The Long Road to Denver

Today we started the long drive to Denver. We're still about 6 hours away and have stopped in some convenient hotel for the night. Yay for free hotel wifi!

While driving days are usually boring, I find them relaxing after cramming in as many sights as possible in all the cities. However, this one had a couple stressful moments.

Cruising down the I-80, just before we hit Des Moines, we ran in to some traffic. While not unusual by any means, the cop cars that sped past us tipped us off that something had happened. After crawling by in traffic, we come upon the accident. This was the worst wreckage I have ever seen in real life. The front of one van was all smashed in and it was stuck in the grassy median between the highways. This was nothing compared to the car, or rather what was left of a car, on the road. This was a blackened piece of metal that was barely recognizable that it was ever a car. The front was smashed in, the back end was completely gone, and it was charred to a crisp leading me to believe it caught fire or exploded after impact. Seeing something like that really makes you slow down and think about life.

Hours later, the sun has set and we're planning which city to stop in for the night when the sky starts to light up every few seconds. We're driving on the highway and in front of us on both sides of the road are major storms with lightning in the sky every 10 seconds are so. We continue are drive and enjoy the lights for a while and then the rain starts. We're driving towards the storms and the rain just gets worse and worse. I'm glad KT was behind the wheel, because I would have just called it a night during this storm. The rain was coming down in sheets and the lightening was the closest and most frequent I've ever seen. The Nebraska landscape was pitch black but the lightning was striking often enough that they might as well have been acting as street lights. After about 30 minutes of driving through this madness, we finally pass through the worst of it and can see the street again and the lightning slows to only 3-5 flashes per minute. WE MADE IT THROUGH!

And in lighter news, watch the video/song that inspired our URL. I'm sure most of you know the reference already, but since I have no pictures or sightseeing stories, I figured I'd post it.