Cleveland, OH -> Omaha, NE (~770 miles)
We decided to get an early start on the day as we stayed on the east side of Cleveland and didn’t want to fight traffic heading west. We left the hotel and headed to our favorite bagel shop (in Cleveland) only to find out it’s closed on Mondays 🙁
After settling for Dunkin’s we hit the road around 7am. The morning was mostly smooth, just some sections of single lane highway for construction and of course the always trafficy piece near Chicago. We were able to get two 3-hour stints in before stopping for some Chipotle for lunch. After lunch my dad took a stint and took us to just outside Des Moines where I switched in for the last stint. With the extra hour from the timezone change and us making such great time we decided to push on for Omaha today.
Throughout the whole day both of us were pretty shocked at how pretty Iowa is. I was expecting flat roads and endless farms. Instead, there a lot of rolling hills with trees and dark green corn that almost looked like long grass. We agreed that Iowa needs to work on their marketing!
After passing through Des Moines we kept getting teased and eventually hit directly by some thunderstorms (seems to be a theme on this trip…). We survived them without any really issue and pulled into downtown Omaha to park at our hotel…except that our hotel was actually 15 mins down the road. This is what happens when my dad is in charge of the technology 😀
The good news is that we got a tour of downtown Omaha which is actually pretty nice. They have a lot of impressive stone buildings including their high school.
After finding the actual hotel we ordered some dinner and just relaxed in the hotel room watching some motorcycle racing. Tonight will be a night to catch up on sleep and hit the road tomorrow in search of an actual city between Omaha and Cheyenne (which is too far to get to tomorrow).
-Jay
Leave a Reply