Day Four: Into Nebraska

July 1, 2008: Into Nebraska

Road Trip Rule Number 2: Never Ever, Ever Stay at the Marriot Springhill Inn and Suites in Cheyennne Wyoming....The air-conditioning/heating is Psycho, the bed is the The Worst Ever, and the non-food breakfast is Bad Beyond Belief. Cute, but TERRIBLE! Cheyenne and Laramie were also disappointing. Next time we'll go north to Yellowstone and Cody.

Over the border to Nebraska and where, oh where, is our Neil Young CD (the one about Nebraska and we can't think of the title?) Yesterday we were listening to Outlaw Country music to match Wyoming-today we are back to Classic Rock....Where are my Gillian Welch CD's? Nebraska is very, very flat for a very, very long time and gospel with an alternative twist seems appropriate.

So, after a 100 miles or so, we decided to take a little side jaunt....let's try a side road! Look, Highway 30 parallels I 80. Let's try it! Eh, eh, eh, eh, warning: Boring slow road ahead!

We got to Ogallala, Nebraska a little after noon, we think-remember friends that we are periodically losing an hour a day, so time has become very squishy around now-and headed for the Chamber of Commerce. Not wanting to sound too ghoulish, we first asked for all of their information, before slyly slipping in that we would also like to see Boot Hill......Boot Hill! the stuff of our 7 year old Old Wild West imaginations. Sitting in front of black and white TV's chomping on handfuls of Sugar Pops just like Roy Rogers and Dale Evans told us to, while we watched absolute justice: the guy in the white hat shot the evil guy in the black hat and the black hatted guy was bundled up, with his boots on, to take his final earthly sojourn to Boot Hill.

But, to be fair, and to help us get rid of the kinks from that Hideous Bed at the Never Ever, Ever Stay at the Marriot Springhill Inn in Cheyenne (truly a mossy flat rock would have been more comfortable) we took the "Walk of Fame" under the blazing high noon sun and learned a lot about the Westward Movement. Did you know that the North Platte River and the South Platte Rivers joined at Olgallala and became the, ready?, the Platte River. Well, in the 1800's, everyone was taking the routes along the various Platte Rivers, the gold seekers, the Mormons, the cattle drivers, the Pony Express ( we read an add for riders asking for strong wiry young men, preferably orphans,) the railraods and, eventually the first interstate highway system, the Lincoln Highway ( remember that from Evanston?). And, when the driving snow wasn't freezing one to death, it was very, very opressively hot! So, it is easy to undestand how cow pokes who had been on the trail for many dusty miles, wearing leather and sitting on sweaty horses and pushing even hotter cows along a very thirsty trail, could get a bit over-excited, over liquored-up and, as many a poor soul did, end their life in a silly dispute on Front Street only to be deposited, with their boots on (thus the name Boot Hill), in a canvas sack, on a lonely hill overlooking the town of Ogallala.

The famous cemetary is in the middle of a neighborhood with houses all around it, but still impressive: lonely, eeiry, and sad. The remains, many of them townsfolk such as the first occupants-a mother and her child-were removed to the "new" cemetary in the early 1900's. In the mid 1900's Boot Hill was reconstructed from historical records as accuarately as possible. Despite its long memory for our generation, Boot Hill was only used for 10 years and there only appeared to be about 60 to 80 markers. It was one of those moments, for both of us, when legend meets reality, and legend looses. But, what remains is a better understanding of the reality of how things were in real life, for real people, with real sorrows, or for people who made some really bad errors in judgement.

After lunch at a faux saloon, we were on the road again, crossing Nebraska.

As we moved on, we and crossed the Platte River many times. It added to our trip to know the significance of the Platte, both North and South, as well as its various channels, in the Westward Movement. It also added to the beauty of the countryside and made us think again about the significance of water as we have crossed deserts and rivers in our first days on the road. You understand it in daily life, but to see the influence of water on the landscape day after day is thought provoking.

Tomorrow we are off to Iowa, under the threat of thunder storms. I am making John, who sometimes wonders at my absolute need to stop and look at "authentic sod houses" and all of the Westward Movement road side attractions (I am barely able to contain my excitement at visiting the Buffalo Bill tourist parks on our way back through after visiting in Toulon, Illinois) stop after breakfast, at the Pioneer Museum here in Grand Island before we begin our next 375ish mile stretch.

We finally decided (read that as Max finally decided) that John's cough was not a hang over from California wild fire smoke inhalation, but that he had a bronchial infection. Amazing what you can do over a cell phone. John is now peacefully asleep after being dosed up with antibiotics and inhalers. It's the first time in three days when he hasn't been coughing every few minutes.

The days of big push driving are almost over. Yippee!

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