Plains, Trains and Automobiles...

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Well… Here we are sitting (or in Carl’s case lying) in the back of the pickup somewhere in Chadron State Park south of Chadron, Nebraska. Tonight was our test drive of the “turck camping” experience… I.e., take everything (including the bikes) out of the back of the truck and put it into the front of the truck - except for the camping gear… Quite a puzzle… and tonight we cheated by “storing” some of the stuff beneath the truck! All-in-all it is doable… just takes time - and to think that tonight we did it in the dark!! So what happened today?

Statistics

Starting Destination: Kearney, Nebraska
Ending Destination: Chadron State Park, Nebraska
Miles Driven: 400
Backtrack Miles Driven: 9
Yes, dear readers we made the mistake of following the bill-board rather than the map and had to back-track!!

Despite the blog title, our trip today was characterized by three elements—the railway, the North Platt River and feed-lots - yes, feed lots! It seemed that every time we turned around there was one not far away, from the carefully camouflaged ones south of Interstate 80 to the yes, eye (and nose) sore ones shouting - do you know where your burgers come from? In some, cases I think that discretion is the better part of valor and we would rather not know!!

Plains

For most of the day we followed the route of the North Platt, and associated rivers… We started the day with a bike ride… Just outside our hotel was one of the best bike paths that we had ever seen - we followed it east to the Archway Museum (left), and then North and West looping around several parks and the University of Nebraska, Kearney campus. The whole time we were skirting around a pretty major thunderstorm system - we thought we were pretty clever as we only got sprinkled on! However, we did manage the unique experience of riding through a bike-path-underpass with a train going over the top (are your sure that’s not thunder?). Then it was back to the hotel, get cleaned up and attempt to re-pack the truck the same way we did when we left Kansas - to our knowledge, nothing got left behind. Our next stop was back to the Archway Museum to take some pictures, as you can see the Museum is quite an amazing structure spanning the whole of Interstate 80. We decided not to go in as we had another museum in mind.

Our next stop was the Nebraska Historical Museum - the attraction for Maria was that it had a WW2 POW Interpretive center. Having read all of the “great escape” stories by the time she was 14 the story associated with the Germans in the US proved irresistible. We spent a few hours in this wonderful Museum - perhaps not as polished as the Archway Museum would have been, but many of the pieces were definitely in better shape compared with those in Minden from the previous day! It was doubly impressive, as the Museum was staffed and run entirely by volunteers.

Carl’s favorite part was the art work by Thomas Naegele (left), Maria’s was the POW story and the fact that many of the items included the name of the people to whom the item originally belonged.

By this time we were scarcely 20 miles from where we had started and we had a long way to go!... So we decided to take the most direct route heading across the plains towards the South Western corner of South Dakota. Unfortunately, this took us along Interstate 80…

However, there were some jems along the way - Several “Rudolf the red nose ‘rein’Deer” (left), unique topography, Carhenge and the seemingly ever-present feed lots! Until we started tracking due north we followed the path of the North Platt River, I guess I had never realized that this part of Nebraska was so “green,” every time we turned around there was some tributary, small lake or stream… Oh, and of course the ever-present center-pivot irrigation systems.

The Super Railway

We also followed the “Super” Railway… We started the day with the underpass experience above, and continued with the seemingly omnipresent coal trains (left) throughout the day - with two parallel tracks it is amazing the number of coal trains going one direction and empty cars returning in the other… Until we tracked North, that’s when things got interesting… several trains had passed us (we took a break to stretch our legs) and we had just caught up with one train, when we encountered the train traffic jam - there were 2 trains stopped one behind the other and then several on sidings along the way… we never could tell what held them up but that ended our train experiences for the rest of the day!!

Carhenge

By this time it was getting late…

Maria had seen lots of pictures that she would have liked—a castle/building like rock formation, the seedy motel that had each “room” painted a different color of the rainbow, a glimpse of the lake down through a break in the bluff—but it was very overcast and the light was bad, Carl said the pictures would not work…. However, along the way we had seen these signs for Carhenge, Maria, having seen the ‘real’ Stonehenge, albeit from a distance was intrigued… We finally found it, with the last light of the day… Carl took the photo left… so much for not much light!!

Thought for the Day

With many road miles today was a day for thinking about just how much Man influences the environment… From the small scale in the early pioneer days through the large scale of today - there is no question that along the way we have become more efficient, can feed more people and have lives that the early pioneers in their covered wagons would never have dreamt of… But at what cost, and is it worth it?

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Comments

[Marvin Bush]

Trains
Carl, The triple track coming East out of North Platte is the busiest rail line in the country. There is between 150 -160 trains a day go East out of North Platte. It's called the Race Track. We need a closer pic. of your wife as we have never seen her. Marv