Tag: Nebraska

Nebraska, I wronged you

I generally travel across Nebraska on I-80. With the exception of the hills along the Missouri River and the Sand Hills area, I have always found it pretty boring. This trip we are traveling across Hwy 20, and until the middle of the afternoon today, my beliefs seemed justified. This we came into the area around Ft. Robinson State Park, and it is gorgeous. Badlands, rolling hills with pine trees, incredible broad meadows with bison and longhorns grazing, pronghorn, and deer. Wow!

Looking along the Smiley Canyon Scenic Drive
Longhorns!
Bluffs with the sunset gold on them
Even more sunset
Did I say something about sunset?
The bluffs yet again

They have a lovely campground. An electric site was $20, but there was an additional daily Parks Pass fee of $8 for an out of state resident. The fort itself is wonderfully preserved. There are many original buildings and a number of reconstructed ones. The old officers quarters have been converted into rental units. They are full many weekends, but not during the week. We road our bikes all over the main part of the fort. Of course we also included the University of Nebraska museum with a lot of fossils. I hadn’t realized just how close this place is to the southern Black Hills. I definitely am going to plan a longer trip that will include the wonderful southern Black Hills plus this area. There are a number of National Monuments and Historic sites.

I wish I could post an audio recording of the campsite as I sit outside on a warm summer evening. Lots of birds (including a mourning dove) plus a small babbling brook at the edge of our site. Quite nice!

Into Nebraska

We left Iowa this morning. Yesterday’s baptism went really well. Darling Clay slept through much of the service, but he woke up when the pastor poured the water over his head! Isn’t he adorable?

Dad, GS, Mom, and the two pastors.

You can see the long skirt that buttons onto a romper. There are actually three sets of pintucks, each 7 rows.

The romper part of the baptism outfit.

The romper has 13 sets of pintucks down the front.

Regarding Iowa, I said I would post some wildflower pictures.

To give some help with scale, the yellow rockets are higher than my waist.

These pictures were taken on the bike path at Pinicon Ridge County Park, but Squaw Creek (where we camped) was the same.

We decided to head toward Gros Ventre campground in Grand Teton National Park. We also decided to not head out on I-80 but instead take Hwy 20. I must admit it is not the scenic path, but at least it has the advantage of newness. We are now camped at Carney City Park in O’Neill, NE. What a lovely little place!

Shade, concrete pad, electricity, and water.

There are quite a few sites available. It is on a voluntary donation system, so we left 10 dollars. We won’t use any facilities except the electricity so it seemed fair.

A change of plans

We headed out of Iowa a little after 9:00 am, planning on going to Oklahoma. Then we saw a huge flock of pelicans in Nebraska. When I say huge, it was at least 1000 birds, some wheeling in the air and even more on the ground. Amazing! I remembered how I had been in the middle of the great bird migration in early March almost 5 years ago while on I-80 in Nebraska. Ummm. It was almost March. Was it possible the migration was starting early? There is a bubble of deliciously warm air over the Great Plains, so we turned north to I-80 instead of Oklahoma. We aren’t in the middle of the main migration, but we did see a lot of birds. Take a look at this picture. All that almost solid white are birds completely covering a borrow pit along the side of the highway.

As usual, it isn’t the best of pictures, but it shows how thick the geese were. These were mostly Snow Geese with a few other geese and even some ducks stuck in the middle of them. During the main migration, this kind of scene occurs in fields and ponds for well over 100 miles. Sadly we only saw the geese and ducks, no sandhill cranes.

We are spending the night in North Platte, Nebraska at Holiday RV Park. Definitely some traffic noise, but it is convenient and pretty cheap for electric, wifi, and cable. Central water, and there is a sewer hookup we don’t need yet. Normally they are full hookups (we have stayed here a few times before), but they are leaving the water off for the season. Since today’s high temperature was in the 70’s, it doesn’t seem reasonable, but it is still February. From here we plan on heading to Colorado, probably Loveland. I’d like to see Rocky Mountain National Park in the winter, but I sure don’t want to camp there. Lowland camping with electricity and cable sounds a lot more enjoyable. Then again, we may change our minds!

Oh, and I have picked up a rotten head cold. I am coughing a lot, and I have a sore throats from the drainage. Ugh.