25th -30 June 2023
If I were to describe the landscape of Nebraska in a few words they would be: gently undulating, mostly corn growing farmland. Great swathes of it. The lack of high ground means no distant views and the wind direction matters. We descended from our loess hill perch, crossed the Missouri River, entered Nebraska and set off westwards, into a stiff headwind. This day was a tiring battle against a Westerly that reduced our fuel economy from terrible (9 mpg) to very terrible (7-8 mpg). We had an ‘Interstate Day’ today, joining the I-80 at Lincon and staying on it until we got near to to our next stop, Grand Island. This approx 140 mile stretch of highway is in a dead straight line, exactly east to west, as if the engineers just drew a line with a ruler and said “Yup. That’s where we’ll put it”.
Grand Island, named for a French fur trappers settlement on the ‘La Grande Isle’ in the nearby Platte River, was orginally touted in the early 1800’s as an alternative capital city for the new country rather than Washington DC. This obviously didn’t happen. Instead, aided by the arrival of the Union Pacific Railroad, it positioned itself as a supply town for those heading west to seek their gold fortunes and to pioneer homesteaders, thus cementing its position as a centre for trade and settlement. Now it has a population of just over 50,000 and is Nebraska’s 4th largest city.
Its chief attraction is the stylish Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer. Named for Leo Stuhr, a local farmer and politician, whose family were early settlers to this area . He donated land, money and artefacts to build the museum which consists of a very stylish and somewhat out of place architect designed building at the centre of a circular island in a circular lake, and a mock-up living history pioneer village made up of many relocated original buildings ‘inhabited’ by period costumed players. It also had an exhibition of historic farm equipment including many steam engines and tractors in a seperate shed.
This had a very elderly chap manning it with the reception desk set up like it was his study desk at home, piled high with papers and magazines. A combination of him being hard of hearing and us being British meant that he couldn’t understand a word we were saying but we had a nice chat nonetheless. We managed to do a quick whip round the exhibits before he shut it for the day at 3pm. Having only opened at 11am, this 4 hours of ‘museum work’ was possibly a perfect distraction from retirement. There were other buildings with exhibits detailing the history and interactions (some may say skirmishes) with members of the local native tribes.
There were some very chatty docents who I think were obviously quite bored and the chap who was demonstrating in the noisy woodworking shop spoke so quietly that we have no idea what he was on about. There was also a small buffalo herd. Interesting factoid: In the 1500s, before the arrival of the white settlers there were approximately 30-60 million bison on the prairies of the continental USA. By 1884 this number had dropped to 325. In total. Now there are approximately 500,000. Here are six of them.
Our camp was located in a lovely town-owned park next door to the museum. It was well maintained and quiet with some much needed shade cast by lots of mature trees. Payment was by stuffing cash into the honesty box and spaces were on a first-come-first served basis. This always gives us a degree of anxiety as we arrive, hoping that the place isn’t choc-a-block, but there were plenty of pitches free. Two nights here gave us a full day at the museum on the middle day and the rest of the time we chilled out in the shade, the Nebraska breezeless summer heat being quite sapping.
The next section of road from here has been billed as one of America’s top ten scenic drives: The Sandhills Journey on Nebraska Highway 2 is 265 miles of single lane road through one of the great widernesses of this country: 19,300 sq miles of grass covered stabilised sand dunes. These were created by the sediment of the Rocky Mountains, ground down by glacial activity and then washout out onto these plains. They are the largest sand dune formations in the Western Hemisphere, and no, I’d never heard of them before either. The soft undulations of the dunes went on as far as the eye could see, but with no high points for a far reaching vista, the photos don’t really do them justice. Back in the day, when the pioneers were granted ownership of 160 acres of homestead land in order to encourage the settlement of the Mid-West they had to rethink the land allowance in this area. The soil quality of this area was so poor that the allowance was increased to 640 acres. One settler remarked that she was glad that the allowance had been increased to 640 acres as now one could starve to death in style. These were hardy people living very tough lives.
We stopped halfway along the route at a National Forest Park called Bessey Recreation Area. This was named for a chap called Charles Bessey, a Nebraskan botany professor who hypothesised that this area had been covered by natural forest in the past and in 1902 he convinced President Roosevelt to set aside 222 sq miles of sandhills to recreate it in a small way. The creation of a tree nursery and many years of hand planting native Ponderosa pines led to this being the largest hand planted forest in the world for a while until the title was lost to a forest in China. In October last year a wildfire called the Bovee fire destroyed over 19,000 acres of forest in this area, destroying one camp and coming perilously close to the camp we were staying in. This camp was very picturesque with the sites slotted between the trees giving some much needed shade. It was mid-week and mostly deserted, the majority of the sites only filling up at week-ends with Nebraskans that come with their ATVs to use the trail network here.
Our two day stay gave us a middle day to do a good hike. This ended up being about 7 miles of reasonably poorly signposted trail through the forest up to a fire lookout tower. Ironically this took us through a big swathe of the fire ravaged land, including the fire tower surrounds. It was beautiful but ugly all at the same time and it was slightly unsettling to imagine what it must have been like to have been staying here when the fire hit and having to evacuate. It was also boiling hot and we were a bit cooked by the time we got home.
Here the scenic highway followed the Middle Loup River, as did the railway line and getting to the recreation area involved a railway crossing. In most areas the trains sound their horns as they approach crossings, even if there are safety barriers deployed, so despite us being IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, the frequent freight trains made their presence known day and night. This is the soundtrack of much of our travels.
After two nights here we hit the road again and the view was all sandhills for the whole journey. They seemed neverending until they ended, which was quite abruptly just before our our next stop in town call Alliance, a classic utilitarian prairie town. Here there was the spectacle of Carhenge.
Like Stonehenge, but made out of cars. The brainchild of a chap who decided to build it and the sort batsh*t crazy thing that puts an otherwise fairly nondescript place on the map. Well on some maps, anyway. We detoured 3 miles to see the marvel. Saw the marvel. Took a few medicore photos of the marvel and left. Most people did exactly the same thing. There was an RV park right next door, but we were booked into a place back on the other side of town. Our place was run by a 80-something year old Woody Harrelson lookalike who had two man-mountain sized sons who ran a lawn mowing business from the same location. We were breaking the rules here and were only staying one night. Our plans for a stroll out to get dinner were skuppered by the weather. The sky started to look very dark and angry and the internet yet again warned us of meterological perils. High winds, flash flooding and possible tornados. I had another calm and relaxed freak-out and sought out our host who was oblivious to the forecast. I enquired as to our ‘options in case of an imminent tornado’. He said we could shelter in the basement of his (on-site) home, which had an external entrance. I got him to show me where the door was, we put away everything that that we had just got out, made sure our go-bag was packed again and kept our eyes on the radar and the updates. In the end, again, it was a reasonably big storm in a teacup. Just a lot of rain and lightning and thunder. As I said my goodbyes and thank yous to Ol’ Woody in the morning he looked at me wryly and asked if we were going to stay any longer to perhaps ‘catch a real storm’ instead of just ‘the bit of rain’ that we’d experienced. This worldly old soul has lived in tornado alley his whole life and can’t quite fathom how terrifying the concept of a twister is to this Euro/NZ gal. The next morning, in lieu of our missed dinner out we stopped at ‘Runza’ for our breakfast. This Nebraskan-centric, Mid-Western darling of a fast food chain is named for its most famous offering, The Runza. This is a German-inspired, seasoned mince and cabbage bread pocket. It has variations and comes with fries. It is not a classic breakfast food but this was our last chance to sample one before we left ‘Runza territory’. We were there as the doors opened at 10am and yes, they are very tasty.
