Nebraska - Day 16 - north and northwest to Merritt Reservoir

Boardman Creek Campground, Merritt Reservoir State Recreation Area

Sunday, 16 October 2022

The vet told me to give the kitties eye drops and liquid medicine for the respiratory infection twice a day.  This morning, Jimmy's injured eye was so gummed up I had to clean it off in order to put drops in it.  I'm beginning to believe he doesn't have an eye in there, but I keep following the vet's instructions, just in case.

today's route
(the blue line marks the time zone boundary)

I drove around Broken Bow a bit on my way to the highway and passed the courthouse.

Custer County Courthouse, built 1911

Some detail from the courthouse.

This is the local Masonic Lodge -
 much larger than I'd have expected in a small town. 

On the weekend edition of All Things Considered, I heard an interview with the author of a book titled Black Women Will Save The World.  It sounded interesting enough that I looked it up and found this summary.   https://readinggroupchoices.com/black-women-will-save-the-world  Once I have a real life again, I'll look forward to reading it.

We passed through several small towns (e.g. Anselmo, pop. 189; Halsey, pop. 76) and crossed both the Dismal River and branches of the Loup River.

I tried hard to find where Dismal River got its name and I came up a little short.  Recreational boaters say it's an exciting river to travel, full of fast-moving currents, switchbacks and varying depths.  Jack Nicklaus designed a very popular golf course in the sandhills by the river, and the club says they think the name came from a local legend.  A young schoolteacher tried to ride her horse across the river in the winter and drowned.  And this is the sum total of what I could find.

Speaking of horses, I saw a fair number of them singly and in herds.  And more trains with filled coal cars heading east.

We passed the Nebraska National Forest, which seems impossible given the almost total lack of trees in this country.  I didn't notice anything that seemed to count as a forest, but maybe I just needed to drive down one of these unpaved county roads.

I saw a Bald Eagle carrying something in its claws.  The bird book says they're in Nebraska year round.

We came to Thedford, "Crossroads of the Sandhills," and this is where we left the Sandhills Scenic Byway to head north again.

We crossed into Cherry County - "God's Own Cow Country," a sign told me.

A large bird flew up suddenly on my left and I couldn't get a good look at it.  All I saw was that it seemed to be the size of a small goose, it had red somewhere on its head, and it had black and white spots under its wings.  I spent a long time with the bird book trying to find anything bigger than a crow that would fit this description.  And I finally realized it was probably a Wood Duck.  That sign yesterday at Victoria Springs said they were around here.  They're smaller than any type of goose but only by a few inches and otherwise fit what I saw.

I passed the turn for the Valentine National Wildlife Refuge and saw lots of duckies in various ponds.  I think this area is part of the flyway for migrating birds.  A few miles farther, I thought I saw some White Pelicans - and then passed a pond labeled "Pelican Lake," so I guess they were.

All day I saw cows, corn, grain, and scrub land.  Farms and small towns and sandhills.  At one point I managed to find an almost safe place to pull off the road to take a photo.

These are the sandhills, covered with grasses.

I took a video to try to show what driving through that landscape was like, but the vantage point didn't show it well enough to be worth watching.  Later on I found an area where the side of a hill had been removed somehow - maybe wind? erosion? - and it exposed what was underneath all that grass: sand.

I saw a large homemade sign that read: "WHO IS Q?"  Not being an adherent of the QAnon beliefs, which I think are truly bizarre, I'm certain Q hasn't identified himself because that would show he was not, in fact, a member of the government or Trump's circle by any stretch of the imagination.  And that would torpedo the foundation of the whole Trump-fighting-deep-state-evil mythology.  But that's just my opinion.

Near the town of Valentine, I took a short detour to see the historic Bryan Bridge, which crosses the Niobrara River.

detail below

more detail of the bridge structure -
see historic marker below for explanation

". . . connected by a single pin"? 
Incredible that it never collapsed, if everything rested on the strength of a pin,
however stout it might be.

I chose to take a more secure route across the river.

On the way into town I passed a historical marker about Fort Niobrara that was once near here.  Among other points of interest, John J. Pershing was once stationed here.  Here's the link to the marker's text.   https://www.hmdb.org/ft-niobrara

In Valentine, pop. 2,820 (named for a state representative), I headed for a park Google showed me on their town map - Colburn Park - only it wasn't at all what Google suggested.  Instead, it was a field that was clearly part of the athletic facilities for the high school next door.  But I'd been promising Dext a walk, so we parked at the high school and walked around a bit.  Even though it was Sunday and no one was parked at the front of the school, I soon found that something was going on, because the parking lot on the side of the school was rapidly filling with cars and pickups.  So we didn't stay long.

From Valentine, we switched to NE-97, "God's Trail Through The Sandhills."

I passed the Samuel McKelvie National Forest (see comment above on the Nebraska National Forest) and came to the turn for the Merritt Reservoir State Recreation Area. This park is well-known around the state as a popular recreation site.  I'd heard of it before my trip as having some of the darkest skies in the country.

All the campgrounds here were available on a walk-in basis only, which made me nervous, but Sundays are typically less populated campground days anywhere, so I was expecting to be able to find at least one spot in at least one of the campground here.  And I did.

In fact, as it turned out, only one other camping group was in that area overnight.  We were among thick trees right by the (depleted) reservoir.  And the skies were dark.  And once I walked away from the trees, the stars put on a show.