Nebraska - Day 23 - east to Cambridge

Cambridge City RV Park, Cambridge

Sunday, 23 October 2022

Before we left the campground, a Hairy Woodpecker flew over to the tree right next to the RV's window, so I got a good look at him.

Hairy Woodpecker

Downy Woodpecker

I'm including photos of both the Hairy and the Downy Woodpeckers because, to me, they look identical.  The big difference is in their size.  The Hairy is 9¼" and the Downy, which I saw at a previous state park, is 6¾".  I'm not good with sizes but this is enough of a difference that I think I can guess right when one is kind enough to sit still for a minute so I can get a look.  

As we were leaving I took a couple of photos of this end of Lake McConaughy.

This one doesn't show the lake very well but does 
show the pretty colors I've been seeing.

You can see this "largest lake in Nebraska" doesn't
have a lot of water in it.

I was at the far west end of the lake, and as I went east I saw the lake was much more full.  But I'm betting the water level was still pretty low, based on what the banks looked like.

Before I left the campground, I happened on the waste tank dump and decided it was safer to empty my tanks now than wait until tonight's campground, when I wasn't certain they'd have a dump station.  I usually prefer to wait to empty the tanks until I've been driving for a while, to keep the contents from settling.  But I decided the bumpy roads in the state park had done a good enough job to be worth the risk.

While I was there, I filled up with fresh water.  I usually don't do that until I've finished a drive, not wanting to pay for the gasoline to haul water around, but again I wasn't sure tonight's city campground would have their water turned on (lots of campgrounds are shutting off utilities for the winter) and decided better to be safe than sorry.

The 15 or 20 minutes it took to do these 2 chores were long enough for swarms of gnats & mosquitoes to find me.  After a few minutes of them, I had a lot of real sympathy for animals that don't have arms to swish them away from the face and have to take to a pond (if they can find one) to protect themselves.  These bugs will drive anyone insane with enough time.  With all the pressures I've dumped on myself recently, my time to insanity was greatly reduced and I was incredibly relieved to be able to get back in the RV and hit the road.  Even Nebraska's roads.

today's route
The blue line is the time zone boundary.

Fort Robinson and Gering/Scottsbluff were all in Nebraska's panhandle, which rests on Colorado's northern edge.  Today, we crossed back into the Central Time Zone and plunged south, almost to Kansas.

Google's directions called for a turn onto a local road - Keystone Lake Road - that didn't have a road sign, but I didn't have to take it on faith because I saw a sign just past the turn for "World Famous Little Church Combined, Keystone."  That's actually an interesting situation.

In 1906, Keystone was too small to support 2 separate churches, but 11 teenage girls decided they needed at least one.  For more than a year they held fundraisers, such as bake sales, and collected 60% of the $1,200 needed to build a church.  The woman who had been mentoring them donated the remaining funds.  The church was built and dedicated in 1908.  The Little Church at Keystone is a combined Catholic/Lutheran church, with a Catholic altar at one end and a Protestant altar at the other.  The pews are constructed with reversible backs, so the congregation can face whichever altar they're there for.  Pope Leo XIII granted the church special dispensation to allow the dual faiths.  There haven't been any regular services there since 1949, but the church is kept in good repair - in fact, in 2015 a small front porch and sidewalk were added as an Eagle Scout project.

The town of Keystone still exists, but it's unincorporated and has about 60 residents as of 2010.

I passed 2 dead coyotes within a few miles of each other.

I passed several big feed lots, and a sign saying Lincoln County is Livestock Friendly.

Beginning in Roscoe (no sign), I turned on US-30 and was back on the Lincoln Highway Nebraska Byway.  This byway is the only one that runs the entire width of the state, and the Lincoln Highway is a coast-to-coast road that I've met in other states.

A sign by the road said, "Hay Harvesting Prohibited."  Actually I saw that sign several times along the highway.  The crop fields I saw were far enough from the road that I was pretty sure that sign didn't apply to them.  Seemed odd.

Nebraska has a town named Hershey, pop. 665.  (It was named for an early settler.  Don't know if he had family in Pennsylvania.)

I saw a large field of maize, lots of dead corn, a field of maybe sugar beets.  A large flock of goats, and more feed lots with quite a few homes well within the stench area.  I can't think of any set of circumstances that would make those homes attractive to a potential buyer.  Wouldn't you at least want to put your house upwind of those feed lots?

In North Platte, I'd expected to see a park or open space where we could stop and take a break.  But I drove all through this town of 24,733 without seeing even so much as a school - there were several churches, but this being a Sunday, they were being used.  I could see we were just about to leave town and in desperation I turned down a street and got super lucky.  Not only did I find a park, complete with large softball complex and picnic tables and small pond, but I also found a large dog park.  Completely by accident.

The wind was blowing so hard that it wasn't really a pleasant place to stop, despite the sunshine.  A young couple came with their dog, but they went into the adjoining dog pen because, they said, their dog didn't like other dogs.  Too bad - Dext was looking forward to meeting the other one.

We stayed about an hour and ate some lunch.

Gas all over town was $3.57/gallon, which was cheaper than I'd found it in Scottsbluff.

We passed the Lincoln County Courthouse, which I didn't get a photo of but thought it was worth looking up.

Lincoln County Courthouse,
built 1921-24

Pretty fancy for a rural area in Nebraska.

We crossed the South Platte River, and I saw an unusual billboard.  It showed a picture of a man whose face might be familiar to Nebraskans, though not to me.  The sign said: "Union Pacific is on the fritz.  Fix it now with a fair contract for union workers."

I crossed something labeled N.P.P.D. Canal.  I'd seen a political candidate running for something to do with N.P.P.D. but didn't know what it was.  Nebraska Public Power District.  I'm not sure what the canal is for, but it's apparently a good place to go fishing.

What had been a very strong wind all morning was now a very strong crosswind as we turned south on US-83.  In fact, the sky got really hazy because there's so much wind blowing around so much dust from unpaved roads and plowed fields.  Now I can see how the Dust Bowl could have happened.  And thanks to the wind, we saw a whole lot of tumbleweeds.

The Nebraska Highway Dept. pulled a little joke.  For more than 5 miles I saw signs saying a passing lane was coming up.  And eventually it did come up - and lasted only about a quarter of a mile.  Why on earth bother to put up several expensive highway signs for a chunk of road that barely existed.

I ended up behind a guy towing 2 horses and traveling about 45 mph in a 65 mph zone.  Behind me were 2 other cars.  I was afraid to pass the horse guy because of all the hills and curves, but the last guy in this procession wasn't afraid.  He passed all of us at once, going over a hill at a small intersection.  So dangerous.

Then the guy immediately behind me decided to pass - and barely made it before the passing lane started.  Why would someone be so desperate to pass he couldn't wait a few feet for the passing lane?

I wanted to pass, too, but those very strong squirrely winds kept shoving me around, and I was too afraid of them to want to pass until the passing lane arrived.

While we were driving in this area, the wind noise was so incessant I had trouble thinking.  It came close to giving me a headache. The sound kept filling my ears and shoving my brain around.  It was a real relief to get to McCook, pop. 7,698, and make the turn east, so the loud cross wind became a tail wind.

Just off the road I saw the Harry Strunk Memorial Rest Area and for a moment I thought it was a cemetery.  With that name, what else?  Well, it was what else.  It was a roadside rest stop.  Harry Strunk lived in McCook most of his life and published the local newspaper.  Over the entrance he had carved: "Service is the Rent We Pay for the Space We Occupy in This World."  He carried out his ideal of service in the field of water reclamation, flood control and irrigation.  He died in 1961 after living long enough to see the US Congress name a new lake after himself.

I saw a really large number of dead animals today and wondered - was it a lot of drunk drivers?  overpopulation that pushed extras out into the roads?  sport?  I don't have enough of a feel for Nebraska drivers to be able to guess.

I came to Indianola, pop. 642, "The Best Little City Out West."  I saw a historical marker that said a POW camp was built near here during WWII to house mostly German soldiers.  You know, I've been seeing these signs all over the country and it's struck me as truly odd that the US would go to the trouble and expense of transporting these mostly Europeans all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, and then halfway across the US.  Did these POW camps in the heartland really make that much economic sense?

Just past Bartley, pop. 355, I saw another dead coyote - the third for the day.

There sure are a lot of horses in Nebraska.  Almost every farm has at least several.

Just before Cambridge, pop. 1,041, I saw a very large white cross on a hilltop, and written into the hillside below were the words "Jesus Saves."

The city RV park where we stayed is right next to a large park that includes softball fields, a disc golf course, a flower garden and an arboretum that's affiliated with the state arboretum.  Many of the trees had labels (English and Latin names), and there were some works of art.

A view of the park and a hiking trail.
The plaque is enlarged below.

I don't remember having seen this before,
but it's very inspiring.
Makes me want to run out and create.

titled: "The American Farmer"

titled: "Daydreams"

Not exactly artwork, but a nice thought.

And as usual, Nature puts on the best display.
In this case, "Eastern Cottonwood - Populus deltoides - Willow Family".

And they had a veterans memorial that was a little unusual.

The memorial shows 6 branches of service, but instead of the Merchant Marines, which are usually depicted as the 6th branch, they've got the U.S. Space Force.

I've shown this memorial from 2 different angles, because you can see different things depending on what isn't blocked.

I took a chance on this walk-in only campground because I figured not only was it a Sunday when fewer people are camping, but also Cambridge wasn't exactly a high traffic area.  And once again, only one other group came to the campground - at the opposite end, which was nice of them.