Showing posts with label NEBRASKA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NEBRASKA. Show all posts

AGATE FOSSIL BEDS N.M.﹠CHIMNEY ROCK (NE)

TUESDAY - We've got a long 224-mile route to travel today. To break up the long day we have scheduled a stop at the 150-mile mark to check out a National Monument and eat lunch.

We were barely outside of the campground when the wildlife came out of hiding to wish us "safe travels" today.

This young buck was the only one of six deer who paused in the middle of the road for a photo.

Then just a few more blocks up the road, right in the middle of a residential neighborhood, we spotted this quartet of wild turkeys picking bugs out of the grass and only one took the time away from their meal to "gobble-gobble" us a goodbye.

I must admit that today's route could have been slightly shorter if we had taken the direct route, but we're adding a few miles by crossing back over into Wyoming and then heading south to cross into Nebraska from Wyoming.

We are still in South Dakota heading west into Wyoming. Not much to see!

We are now in Wyoming heading south and at least there are a few interesting hills to see.

OK, we are now obviously crossing into Nebraska from Wyoming here.
That's right! We've now collected our 102nd Border Crossing and only have 5 more to go.

In Nebraska there are definitely some plateaus and valleys to keep us interested.

I can't remember where was the last time I saw a tree today. Oh look! There's "one" now.

Just 34-miles after crossing into Nebraska we found ourselves turning off the highway to visit the Agate Fossil Beds National Monument.

AGATE FOSSIL BEDS NATIONAL MONUMENT

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Inside the Visitor Center there were all kinds of plaster skeletons like the ones found outside.
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This is the beginning of the 1-mile Daemonelix Trail at the park entrance.
It's the only place open to the public where you can still see fossils in their original place.
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This is what a 22-million year old fossilized dune looks like today.
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It looks like we have more visitors in the parking lot. I wonder if they're going to hike?
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Sure looks like it! At least we won't be alone out here.
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This is affectionately referred to as "The Phone Booth".
It protects a fossilized spiral burrow of an ancient Paleocastor.
Think of a Paleocastor as an ancient beaver-like animal.
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I'm glad I turned around before I got to this section of the hike.
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At least it looks like it's all downhill from here.
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That building down there houses something very special.
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It's completely surrounded by glass to protect it from erosion and vandalism.
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It's a little hard to make out, but this spiral burrow goes off in two directions
when it gets to a certain point. A unique find here in the park.
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That doesn't look very stable from this vantage point.

Now that our visit to the Agate Fossil Beds National Monument is complete it's time to get back on the road. We are still over 75-miles from our destination.

I hope the entire 75-miles isn't like this. At least there's no traffic or stop lights.

We passed by this huge processing plant and I thought about going inside to see if I was in any way related to the owners and possibly be entitiled to a few profit sharing checks.

Afterall, my dad was born in Nebraska about 360-miles east of here back in 1919.

Yeah, no such luck!

We are headed to the town of Bayard which has a small FREE RV campground next to their city park. There are only 3 FCFS campsites at the city park with water and electric hookups. I'd like to get there early enough to get one. Our batteries sure could use a rest and get a full overnight charge too.

On the way to the campground we passed right by our next sightseeing destination. Here's a quick peek at what it is!

We arrived at the city park and found two of the three sites were already occupied. So we secured the last one, unhooked and locked up THE POD before we "took off" to go see Chimney Rock, they close at 4:00PM and it's already 2:30PM.

CHIMNEY ROCK

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Here is the Visitor Center with Chimney Rock in the background.
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Here it is without the Visitor Center in the way, much better.
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They have placed a couple of props to make your photos look more authentic to the 1850s.
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We drove over to the hiking trailhead to get a closer look.
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A storyboard explained that since 1850 more than 80' has eroded from the top of Chimney Rock.
Don't panic, there's still another 120' before it's gone.
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To get any closer than this you'll need to put your hiking boots on!

We got a big suprise when we got back to the campground. Instead of three RVs here there were now five. The one of each end don't get the water and electric hookups, but they do get a FREE and safe overnight parking spot.

There is even a nice shade pavillion for us to use.

Count 'em! Five RVs, but only 3 electric connections.

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OUR 4-DAY MAD DASH ACROSS THE MIDWEST!

MAD
DASH
DAY #1

THURSDAY

STOP #447 		3.3 miles of Interstate Highway driving!

Day #1 of our Mad Dash included 284-miles of driving east through the Cornhusker State of Nebraska. Avoiding the Interstates took us through the rural areas of central Nebraska and it was soon easy to see how the state got it's nickname.

All we saw were corn fields and grain silos, with an occasional train hauling what I believe to be coal, that is when we could see through the dense fog that seemed to hang around until noon.

I scheduled our departure perfectly this morining so that we would arrive in the town of York, NE just about lunch time.

There are several reasons why I chose York for our lunch stop today. The first is because there is a Runza restaurant in town, we are still in Nebraska after all.

Second reason is right next door to Runza is a self-serve car wash with bays large enough to fit ROVER and THE POD. They were both in need of a quick rinse after traveling on that wet 14-mile gravel road last week.

Lastly, York in the town were my father was born some 100+ years ago. I'm well aware that the town we saw today looks nothing like it did back in the 1920s when my dad was growing up, but I still felt the need to at least pay it a visit.

One other interesting thing that we observed today was that along the first 130+ miles of our route we kept seeing huge yard sales on both sides of the road, on a Thursday none the less? Some had signs displaying the words "A Junk Jaunt" location.

When we finshed our drive we looked it up! Every year since 2004 on the last full weekend in September there is a yard sale along Route 2 in Nebraska. It covers 9 counties, 35+ communities and nearly 500-miles of shopping.

This is very similiar to the "127 Yard Sale", which claims to be the longest yard sale in the county, which is held the first weekend of August and runs down US-127 from Michigan to Alabama, that's 690-miles of shopping fun!

We didn't stop to buy anything because we currently have everything we need and we'd have nowhere to store anything if we did but it.

MAD
DASH
DAY #2

FRIDAY

STOP #448 		0 (that's spelled zero) miles of Interstate Highway driving!

Last nights Walmart in Nebraska was less than 3-miles from the Missouri River, which creates the border between Nebraska and Iowa.

We drove the full width (279 miles) of Southern Iowa today and I'm sorry to report we have not one single photo to share of our drive.

There were a lot of smaller towns and a lot of rolling hills along Route 2, but nothing that inspired a photo. Maybe Tricia was just too tired to lift the camera today.

In one of the small towns we drove through we couldn't help but notice that EVERY single house and business along the main street was toilet-papered, just like I used to see growing up when someone didn't hand out an adequate amount of Halloween candy.

It's nowhere near Halloween yet and even City Hall, the Police and Fire Departments were decorated. We of course Googled it when we got settled and found out it's a midwest tradition to TP the town on the night before your High School Homecoming football game. Who knew? That didn't happen where I grew up in South Florida, how about any of you?

MAD
DASH
DAY #3

SATURDAY

STOP #449 		0 (that's spelled zero) miles of Interstate Highway driving!

This morning we again crossed a river shortly after getting on the road, only this time it was the Mighty Mississippi River separating Iowa from Illinois.

A little over 2-hours later and we were driving around the big city of Peoria when we crossed another rather large river, this time it was the Illinois River.

Just downriver from the current bridge they are busy constructing a brand new bridge, which is expected to be completed in the Fall of 2024. Construction began in the spring of 2019, so it's anybody's guess when it will actually be completed.

Today we drove completely across the state of Illinois and halfway across Indiana. We did see a few more houses with TP in the trees, but nothing to compare to what we saw in Iowa.

Here's a thought? Maybe the losing football team should be required to not only clean up their own town, but also the winning teams town! Now that would be an incentive to play your best.

MAD
DASH
DAY #4

SUNDAY

STOP #450 		0 (that's spelled zero) miles of Interstate Highway driving!

We started our 4th and final travel day with breakfast at the Bob Evans Restaurant across the street from Walmart.

I made sure our last day of travel would be an easy one of just 147-miles and that almost what we got.

In a little town in Indiana we saw signs mentioning a detour, but we've seen those all over the place in the last few days. Then we saw the sign that read "Bridge Out". That is not something we can ignore, so while still 5-miles outside of town we made a u-turn in the roadway and headed back out of town to take a very short 5-mile detour to get back to the route we had planned.

We arrived at the Airsteam Factory Service Center campground just 30-minutes after our Colorado friends and tomorrow morning we'll both be in the office with our list of repairs in hand. Wish us both luck!

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