Sunset, Nebraska

At last we come to the end of the trip pics for Nebraska. Having bored you all witless, any remaining readers can switch off at the sight of sunset over the prairie.










Oddly, no matter how fast I drove (75mph is fast by Oz legal standards), I could not keep up with sunset! It got away from me on the I80. So did the clouds. They were going south at least as fast as I was on the highway (65mph). Those were clouds in a hurry!

Next time I go to Nebraska, I hope to go to Omaha and meet persons who know who they are ;-) Of course if our upcoming train trip goes ahead, we have to pass through Omaha on the way out and on the way back. The train stops in Omaha at 10:30pm on the way west (back) and at Ridiculous Hour (6:14am) on the way east. Ouch!

On top of the world (a trip to Nebraska, part 3)

Heh, that isn't the sort of title one expects for Nebraska, is it?

The ranger at Scotts Bluff kindly let me go up the top - you can drive right up to the top on a made road through tunnels and all - even though it was pretty much closing time. I guess he figured someone who was from Australia and had driven specifically to go to a woollen mill (his mum knits so when he was posted there she was delighted) ought to see the local sights.

My goodness what a lot of sights. I'll let them speak for themselves.





(Saddle Rock)











As I scuttled around the various short walks on the top of the Bluff oohing and aaahing at the sights I noticed LOTS of bunnies that are almost perfectly coloured to blend into the landscape

and even more trains! Our camera doesn't have a big zoom (heck it is a 4megapixel beast that has now taken 10,000 pics in exactly 11 months) so I don't have pics to share of the trains cos they are like dirty lines with bright dots for lights at the front. It turns out that Scotts Bluff (the town) is on the main east west line so that would be why there were trains about 5 miles (if that) apart on it going in either direction. I was mighty impressed by the number of trains I could see. I would've seen more if I had dropped a quarter or two into the viewing binoculars.

I noticed some sunsetty colours appearing


and thought I had best drive back down the bluff so's I could check out the stuff outside the gates, like the Oregon Trail itself. Alas, not much to see of the trail as it has eroded a LOT - heck you can see how much the sandstone bluff itself has eroded in less than a hundred years - that survey post was level with the rock:

so all the wheel ruts are gone. Still I trotted along a trail that has a lot of history, even if that history is not mine.


Dome rock from the Oregon Trail, and some more :-) These views really made me feel like I was in the Wild West somewhere but this wasn't really wild, not like some of the places we've been. Very cool though.





The sunset light was full on Saddle Rock - how pretty! Like Uluru but not.


And the skies lit up gently over the prairie


(Next, the journey home - sunset over the prairie)

Scotts Bluff (a trip to Nebraska, pt 2)

Ah where were we?

Driving through the wilds of western Nebraska. As I drove, I mused on the landscape. At this stage it was all looooong rolling hills. Imagine being a pioneering (white) family and having oxen pull your wagon over the vast prairie and then getting the wagon over the occasional little creek. I don't know how gullied the landscape was when it was true prairie but there are a few gullies now. They would've been pretty tricky to navigate.

The land itself looks rather barren at this time of the year. Anywhere that isn't irrigated (which is most places now as it is November and snow is expected anytime) was a soft grey/beige/green stubble. I have no idea what most of the land is used for but it has fences so its used for something - cattle mebbe? - and some is ploughed, and I'm guessing some has winter wheat on it just waiting to be covered by the winter snows. It looks like land that is asleep and waiting for the days to start getting longer and spring to come.


Suddenly the landscape changes. Instead of long rolling hills, you discover scarps and pointy mesa type hills and the landscape becomes somewhat more exciting.



Wildcat Hills open up on the long prairie beyond. The far west of Nebraska seems to pocked with the remnants of a plateau. The plateau is only sandstone, soft sandstone, and is eroding away. Scotts Bluff and Wildcat Hills are an edge of that disappearing plateau.

Finally I reached Scotts Bluff. It was not my actual destination - a woollen mill was, but as it turned out Scotts Bluff was *much* more interesting!

I had plenty of time to ponder the bluff and Mitchell Pass as there were roadworks happening.


How would you like to be this guy, standing out in the occasionally bitter wind holding a STOP or SLOW sign? Nice view, though. (taken from the north, coming back from Brown Sheep Mill)

I only twigged that there was something special about the bluff when I saw a sign like this:

Like DUH!

Ah. That would be *the* Oregon Trail then. The one that all those nutty, hopeful, nothing to lose and land/livelihood to gain people dragged their families across America on. In this age of cars, trains and aeroplanes, I cannot imagine how it must've been to hitch some oxen up to a wagon or two and take *everything* you had on a trip across the prairie and the mountains (cos I have been across those mountains and they are rather large!).


(Eagle Rock and wagon)

See? They even have an old wagon or two, minus the covers at this time of year, at the national monument. Guess they don't want them blowing away.... The wagons were *very* narrow - about a metre or about 4' wide at their widest point and maybe 2.5m/8' long. That amazed me. I don't know how those poor women survived having everything they needed in the way of provisions, clothing and basics in that small space. The wagon in the pic is a larger freight wagon. It still is not bigger than a family sized car say a Camry or something like that. You can read more about the history of Scotts Bluff on this NPS page.

Here's some pics of Mitchell Pass, Eagle Rock and some extras. I rather liked this place despite the bleakness of the badlands and of the season.







Just you wait - Even More Pics next time! Still of Scotts Bluff and views from the top! It is quite speccy.

A trip to Nebraska, part 1

On the 2nd of November, a most auspicious day, I decided to do a quick trip to Brown Sheep woolen mill outside Scott's Bluff in Nebraska. I figured I could kill two birds with one stone - visit a woolen mill and get to see a little American heritage.

Driving up the I25 to the border of Colorado with Wyoming is well, not terribly interesting. It's only about 40 miles to Cheyenne from Fort Collins but it feels a fair whack longer.


One of the main things I noticed about northern Colorado was:


and


Yep. It seems to specialise in big powerlines. The two shown are just a subset of the many I saw. There are lots and lots and lots of powerlines.


The reason for the lots and lots and lots of powerlines became pretty obvious too. The wind farm was east of the old (coal fired) powerstation - a nice contrast of old vs new tech, ecologically unsound vs sustainable electricity generation. The windfarm is set well away from the I-25. It seemed weird to me because from one angle all the turbines were in a number of rows. In Oz, windfarms are not in lines as they follow the coast or a range of hills and those landmarks tend not to be in nice geometric lines....


The terrain is fairly flat with low hills rolling away from the Rockies. There was one weird lot of lumpy rocks by the side of the road:


and a metal bison on top of a hill:


But that is about it, unless you count the excitement of a car pulled over with not just three but four cop cars behind him and the coppers checking his car out *very* *very* closely.

I'd show you the welcome to Wyoming sign but well let's just say the camera focused on the inside of the windshield and leave it at that.

Soon enough I saw this sign:

and was so excited about taking a pic of it that I nearly missed the turnoff! Hi Minnie!

They appear to grow satellite dishes in Cheyenne, like some weird and enormous form of fungi:


And off we dashed through a wee bit of Wyoming, which I have to admit was a boring bit of Wyoming because it is prairie and a bit bland this late in the year. The opposite diagonal corner of Wyoming is very exciting indeed since it is the home of Yellowstone.


You can see some prairie on the other side of (Pine Bluff?). It seems to go on forever. It looks very flat, but it isn't. It is just mostly flat.

Finally the sign:

Home of Arbor Day? I guess there are so few trees in a place where the prairie dominates that they wanted a few more trees as windbreaks and to beautify the place. After all the prairie seems pretty trashed now.


I've always thought of Nebraska as being flat. Apparently it is wrinkly around the edges (a bit like me I guess) cos I drove over a lot of small hills, like overgrown sand dunes only rocky, and a few larger hills. At least they know how to make good roads there - the ones around Fort Collins all appear to be based on concrete slabs, which all seem to move, so there is a lot of k-thud, k-thud k-thud as you drive around both on the interstate and around town. (Particularly painful on a pushbike.) All of the ones I drove on in Nebraska (all four of them) were good bitumen (asphalt) roads.

I found a little wind farm to take pics of - do you think I like them?


I even took pictures of shrubs and trees on the roadside because I hadn't seen any for quite some time on my drive. I don't need to share them with you as I am sure you have seen trees and shrubs before, but you do get to see these:

Two months ago that field would have been magnificent. But now? Dead sunflowers all bowing their heads. It is sorta sad and dull. Wonder if their seeds have fallen out yet or will hang in there until they are harvested?

Next - Scott's Bluff National Monument and lots more pics.

Is there anything in Calgary?

Does anyone know? There is a US consulate there. It was home to the Winter Olympics many years ago. I guess I should look it up on Wikipedia and google for any yarn shops.

Hey, it is near Banff! Even Aussies have heard of Banff. Maybe we can do a day trip out there or something, weather permitting... 1.1 million people live there so it ain't small. Looks more interesting than Winnipeg, ahem! (DH was there in August.) It gets a lot of sun, for Canada, and winters are highly variable - chinook winds can make things rather warm or blizzards can bring temps low.

There's a few yarn shops too. Anywhere to get spinning stuff?

With any luck the new visa applications will go through no probs and we can fly across to Toronto and spend time with friends and family too! Hopefully we will get a white Christmas after all! Looks like Nathan's parents won't get to see Fort Collins now cos the visa stuff for us makes it too complicated. This dumb rule of not being able to enter earlier than 10 days before the job starts sucks bigtime!

Still we have an appointment, we get to see two big Canadian cities, we will get time with people we know (new friends are nice but sometimes you want something/someone familiar) and then we get to go to a WARM place! Oo err!