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.