Nebraska

From Laramie's 8,000+ altitude we rolled downhill into Nebraska, aided by a stiff tailwind - that little assist doubled our mileage so we didn't complain!

On the recommendation of a friend we scheduled my birthday lunch stop at Ole's Big Game Steakhouse in the little village of Paxton, just off I-80 (pop. 614). Thanks for the recommendation Evie, it was a great experience!!!

 The restaurant was founded in 1933, the year Prohibition ended in Nebraska. Founder Rosser O. Herstedt, "Ole", loved to travel the world and hunt wild game, and over the years his trophies and photos of his adventures accumulated on the walls of the restaurant until now there's hardly a square foot of wall without some sort of adornment.

The beautiful old wooden bar-back is so covered with brewery and distillery cmemorabelia that you can hardly see the carved columns. Fascinating to say the least!

We enjoyed delicious hamburgers and an excellent brew from Nebraska's first brewpub (Empyrean Ales' Third Stone) and then  visited with a young couple from Colorado, up in Nebraska to trade a few bulls for a cow (sounds like a good trade to me).

 Surrounded  by critters in Ole's

We also spent quite a bit of time reading the captions on all the hunting photos around the room. One really could while away a good part of the day here, but the road and our campsite beckoned, so we saddled up and continued east to our scheduled stop, Buffalo Bill Ranch State Historical Park, just outside North Platte.

These Nebraskans are made of sturdy stuff, that's all I can say. The cold winds coming down from Canada buffeted our little house on wheels all night, and brought in some pretty chilly temps. It's beautiful here though, parked beside the North Platte River.

The state park campground isn't much to get excited about. There are 23 spaces with electric, a tent camping area, a couple of water spigots and a vault restroom.  The sites are grass and gravel, with a few smallish trees here and there, but the campground is right on the river, so that's a bonus.

There's a trail of sorts running along the bank, and as the water is pretty low right now Shiner and I were able to hop over to the little sandbar island that is directly opposite the campground. It made good exploring territory for her, and a photo op for me! This is grassland, so it supports an abundance of birds. There are cranes, songbirds, and according to the discussions on the local radio station, there's lots of pheasant hunting to be had.

The star attraction of the park is Scout's Rest, Buffalo Bill's ranch, just a few minutes' drive from the campground. What a gem! The self-guided tour offers visitors a wonderful opportunity to experience the fully restored Victorian home which displays many original furnishings, the spring house, barn, and the log cabin that served as headquarters for the ranch in the early days.

With touches of fall color here and there the well-maintained grounds are absolutely beautiful. Check out the album for photos of the rooms and buildings. Captions on each photo include details about the ranch.

The following day we drove in to North Platte to pick up a few groceries and check out a quilt shop. I highly recommend The Quilt Rack, tucked away at 101 W. Front Street, right under the overpass. This shop has a huge selection of fabrics, kits and patterns, and some really nice theme fabrics of the type I like to collect as souvenirs of our travels.

By evening the wind had stopped but the temperature was dropping. With any luck we'll be out of Nebraska before the snow hits!

Wyoming

Monday, heading east on Hwy. 80.

Antelope along highway I-80

Not much differentiates eastern Utah from Wyoming, except that the rolling hills flatten out. The landscape is dotted here and there with antelope and cattle, grazing or placidly watching the traffic go by. There's little green, as winter is rapidly approaching in these parts.

It's beautifully sunny, so hard to imagine what winter must be like here but the extensive system of snow fences on both sides of the road provides a clue as to how harsh the winter weather here must be.

old-style snow fence, angled against the prevailing wind

We are used to seeing snow fencing in the Sierras. The highway passes there have a few of the old-style panels that are slanted so that they lean away from the prevailing winds. Arranged in rows in open areas they help slow down the snow that tends to blow across the highway.

We've never seen so many panels in one stretch of road however! Many are currently under construction, all bright shiny new lumber that really shows up in the sunlight.

These new sections, I discovered, are the result of a 2+ million dollar contract (stimulus money) awarded to a Wyoming fencing company. The system must work, as they are installing them over a 23 mile stretch west of Laramie, an area that is particularly problematic in the winter.

row after row of new snow fencing, west of Laramie

We had planned on a short day, but after a quick stop for lunch we decided to plunge ahead and go all the way to Curt Gowdy State Park, just east of Laramie.


It turned out to be a good decision as we arrived at the park early enough to drive around both Granite and Crystal lakes and check out all the possible sites. We finally ended up back near the entrance where we had a fantastic view of the lake and pretty good cell service.

Sites on both lakes vary greatly in degree of cell access, wind protection, lake view and access, and though most are fairly level, some are a real challenge for longer rigs like ours.

Evening view of Granite Lake

 We ended up on a point where we knew we'd catch the wind if it came up (which it did) but we not only had the fantastic view, we could walk easily to the water, and there was plenty of room to play with shiner. This time of year there are few other campers, so we had all the privacy we wanted.

The scenery in the park is spectacular, with the fall colors in the foliage and the bright blue sky.

This park would have provided a great canoeing opportunity if it hadn't been for the gusty wind that kicked up in the morning, so we just enjoyed the views of the lake and the surrounding hillsides. Beautiful rock formations contrast with the autumn trees. We're lucky in our timing as cold weather, and snow, are predicted by Thursday and soon the colorful leaves will be gone. 

Curt Gowdy State park is in a small unit of the Medicine Bow National Forest, and from what we can see from the road the forest has a lot of beautiful scenery to explore. We've promised ourselves we'll come back and spend a month here, checking out the historic sites as well as the scenery. 

Medicine Bow Forest view

On Tuesday we ventured into Laramie to check out the sites. Our first stop was the Lincoln Memorial, which we had seen from the highway when we first arrived.

It's pretty hard to miss the monument, which stands over 48 feet tall!
Completed in 1927, the Lincoln Highway, the prototype transcontinental route designed for automobile traffic, stimulated highway improvement. It later became federally marked U.S. Highway 30. In the 1950-1960s Interstate 80 was built to carry east-west traffic through Nebraska. Though I-80 parallels the Lincoln Highway route in many counties, the older route continues as a part of the federal highway network.

The monument is in a rest area that also contains a really nice visitor's center, which offers a wealth of tourist information about the area.


Next stop on the list, the famous Territorial Prison, one-time home to Butch Cassidy and several other notorious outlaws.

The entire building is open to visitors, so you can wander among the cells, view the kitchen, dining hall and infirmary, learn about how the restoration work was done, and enjoy the historic displays that eloquently portray the lives of several notable criminals as well as the lawmen who served in the territory at the time. The restoration has been beautifully done, and all the outbuildings add to the experience. 

The prison has had several incarnations, as a theme park, as a livestock farm for the university, and now, historic site.

A bit of each is here for visitors to enjoy, along with several opportunities for living history experiences, such as the broom making factory.

This was a major industry for the inmates, and now reenactors make brooms in the large building that was used at the time, in the same way the inmates did. You can purchase one in the gift shop - three sizes - I bought a nice little whisk broom for the fireplace at home. 'Handcrafted by Dave, the tour guide told me.

Broom-making room at the prison

After touring the prison we refreshed our flagging energy at the Altitude Chophouse and Brewery with an excellent lunch and a couple of very good brews. We can highly recommend the Altitude Amber Ale, and the monthly special, American Rye Ale.

My after-lunch treat was a quick shopping trip to the quilt shop right next door to the pub. We drove around downtown a bit, identifying several places we'd like to check out on our next visit, and  then it was back to camp for us to rest up for the next day's travels.
(click on any photo for a larger view)

Jordanelle State Park and a fast trip across Utah

We spent three nights at Jordanelle State Park. This was our second visit to the park, as it's a convenient place to stay when visiting my sister in Park City. Our last visit was in July of last year. See that post for more information on the park and the surrounding area.

The park is beautifully maintained, as they have an ambitious group of volunteers. Most of the sites have a view of the lake, though this lake (reservoir) is suffering from the same lack of water that most others are this year.

The dark water line on these trees shows how much lower the current level is than it has been in recent years.  The exposed shoreline is now down to such a low level that the beach is all mud, so I attempted to keep Shiner up on drier, firmer ground when we went exploring. Somehow she still managed to sink up to her elbows in lovely, black swamp mud. Even after a good hosing down she was perfumed faintly with dead fish and pond weed. 'Guess that's the price of having a country dog who likes to explore!

We spent the two full days here visiting, catching up on laundry in the park's little two machine laundromat, and completing the repair on the damaged kitchen vent.

We're still recovering from the germs, so plenty of recuperation time is still on the agenda. The surrounding hills here are covered with beautiful fall colors, so it's a great place to sit back, relax and just admire the scenery.

Monday, we made a 9 AM departure from Jordanelle State Park, north on hwy. 40  then east on I-80 through the canyon. With it's fiery red canyons filled with brilliant yellow and red trees it made a grand exhibit as we left the state.

All too soon the red canyons faded into layers of beige and green, sedimentary layers deeply eroded into interesting shapes, with sharp outcrops of harder stone here and there.The low hanging autumn sun makes the shadows on the eroded hillsides even more outstanding.

As we entered Wyoming the highway flattened out to the rolling, sagebrush covered range land of the northern Great Basin. This is definitely cowboy country. Not much but range land, cattle, and prong horns.