 |
| Welcome to Nebraska |
 |
| Four in one auto (bike) route |
Today I was set to enter Nebraska and see the only two real sights that I had planned out for my travels through the state - Scotts Bluff and Chimney Rock. After packing up my gear (much easier without setting up my tent), I biked back through Corrington and a few miles later I was in Nebraska. I spent all day on Route 26 which, for the second half of the day, was also NE-92 Scenic. NE-92 roughly follows the same routes that four historical routes took across the area: the Oregon Trail, the Mormon Pioneer Trail, the California Trail, and the Pony Express.
 |
| Scotts Bluff National Monument |
A little more 30 miles into my day's voyage I came across Scotts Bluff National Monument. The road I was on (as well as the various historical trails it follows) goes through a pass between two of the bluffs at the top of a slight elevation gain before heading back down the other side. Settlers in wagons used this unique outcropping and pass (not shown here, but on the other side of the the road and outcroppings that I've photographed is a similar if somewhat less impressive set of cliffs) as a landmark in their journey westbound. It was a pretty spectacular sight, especially considering that most of Nebraska (or at least the portions I was riding through) was pretty flat.
Biking away from Scotts Bluff I realized that some of the squirreliness that I was noticing in my steering at low speeds while approaching the monument was due to some low front tire pressure. Figuring it was going flat, I stopped to change it (much more annoying than on a normal bike as I have to remove the panniers, unplug the electrical cable from the dynamo hub, and unbolt the front hub). Sure enough, I ran over some prickly thorns when I pull off the side of the road to take some photos. That actually used up all the rest of my patches that I brought with me so I only had one spare tube left for the remainder of the trip so I was risking it a bit, but I like to live dangerously!
 |
| A dozen doughnuts and a runza... |
 |
| My first runza - pretty good! |
After getting everything reinstalled on my bike, I continued onward back towards NE-92/US-26. Before I got back I passed through the town of Gering (the larger town of Scottsbluf is located adjacent on the other side of the North Platte River) where I had scoped out a small town bakery a few days back when I had internet access. I stopped in and ordered a dozen doughnuts (notice a trend here?) while I surfed the web on their free wi-fi. While I was doing so, several people came in and asked about or ordered their 'cabbage burgers.' I had seen a sign about this when I entered the place but brushed it off as being some sort of desert or pastry that perhaps looked like what I would envision a cabbage burger to be. Finally, I decided to Google it and lo and behold, it actually is a 'cabbage burger.' Originating in Russia, spreading to Germany, and then to Nebraska and the Dakotas (and other places with high concentrations of German immigrants), a cabbage burger, also known as a runza, bi
erock, fleischkuche or Kraut Pirok, is a mixture of cabbage, ground beef, onions and seasoning baked inside a pocket of dough. Not bad at all I would have to say!
 |
| Chimney Rock (not my photo) |
After my extended stay at the bakery, I headed out again and got back onto the highway where I cruised along on a slight decline (which I was doing from Wyoming all the way through Nebraska for the most part) for the rest of the afternoon. A few miles further down the road I passed by Chimney Rock, another settler landmark visible from miles in the distance. As it was a few miles off the road and the day was getting late as is, I decided to skip visiting it and instead just snapped a couple of crappy photographs of it from the distance. Here's someone else's photograph of it if you want to see what it looks like. Chimney Rock is actually featured in the background of many of Nebraska's road signs.
 |
| A view from a hill (!) in NE |
 |
| Corn littering everywhere... |
As the day was wearing down, I passed through the decent sized town of Bridgeport where I noticed a sign for a park. I checked it out to see if it was a good place to stay for the night but it was quite small. Turns out there was another larger park in the town that I noticed after the fact while looking through my routes on Strava but oh well. I continued on another ten miles or so in the dark until I lost the shoulder I was biking on when I got to the intersection of US-385. I figured it was a good time to stop for the evening instead of biking along a 55 mph highway at night without a shoulder. There was a mammoth pile of sand off to one side of the T intersection for winter highway maintenance that I slept behind mainly out of sight from the two low use highways. Most of the surrounding land that I had passed for most of the previous miles was fenced off private property so this was probably one of my best locations anyways.
A little more 30 miles into my day's voyage I came across Scotts Bluff National Monument. The road I was on (as well as the various historical trails it follows) goes through a pass between two of the bluffs at the top of a slight elevation gain before heading back down the other side. Settlers in wagons used this unique outcropping and pass (not shown here, but on the other side of the the road and outcroppings that I've photographed is a similar if somewhat less impressive set of cliffs) as a landmark in their journey westbound. It was a pretty spectacular sight, especially considering that most of Nebraska (or at least the portions I was riding through) was pretty flat.
Biking away from Scotts Bluff I realized that some of the squirreliness that I was noticing in my steering at low speeds while approaching the monument was due to some low front tire pressure. Figuring it was going flat, I stopped to change it (much more annoying than on a normal bike as I have to remove the panniers, unplug the electrical cable from the dynamo hub, and unbolt the front hub). Sure enough, I ran over some prickly thorns when I pull off the side of the road to take some photos. That actually used up all the rest of my patches that I brought with me so I only had one spare tube left for the remainder of the trip so I was risking it a bit, but I like to live dangerously!
No comments:
Post a Comment