East by Northwest: Day 23 (Saturday 11-12-2011): NE 92 & US-385 intersection to North Platte

The start of my day on Route 92

A half hour or so later

Cornfield in the morning time

A lot more decent pictures today so I figured I'd dump a bunch of them here for my reader's enjoyment. Sorry about the formatting of the post - Blogger doesn't really allow much in the way of fine tuning how you place images in your post, especially when you are trying to incorporate quite a few of them in with text at the same time. Today was one of my if not my longest ride to date: 136+ miles. I started the day pretty early and set off shortly after sunrise (which provided some nice photo opportunities).

A little after 50 miles in I had a choice of splitting off and following NE-92 Scenic along the northern shore of Lake McConaughy or staying on Route 26 which followed the shore to the south up on top of a rolling plateau. Figuring that 26 was a bit more direct and the chances of running into washboard dirt and gravel roads if I made it a bit more direct line off of 92, I stayed on 26 and climbed up Windlass Hill through Ash Hallow State Park to the high lands above (about a 500 foot rise). I followed this route for another 30 miles or so before heading due south for a few miles and intersecting Route 30. If I had wanted to, I could have taken Route 30 all the way back to Philly but I never really got to that stage in the planning process to see if that was indeed the 'best' way to get back.

The day wore on and I was making good time on the ever so slight descent in the Great Plains. I stopped in Hershey Nebraska around mile 120 when I came across a community park and playing fields but it didn't have any good spots to stay so I decided to truck on and see what I would come across, even though it was getting dark out. As night set in, off to my right (the south) I started seeing tons of bright lights. I knew I was coming up on North Platte which I had seen from Google Maps to be a pretty large city, but these lights kept going for miles and miles. Turns out a mile or so south of Route 30 (and a few miles north of Interstate 80) was a gigantic rail yard. If you take a look at a map, you can see that it stretches on for miles and at some points is close to a mile wide!

I finally came across North Platte and it was indeed a very large city. I biked around for a bit scoping out a possible place to eat and discovered that the Daylight Donuts in the city was in fact open only during daylight hours (it seems like they all close in the early afternoon after they served up their daily stock of doughnuts). I missed out the directions to a large park on the way into the city so I biked into the heart of the town where I knew there was another park near the North Platte River.

Along the way I cam across an empty office building and parking lot where I rolled up to make dinner and scope out an open WiFi signal. I was in luck and did some planning for the next few days. While I was doing so, a police officer rolled up along the side of the building where I thought I was fairly out of sight and discrete. Turns out the high rise building a hundred yards or so away was a retirement complex and some people thought I looked suspicious so called the authorities. The officer was pleasant enough and didn't give me any problems and was actually somewhat interested in my journey so far and even gave me some suggestions on places to stay for the night (including the park that I had scoped out and was probably going to use anyways!). He said no one is really down there after dark as it's near a hospital so I shouldn't have any issues staying there. After finishing up my dinner, I biked the quarter mile down to the park where I slept in a pavilion. While I was setting up, it was definitely quite windy (but not as bad as the other night in the park) and it was raining a bit but the roof was large enough to keep me dry even without setting up my tent.