On to MO

Before we left town on Thursday, Alan and family took us out to Minerva’s for lunch. From there we headed south to Broadwater, NE, population 140. It was dark, but we found a side street surrounded by abandoned buildings and parked for the night under a streetlight. At one point a police car drove by, which reassured us that we weren’t totally on our own!  As we traveled, there were multiplied fields of sunflowers along the way and as the sun set, multiplied bugs hit the windshield. But we slept well. Here's a daytime image of where we parked.

Continuing on to MO, we stopped at North Platte, NE, at the Golden Spike Tower. Besides the tower that relates railroad history, the world’s largest train yard surrounds it. We learned a lot about how rail cars are directed and connected to the right engine. The information was overwhelming…!

From there we went to a pony express stop museum. Although Roger thought we had been there before with the kids, it didn’t look right. We learned that the youngest pony rider was 11! It was a dangerous job – they advertised for orphans to ride. When we described what we remembered about the place we had visited with our kids in 1992, they directed us to a sod house museum across town. And that was what we remembered – only it did not seem to be maintained very well.

We drove on to Grand Island, NE, and spent the night in a truck stop. Slept well!

Saturday we went to the Stuhr Pioneer Museum in Grand Island, NE. They have 100 buildings onsite. The museum is set in the 1890’s era. We couldn’t begin to visit it all, but enjoyed what we could, including watching several men tanning a deer hide.

 

We ended up in Columbia, MO, and spent the night in a truck stop. We slept well. Sometimes these overnights amongst the trucks are noisy, but this night was pretty quiet.