3-27-2016 OGALLALA, NE

The roads heading east from Rifle were clean and dry meandering through the rocky canyons.  How they engineered these roads is a mystery to me, if not a miracle. 

There was a slow stretch where there had been a rock slide, as we had been warned by my brother Larry who had traveled out this way last month.  It has been cleared away by this time and the slowing of traffic to 50 was precautionary as the construction crews repair the concrete barriers.  (You know, those things that keep you from catapulting off the edge down 10,000 ft. into a canyon full of other skeletons.)  When we hit the Rockies around Denver, it was a pretty ride through beautiful snowy peaks demarcated by the timberline and streaked with many chairlifts and ski runs. 

Cruising along with the Colorado River

This is how my mind manufactures a picture of Colorado, but in fact, east of the Rockies, the state flattens out into expansive flat grassy plains.

Those plains continue to stretch on and on for hours into Nebraska.  Often, people will remark that driving through the plains states is deathly boring.  “The fly-over states,” they call it.  Like the only two places that are important are NYC and LA and you just fly over everything else?  I think not.  Traveling the east to west highway, you pass miles of fields that grow our wheat and corn and, scattered everywhere, all the John Deere farm equipment that maintain and cultivate these.  Tens of thousands of silos are filled with grain to feed what will become the juicy rib eyes on America’s plates.  A million trucks travel along the main commerce artery through the center of the country carrying goods to and fro.  How can driving across the heartland’s thoroughfare, America’s bread basket, be boring?  There is so much to see!  I am never bored!  (If you don’t count the 5 years of marriage to my ex.)  Especially when I am driving and the wind tries to blow the BFT into another lane occupied by a couple of tri-trailer semis that seem to move along by fishtailing.  In this part of the world, signs warn motorists of gusty winds and windsocks are not just indicators at airports.  They are mounted above the many gusty wind warning signs on the median strips and they stick straight out.

Ogallala (pronounced “oh-gah-LAH-lah”), Nebraska was our stop for this day.  Let’s say we did the hully gully to Ogallala (Say that three times fast!).  The word Ogallala is a rough derivation of Oglala, a band of Lakota Indians of the parent Sioux tribe that inhabited the area.  Ogallala was considered the end of the cattle-drive trail, where the cattle met their demise in one way or another.  We had a wonderful room here at the Stagecoach Inn.  I don’t know if the Wells Fargo stagecoach out front is the genuine article or not, it sorta looks like it. 

The room was amazingly down home with lace curtains and real furniture, a solid walnut dresser and a desk with brass handles on the drawers.  Hot waffles and biscuits and gravy for breakfast for my beloved made this a most pleasant stay indeed.

Off to Des Moines, Iowa.  A longish drive of 460 miles but we’ll switch off, make sandwiches and have fun!

Rob and the dirty BFT