Nebraska, Part 1 - The Sandhills Journey National Scenic Byway (and "When Birds Attack!") [240501-03]

We spent about 5 days touring Nebraska, two of which were spent touring "The Sandhills Journey National Scenic Byway" - a 272 mile stretch of Highway 2 - with the help of the audio tour provided through their free app.

We pulled into the city of Kearney just before 4 p.m. Wednesday afternoon and went to check out our planned accommodations for the evening: the parking lot of the Great Platte River Road Archway Monument.

The Archway arcs over I-80 - the same I-80 that runs all the way through to the Bay Bridge in San Francisco - so theoretically if we were tired of travelling and wanted to go home we could hop on I-80 here and be back in the Bay Area in a little over 22 hours. That's "Google Maps" time, of course; past experience has shown that Travato time would be more like 27.5 hours 😉). A lot of the Kearney literature claims that Kearney is "halfway between San Francisco and Boston" but that must be "as the crow flies" or something, because Google Maps shows the route to San Francisco as being 129 miles shorter than the one to Boston.

In addition to a large museum, gift shop, and restaurant, the Archway also houses a Nebraska Visitor Center so we popped in to pick up some brochures. The inside was quite impressively decorated.

While the museum inside was dedicated to the pioneers that traveled westward, there was a series of sculptures out front themed "We Stayed" dedicated to those who chose to settle in Nebraska instead of continuing on westward.

One of them told what must be a well-known Nebraskan legend, because we saw it retold in various places, about the Martin Brothers - whose family was attacked by Indian raiders (in objection to being pushed off their homelands by settlers from the east) and while fleeing on horse back were hit by several arrows, including one that went through one and into the back of the other pinning them together. Left for dead, they both survived to tell the story.

Since it was still early, we decided to check out some of the various grocery stores in town. Neither of the other two had the items we needed at prices we were willing to pay, so we ended up at Walmart again. Since we were already there - and it was further away from the freeway than the Archway, and therefore potentially quieter, we decided to just spend the night in the parking lot there.

Rain started falling around 11 p.m. turning to a full on thunder and lighting storm around 12:20 a.m. Although we couldn't see it out any particular window, the lightning would brighten the entire area - at times being within a second or two of the thunder - and we received more and heavier rainfall that night than we had at any point in our trip so far.

-----

The rain stopped by the next morning, and blue skies were back out by the time we were ready to hit the road. On our way out of Kearney we stopped at the Archway again for some blue sky photos of it.

From there it was a 30 mile drive to our last stop before we started the Scenic Byway driving tour: the Crane Trust Nature & Visitor Center, located on the area of the Platte River where every year "between Valentine's Day and Tax Day" 80% of North America's Sandhill Cranes (approximately 500,000) stop to rest and feed on their migration northward.

Note how we were not visiting within that date window, so we did not get to see any actual live Sandhill Cranes and instead had to settle for watching their informational movie, browsing the gift shop and art gallery, and . . . these guys:

They also had a senbazuru, along with an explanation with the story of Sadako Sasaki, which we had first heard about when visiting the Hiroshima Peace Memorial last year. In another room, they had origami paper and instructions for folding a paper crane in case you wanted to fold some of your own, and were giving away pre-folded ones at the desk for lazy people as well; we left with pre-folded one.

From there it was a short hop onto Highway 2, where we drove occasionally listening to audio tour segments that told a bit of history about the towns we were about to pass through and added some context and local color. Our next stop was at the Sandhills Journey Scenic Byway Visitors Center in Broken Bow.

As we were looking around outside, someone popped out from inside and let us know that they weren't open yet (the sign on the door says they're open from Memorial Day through Labor Day) but they were having a meeting inside and we were free to come in and look around. We went inside, and a table had been set up in the main room around which a group of people - who we believe were the Scenic Byway Council - were seated and talking. They asked if we knew about the audio tour and app, and were quite delighted to hear that we were currently using it - and pointed out that the app's author was attending via video conference on a laptop at one end of the table, and wanted to know if we had any feedback. They eventually got back to their meeting, and we browsed the displays.

The meeting inside wrapped up as we were looking at some of the outside displays, so some of the members came by to chat. One of them was Bill Burdett, the "voice" of the audio tour we had been listening - so we met a local celebrity that day 🙂. He encouraged us to visit the sod house they had just recently finished constructing (delayed by years of drought which made the sod to hard to cut), and also check out the view from the observation deck up the hill.

We noted on the hike down the hill that the grass here, which is what stabilizes the sand dunes that form all the hills, was substantially taller than the stuff growing at the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve back in Kansas was.

Driving along the highway, it was hard to believe at times that the green rolling hills we were seeing were really all grass stabilized sand dunes. Large portions reminded us of driving through the Highway 116/121 area of Sonoma County.

Occasionally, though, you could spot a patch where the sand showed through.

About an hour up the road in the village of Anselmo we stopped at St. Anselm's Church, aka "The Cathedral of the Sandhills".

Our accommodations that night were at the Bessey Recreation Complex, a U.S. Forest Service campground. We were looking forward to some nice hot showers in the shower house that evening, but for reasons unknown the bathrooms were still locked and the water throughout the campground still hadn't be turned on yet for the season, even though it was supposed to all have been done at the beginning of the month. The camp host told us we were free to use the spigot on the side of the maintenance garage to get water, which was the only spigot active in the entire campground. So we had to "settle" for "navy showers" in the T42 instead.

Shortly after parking, we also started hearing a perioding "thunk"-ing sound against the hull. Thinking that we might've parked under some branch that was dropping things onto the roof we checked, but there were no branches extending over the roof of the car. We eventually came to realize the sound was caused by this little red trouble-maker.

He would land on the driver's side mirror and stare at us for a little while, the flutter loudly against the mirror, and occasionally throw himself against the glass. Then he'd move to the rear of the van where we'd hear the same sorts of sounds, before returning to the driver's side mirror to start the cycle again. We tried putting some crinkly aluminum foil on the top of the mirror to dissuade him, but it had no effect. At first we thought that he was seeing his own reflection in the glass and attacking it thinking it was another bird, but we eventually figured out that he thought we were invading his territory and he was actually trying to attack us! The silly bird kept it up basically from the time we arrived until it got dark.

-----

The next morning at 6:30 a.m. our little red terrorist was at it again. Tom got his spray bottle out and had a little battle of wills with the bird for a little while; it's unclear who won in the end (although the cardinal was probably claiming victory as we drove away).

We stopped at the ranger station to find out if the Scott Lookout Tower was open or not (the audio tour had said that its locked sometimes but you can get the key from the ranger station). Unfortunately, the tower burned in a fire in October of '22 and hadn't been rebuilt yet (you can see what the tower used to look like in the lower left corner of the first photo below). The ranger was friendly and chatty, though, and we learned a lot about the tower, forest history, nursery, and Artemis 1 lunar mission seeds. Another ranger confirmed our avian attacker was a Northern Cardinal, and that the males can be aggressive about defending their territory.

Despite the Tower itself being burned out, the ranger said we were free to drive the 3 miles up the hill to see the view from the top, which we decided to do. Along the way, we saw the stacks of logs from trees that the crews were still clearing from the burned areas.

At the top we got a view of not only the surrounding area, but also the skeletal remains of the old tower.

Then it was back on the Byway again. Passing through the town of Thedford about an hour later, we saw a pretty chainsaw carving by the side of the road.

The scenery changed for awhile, reminding us more of the hills you might see along the California coastline.

Then we reached "the end of the road", so to speak, in the town of Alliance - somewhat fittingly also the home of Carhenge (yes, it's what it sounds like: Stonehenge re-created using old cars).