On the Great Road

Aug. 26, 2010

We started out today in Kearney, NE, at the Great Platte River Road Archway Monument. This museum, which is literally built as an archway over I-80, is absolutely fantastic! It immediately reminded me of a ride at Epcot Center, except we walked through rather than riding on a moving seat. We were given a self-guiding audio tour via headphones, and the use of technology was really excellent. Each area had dioramas, video, and large panels with photos and historical information. At the same time, the audio portion came through the headphones, consisting of excerpts from diaries, radio broadcasts, and all kinds of other audio information.

The first floor of the museum consisted of the pioneer experience—be it on the Oregon Trail, the Mormon Trail, or the California Trail of the gold rush prospectors. The Trails started in different cities, but they all converged in the area of Kearney for a hundred miles or so, along the river near the site of the museum. We made our way through the rooms, starting with the hopeful emigrants searching for a better future, dealing with difficult weather, disease, and death; passing abandoned household goods and gravesites. All the while we heard the descriptions through our headsets and read the wall panels. The experience of the Native Americans was also included, of course. Finally we came to the end, and read and heard the expressions of joy, exhaustion, and new hope from those who survived what must have been a trek incomprehensibly difficult for us to imagine.

The second part of the museum dealt with the continuation of the travel westward, beginning with information—the pony express, and the telegraph—and then with the stage coaches, which offered a much faster way to traverse the country. Then came the railroad. Almost overnight, with the completion of the railroad, the uncomfortable and uncertain stage coach travel ceased.

But what moved us most was the development of the first transcontinental roadway, the Lincoln Highway. First of all, we grew up on the Lincoln Highway—even today, in Edison, there are signs on Route 27 which say “Lincoln Highway.” The highway ran from New York to San Francisco. The descriptions of travelers who could use their own cars to hit the open road without being “at the mercy of the train schedules” certainly hit home with us—I loved the tableau of the family with the tent set up, the table adjacent to their auto; and the small tourist cabins in the background. The quotes and memories coming through our headphones simply added to the wonderful experience as we vicarious lived both in the past and in our own present.

I took a photo of one of my favorite quotes: On The Road: "Informality is the password, snobbery is taboo, every man is your neighbor, and all are bound together by an almost unbelievably powerful tie--the dust of the open road."--Frank E. Brimmer, writer.

The last room on this floor showed us a large map of the US, which lit up all of these consecutive cross-country trails, tracks, and roadways following such similar pathways through central Nebraska along the Platte River. And finally, there was a window which looked down on the latest incarnation of the Great Platte River Road: Interstate 80 below the archway, with counters keeping track of both the eastbound and westbound traffic. Both Joey and I had a profound sense of being part of history—joining the thousands and millions who throughout the past 150 years have travelled this very route across our huge and beautiful country.
We left the museum and returned to our modern day covered wagon, and joined the great migration across America, this time heading east again. And that was what we did all day—travel through the eastern half of Nebraska, and across the Missouri River into the remarkably beautiful rolling farmland of Iowa. (We had hoped to time it right for a steak dinner in Omaha, as suggested by Rabbi Fellman which I wrote to him this morning, but we passed by the city at 3:30; we’ll have to come back someday for that—maybe when we follow the Lincoln Highway from home, all across the country!) Our favorite sight of the day was when we passed Adair, Iowa, which is home to a major wind-power installation. We saw at least 100 wind turbines twirling, spaced throughout the thousands of acres of cornfields. They were a stunning and beautiful sight, and we couldn’t help but wonder why more of these generators aren’t already in use all over the prairie states. We passed several trucks carrying the blades for the “windmills”, and they are simply huge, probably 100 feet long. They are very impressive.

We arriving just at dark at the Amana Colonies, and are expecting to explore a little bit here tomorrow before returning to the interstate. As I keep saying, each day just shows us yet more new roads that we long to travel. But for now, our road is leading us back home.
[Note: I had a lot more photos to upload, but this connection is taking forever; so I will try to upload them tomorrow. Iowa has WIFI at most of the rest stops, and it worked very fast this afternoon.]

Western Nebraska

Aug. 25, 2010

Western Nebraska—who knew? We have had a beautiful drive today, and added Nebraska (a quite large state, btw) to our states sticker map. We left Hot Springs around 9 a.m. and headed south, crossing into Nebraska at about 10 am or thereabouts. A roadside marker informed us that this portion of our trip was following the Fort Pierre-Fort Laramie Trail, originally used for fur trading. Our first stop was an hour later, in Alliance, to see “Carhenge”. Carhenge is a roadside sculpture, basically a combination of Cadillac Ranch and Foamhenge, two of our previous roadside sculptural stops (you can get the impression from this blog that we like this kind of funky, idiosyncratic roadside creation!) I think Carhenge might be a little bit smaller in diameter than the original Stonehenge which it was made to resemble, but it is definitely cute.
The field in which Carhenge stands is marked with a sign as an “Car Sculpture Preserve”, and there are a number of other automobiles in various stages of rearrangement. There is “The Fourd Seasons”, cars painted green, tan, white and pink (why did they start with summer, I wonder?) and there are several cars buried up to their noses with markers indicating that they are time capsules from various classes of Alliance High School (Alliance has about 9,000 people and there sure isn’t much around there other than fields, so I suppose the high school kids get creative in self defense!) There were also a few other oddball sculptures—a salmon and a dinosaur. Equally fun for us was the fact that the field was filled with thousands of grasshoppers, and with each step, they would fly up ahead of us. They had different colors and sizes and were pretty amazing. I didn’t appreciate it when they flew into my head, however—they don’t have great aim.
After Carhenge, we had a quick lunch and then hit the road in earnest. We headed south-east on US 26, which was marked on the map as a scenic route, and we were definitely surprised. We passed rock escarpments which were obviously carved out by a river, which looked much more like “out west” than the Midwest. I looked at the map, though, and realized we really were not that far from the state line between Nebraska and Wyoming; and later on, the line between Nebraska and Colorado. I think some of the remarkable rock formations of those states came over into western Nebraska.


Then we came to a detour which turned out to be to our advantage—instead of following US 26, we were directed onto NE 92, which ran just along the northern shoreline of Lake McConaughy, a very large lake which was a beautiful blue color and which was obviously a destination for recreation in south-central Nebraska. I forgot to mention, but pretty much all day we’d been on roads with very little traffic, and that sure is nice. Once we rounded the eastern end of the lake, however, we were only a few miles away from I-80, and we had to give up our week of empty roadways.

On I-80, I stopped at the first rest stop I came to, hoping for some tourist brochures. There was nothing like that, but it was a worthwhile stop anyway—the info on the walls told us that we were following (in reverse, of course) the same route which the pioneers travelled—the Oregon Trail, the Great Platte River Road, the Mormon Trail, the pony express, and the first interstate railroad line. All of these followed the Platte River, as does I-80. At the rest stop, they had set up wagon wheels to indicate ruts in the grass across the back of the rest area, which was the path taken by wagon trains which were coming around the bluff we were on. It was very cool and of course made me wish I could travel slowly on US-30, the Lincoln Highway, which also follows this route and has lots of interesting sites to see along the way.

At that point, though, we hit the gas, and travelled at about 70mph (the speed limit is 75) until we stopped for gas at the town of Gothenburg. Right at the gas station was a small museum with a recreation of a sod house. Unfortunately the museum was closed, but we were able to look in the sod house, which was interesting. Also in Gothenburg is an original pony express station building, and so we drove a few blocks into town to see it. That was still open (it was 6:45pm) and the lady inside gave us a little shpiel about it. It was really very interesting, and we enjoyed our stop.

One more hour on the interstate, and we are now in Kearney, NE for the night. In looking at the map of the US, it seems to me that Kearney may just be exactly in the center--east-west AND north-south! As the pioneers did at Fort Kearney, we too are stocking up on provisions for our journey—but our general store is a Walmart. Tomorrow morning we will be going to the Great Platte River Road Archway Monument, a museum dedicated to the westward migrations and to the subsequent freedom of travel across America. The monument itself is built right across I-80. I have wanted to visit this for a long time and we will spend some time there tomorrow before heading east again. As with so many other places I’ve visited, my quick trip through Nebraska just make me want to come back again at a slow, leisurely pace and stop at all the museums, historical markers, and other points of interest along the Lincoln Highway without having to always pick and choose between them.