Omaha and the End of the West

This morning I'm sitting in the service lounge of Audi of Omaha.  After 16,000 miles on the road, the car needs its second oil change.   Both of us are coming to grips with the realization that our travels, for this trip, are coming to an end.  While Huntsville is still over 850 miles away, being in the relatively small urban area of Omaha is very different from our camp in Wyoming.

I can't imagine a better place to view the eclipse than we had, but how we got there was due to a rash decision and a bit of luck and some experience at selecting camping sites....

After we left Denver, we traveled through Wyoming (Gurnsey State Park/Ft Laramie) and Nebraska.  We really enjoyed the Agate Fossil beds and Fort Robinson.   Fort Robinson has a lot of frontier history.  It was the site of the murder of Crazy Horse who had come to camp to talk to the Colonel.  Later the Army repurposed the fort a couple of times before giving it to the state of Nebraska to run as a state park.  The university of Nebraska has a very nice museum at the fort that has a pair of fossilized Columbian Mammoths who died during a battle.  The entire struggled remains fossilized, complete with tusks interlocked.

From Ft Robinson we went into  Custer State Park in South Dakota.  We arrived during the week of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.  The park is very nice, but the constant rumble of thousands of motorcycles did not contribute to our enjoyment.  It would have been a beautiful bicycling spot, but since the motorcycles were occasionally running into each other, we kept our bikes off the road.  We saw three separate accidents with cars/motorcycles during our stay.  We visited Mount Rushmore and Rapid City.  Rapid City has a pretty nice downtown, and we enjoyed walking around.  They have a statute of each American president placed on the street corners of their downtown.  I got a shot of Frances with the Jimmy Carter statue.

From South Dakota we went on to North Dakota.  We had intended to camp at Theodore Roosevelt National Park, south unit, but it was full.  This was only the second time that we encountered a national park with full campgrounds.  Glacier was the other.  There is a tourist trap of a town, Medora, at the South Unit.  Think of it as a western version of Gatlinburg.  We spent one night at a local campground, Sully Creek, and then moved on to the North Unit.  This national park has two, non-contiguous sections.  The North Unit was very nice.  We had a bison herd roam through the campground.  We got a great hike in, and had fun walking through the badlands.  Petrified wood could be found with ease.

After rolling out of the North Unit we headed east toward Minnesota, encountering heavy rain as we drove through the oil fields where fracking is on going in the Bakken shale.  The activity was not quite as intense as what we saw in the Permian basin of New Mexico, but it was intense.    We decided, for the first time on the trip, to stop in to a hotel due to weather.  We got a room at a Hampton Inn in Bismarck.  Over dinner in Bismark, Frances seemed a bit subdued.  I ask her what was up.  She said, "I don't want to go to Minnesota!"  (Think of Seinfeld's line, "I don't want to be a pirate".   Due to our flexible plans, we decided on the spot to head back west, eventually landing at Friend Park campground near Douglas, WY.

To to get Friend Park, you have to travel 50 miles from Douglas, into the Medicine Bow National Forest.  38 of these miles are on dirt roads.  We were originally heading to Esterbrook Campground, but despite the fact that we arrived on Thursday before the eclipse, the campground was full.  Dispersed camping was available, but a forest service employee recommended Friend Park.  At first, I was opposed to driving 22 extra miles on dirt roads, but something in her description made me realize that it was a special place.  We pulled into the campground and got the last available space.  We would end up staying 5 days here, meaning that Wyoming became one of the states where we spent the most nights.  I think only California had a longer stay.

We were a five mile hike from Laramie Peak, and were able to put in a nice hike to the peak right out of our campsite.  Everyone in the camp was excited about the eclipse, and hundreds more people showed up and camped outside of the camp in dispersed camping areas of the national forest.  This was a very special place and stay.  One of the high points was an impromptu jam session of about 8 musicians.  We were literally sitting around a campfire, under the stars in Wyoming, singing Cowboy and country music.  One local young lady, Diana, played violin, mandolin, ukulele, banjo and guitar.  Don entertained us with the humorous Snaggletooth Jackalope, a song poking fun at Wyoming tourists.  One of the players, Carl Purne played a concertina that he bought from Homewood Music in Birmingham, AL.  I bought a guitar from that same shop.

The big day was the eclipse, and were were delighted that Karl Hubble and friends, Andrew, Vicus and Issac showed up on Sunday to join us in camp and for the eclipse.  They drove up from Denver and were a great addition to our stay.

We have a great view and weather for the eclipse.  See photos.

After that, we departed, landing in North Platte, NE.  We didn't visit, but Buffalo Bill Cody has a ranch in town.  We were back on the Interstate and then headed into Omaha, NE.  I think Omaha has more to offer than steaks, but after our car is serviced, we are heading on to Iowa.  We need a bit of a reset of expectations now that we are out of the west.  We know that we won't have to open spaces and low population density that we have enjoyed for most of the trip, but we still have a few weeks of vacation and don't want to waste it.

We will swing by Gambier, and visit Maggie for a day or so.  She has now started her senior year as of today.

Here are some pictures.