Denver, Colo. to North Platte, Neb. via lots of dirt roads
Distance: 337 miles / 552 km
Time: 5h50m
Joes, Colorado…
The Battle of Beecher Island. This is depicted in a mural in the Kansas Capitol Building. The old monuments omit the fact that the Black cavalry troopers were the heroes of the story. This newer memorial corrects that omission. There was no island when I was there. The shifting sands of the “river” (there wasn’t much of a river either) had erased the island over 100 years ago.
Mailbox… I locked the breaks and skidded down the road when I saw this. I put War Bus in reverse because there wasn’t a car within a quarter county. I backed up to take the shot. As I typed this I showed it to new friends in Alaska who all commented on how everything except the horizon is off-kilter.
Not the Colorado you think of… but still very, very beautiful. I love this picture. The flat horizon that is not really flat but hints at undulation, the radio towers, the rows of hay bales, the line between the harvested and green field that shows the texture of the land, the one car half a mile ahead kicking up dust, the two tire-killing rocks in the road, the farmstead down where water might occasionally gather… There is a lot going on here, it just doesn’t jump out at first glance
Grain on the ground. The harvest was coming in and you need to store it somewhere. This is an enormous pile of grain.
Guy-wires for a radio tower, eastern Colorado
The Tri-Corner of Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado. I love all the bullet holes in the marker. How stupid do you have to be to fire down at a metal marker from that close…
I put my right foot into Kansas, and then stepped into Nebraska, and then stepped back into Colorado. That one right foot was as far into my native Kansas as I went on this trip, but I had to touch it along the way. In law school we discussed the Yellowstone Zone of Death and jurisdictional issues of finding a dead body on the Virginia side of the Potomac River… Who has jurisdiction if I’m murdered right now, with a foot in two states? [Later note: If you check this page, you’ll see this is the second of THREE markers of the tri-corner. I missed the later one by like 3 yards… The woman on this page is standing on the latest marker. Given this I’m not sure I actually touched Kansas. But I did in my mind.]
The original marker of the Tri-Corner. About 100 yards south of the current marker. It’s funny how our precision increases over time and is reflected in stone on the ground.
Pre-cast bridge span beams. I saw a LOT of bridges being rebuilt on this trip.
At some point the roads became pink.
Main Street, Wray, Colo. Cinemas seem to be coping on the plains…
Ate at At Ease BBQ, a great place with a military/Navy theme. And it turns out there is a BBQ cookoff at Beecher Island, where I just was.
I then visited a project I actually got funded on the Nebraska, Kansas & Colorado Railway (NKCR). That grade crossing looks GREAT! Proud to have been a part of this. However, that crossbuck got jacked by a grain truck in the last few weeks…
Here’s a good new crossbuck!
Looking good!
It’s been a rough couple years for Brandon… F*&@!
A bridge on the NKCR line to the Gerald Gentleman Station
Infrastructure comes in many forms. Some, more transitory than others. Here is the former terminus of the Texas Trail. A great intermodal story of linking cattle drives to railroads.
The Gerald Gentleman Station, the largest electricity generating plant in Nebraska, generating roughly 1,400 MW of electricity. It is about as old as I am and burns 800 tons of coal an hour. It is accessible by both NKCR and Union Pacific, but UP has had the coal contract for many years, ever since Nebraska Public Power District built a new railroad to access UP service.
I got to North Platte with the intent of getting to the observation tower over Bailey Yard, the largest railroad yard in the word, with time to see it and shoot some pictures. ALAS! I was 10 feet to the west of the time zone boundary all day in Mountain Time, and the observation tower is on Central Time. Shucks! Pulled up right as the doors locked. I hate time zones.
A Viking’s Walkabout: | Prologue | Day 01 Calif. to Az. | Day 02 Az. to N.M. | Day 03 N.M. to Colo. | Day 04 Colo. | Day 05 Colo., Kan., Neb. | Day 06 Part 1 Neb. | Day 6 Part 2 Neb. to S.D. | Day 07 S.D., Wy., Mont. | Day 08 Mont. to Alta. | Day 09 Alta. (Banff) | Day 10 Alta. (Grande Cache) | Day 11 Alta. to B.C. | Day 12 B.C. to Yukon | Day 13 Yukon | Day 14 Yukon to Alaska | Day 15 Alaska (Coldfoot) | Day 16 Part 1 Alaska (Atigun Pass) | Day 16 Part 2 Alaska (Deadhorse) | Day 17 Alaska (Prudhoe Bay) | Day 18 Alaska (Fairbanks) | Day 19 Alaska (Anchorage) | Day 20 Alaska (Anchorage) | Day 21 Alaska (Tok) | Day 22 Alaska to Yukon | Day 23 Yukon | Day 24 Yukon to B.C. | Day 25 B.C. (Prince Rupert) | Day 26 B.C. (Prince George) | Day 27 B.C. (Vancouver) | Day 28 B.C. to Wash. | Day 29 Wash. to Or. | Day 30 Or. | Day 31 Or. to Calif. | Day 32 Calif. |