2022 KC/MI Wander, Day 7: the wandering resumes

 This is the fifth installment of the blog post documenting my epic wandering around the middle part of the country. You really should read them in order. To that end, here's a link to Part One. At the bottom of each post, click the link for "Newer Post" at the bottom. And here is a link to ALL the pictures I took on this trip. Viewing them will require that you scroll through God knows how many pictures of parts of old cars, so you might want to just skip that altogether.

The morning dawned, as I'd hoped, with a blue sky and only a few light clouds. So nice when you order something from Amazon and they get it right! So: top went down. Idiot light comes on: "Convertible not latched." Sure enough, the latching mechanism was stuck in the "up" position. I had thought that the noise the mechanism makes had sounded somehow different: it was that the motor had kept whirring and the clickety-clack of the latch retracting had been missing. 

Okay, I thought as I put the top back up, that's it; I'm going home. Forget Michigan. Who needs it?

Then I thought, what the hell, so I put the top down again. It worked perfectly. I guess it's like restarting your phone when Google Maps freezes (like it's done twice now on this trip). 

Plugged in my first stop: the Wilbur Memorial in White Cloud, Kansas. I had changed the trip settings and allowed freeways, so it took me straight up Interstate 29 to St Joseph, Missouri. Told me to exit at US Highway 36, which I did. That is the only bridge across the Missouri river for many miles in either direction. Unfortunately, there was some kind of oversized load broken down on the bridge access and a line of vehicles (mostly trucks) that stretched away for as far as I could see. I figured there must be some other way, so I went the opposite direction, got down into the town, and checked the map on my phone. Sure enough, there was an access to the bridge from the southbound side that would put me beyond the broken down vehicle. So I went about a mile and a half up the road until I came to a street that would take me to the southbound side of I-29; cut over and got on the freeway again, and immediately exited for US 36 westbound. 

The ramp that goes from I-29 southbound to US 36 westbound is under construction, and there's a detour.... Guess where it takes you.

Fortunately, the oversized vehicle had moved and the traffic was clearing. So I like to think that I spent the delay seeing something of St Joseph, Missouri. A charming town, I'm sure, with its Pony Express Museum and the home of somebody famous.

When I got to White Cloud, my GPS took me to a vacant field where some guys looked to be setting up for a yard sale. They weren't from here, and while they were surprised and interested in my story about a pig monument, they had never heard of such a thing (to use their words). So I asked at the post office. The clerk wasn't from here either, and she suggested the "water people" across the street. Those women were locals and knew immediately what I was talking about, and told me it was across the street at the next corner, in front of the church. And so it was.

Pig Monument

Local boy Wilbur Chapman owned a pig, named Pete. He "adopted" a leper, and sold his pig to raise money to help. The newspapers got the story and it went viral (in the 1910 equivalent). The result was that banks across the country started handing out Pig Banks to children to help them save their money, and that's how piggy banks got started. (I did not know that.) The writer E.B. White heard about Wilbur as he was writing his classic children's novel, Charlotte's Web, and named the pig in that story after the boy.

As one source put it, Pete the Pig got nothing out of all this. He was, presumably, slaughtered and eaten.

My next planned stop was the boyhood home of Harold Lloyd, famous silent film comedian, in Burchard, Nebraska. He was one of my favourite movie actors when I was in college. I remembered (for the first time ever) to download directions in case of poor cell signals. Unfortunately, that didn't help. The directions wanted to take me down a gravel road, and I couldn't get it to alter that plan. Having no paper maps to fall back on, I had to go by vague memory and dead reckoning. When I came to a town where there was a signal, I looked it up again and verified I was going the right way. Got to the town and had no signal so just had to guess where it was. I had seen it on the map about a month ago, & remembered correctly: 4th & Plum Streets. Well, it's a tiny town, population 82, so how far astray could I have gone? 

A sign on the door said to call So-and-So for a tour, and gave a number. Unfortunately, I had no cell service, so all I got was a picture of the outside.

And with no signal, I couldn't pull up directions to my next destination on my phone. So again I had to go by those month-old memories of what the map looked like as I was planning the trip. Again, I remembered right, and when I got a signal, about 10 miles down the road, I was able to verify that I was going right. Followed the GPS from that point until I came to a sign that said "Road Closed." Having no real alternative -- the place I was going was on that road -- I went around the sign. Continued for a mile. By now I had no signal again. Came to a stop sign, and another "Road Closed" sign. Continued up over the next hill, and this time the road actually was closed. So I turned around, and found a sign directing me down a side road to my destination. (There had been no such sign coming the other way.) My GPS kicked in again as I got to the entrance of Rock Creek Station State Historical Park, and guided me through beautiful woodlands down to the creek bottom ... where there's a picnic table and a bathroom. Well, opportunity knocks and I answer.

Then I head up the hill, ignoring the GPS's exhortation to make U-turns every few yards, and I located a visitors' center farther along in the park.

Rock Creek Toll Bridge

Rock Creek Station was a way-station (called a "Road Farm") on the Overland Trail, a stagecoach line, and briefly a Pony Express station. A guy named McCanles owned the property. He farmed the western part, and rented out the eastern part to the stage company. He also built a bridge across the creek, and passing settlers would gladly pay the toll (ten to fifty cents, depending) to avoid having to ford the creek. 

The Overland Stage company's manager didn't make the rent payments timely, so one day McCanles and his son Monroe, aged 12, along with two other men, employees Woods and Gordon, went over to collect. The manager refused to come to the door, sending first his wife and then his hired hand, a hothead named Hickok. Long story short: Bill Hickok ended up hiding behind a quilt wall and shooting McCanles from his hiding place. Woods and Gordon, who had been doing other business over at the toll house, came running at the sound of the rifle, but Hickok shot Woods while the stage company manager, a guy named Wellman, bludgeoned him to death with a hoe. He tried to kill Monroe too, but the boy got away. Gordon got as far as the creek before he was done in by a shotgun. Wellman and Hickok were both arrested and tried; Monroe, being only 12 years old, was not allowed to testify. That was the law at the time. Without his testimony, there was no evidence, so both men were acquitted. Hickok went on to live life large and become famous, until justice caught up with him in Deadwood, South Dakota. I don't know what became of Wellman. 

East Farm

Rock Creek Station was restored back in the 1980s, and except for the sign boards and the cleanliness of the buildings and grounds, looks pretty authentic. East Farm, where all this took place, is a pleasant fifteen-minute walk from the visitors' center. I spent most of my time over there talking to a young man who was weedeating; he was very glad for a break, and I believe pretty knowledgeable about the plants around there. I'd seen and photographed a bush with red berries or flowers on it, and he said it was poison sumac. Then we got into a long discussion of the flora in the area, and wandered around as he pointed out this and that and generally talked for half an hour about bluestem and cottonwood trees (pointing out a couple of trees that were in a photograph taken of the Station in the late 1860s and were still standing). 

I remember seeing how creeks cut right through the soil in the Great Plains around Scotts Bluff, in western Nebraska. Rock Creek is the same way. The ground may be more or less flat -- no mountains, anyway -- but damned if there ain't a 20-foot-deep gorge with vertical banks at every little creek in this area. If I'd been trying to cross the country in a covered wagon back then, I would have just gone back to New York.

(A propos of nothing: I just happened to glance out the window of my hotel room in Percival, Iowa, to see the reddest sunset I have ever seen.)

On leaving Rock Creek Station, I calculated that the car museum in Lincoln would be closed by the time I got there; all the other locations I'd planned to visit there are open 24/7, but none of them are important to me, so they can wait until Lincoln becomes a destination instead of a waypoint. I instead plugged in a planned site at Nebraska City, on the Iowa border: the monument to Where the Wagon Broke Down.

Where the Wagon Broke Down

This required a couple of miles on dirt roads to get to, but dirt's okay as long as it's in good repair. These roads were. I found the spot with no trouble.

In 1862 -- wasn't there a war on then? How did anybody have time for this? -- a self-propelled steam wagon (of Gargantuan proportions) was invented in Minnesota by Joseph R. Brown. It was built in New York City and transported by steam ship down the Ohio River and up the Missouri River to Nebraska City. It was to be driven from there to Denver. It was the "first self-propelled road vehicle ever used west of the Mississippi". It made it only about four and a half miles before it broke down, and was abandoned (I reckon because of its size). And for some reason people thought that would be the appropriate subject of a brass-and-stone monument. So there is a brass plaque mounted on a stone to memorialize the event. They are just desperate for history in Nebraska.

My next stop (and in fact my last stop in Nebraska, having gotten the two counties I was after) was at a Runza fast-food restaurant. My sister- and brother-in-law gave me a book recently called USA State By State, one of the resources I used in planning this trip. And the best thing about that book is that, for every state, it makes suggestions for local foods that are unique to the area. Well, some of those things I already know about. I've already had enchiladas in Texas, and po-boys in Louisiana. I tried scrapple in Delaware and Ranier cherries in Washington. But I would not have known about runza in Nebraska without that book.

I had a couple of runza shops marked on my route, but the last one (in case I hadn't already tried it in Rulo or Beatrice or Lincoln, was in Nebraska City; and it was suppertime when I drove away from Where the Wagon Broke Down, and I needed to find and reserve a room for the night, so I went to the Runza restaurant in Nebraska City. 

Runza

Runza is seasoned ground beef and cabbage baked inside a soft bread shell, kind of like a kolache from my favourite Czech restaurant in West, Texas. It proved to be so popular in these parts that the inventor named the restaurant after the food and started a successful chain. It now can be had with cheese, and I forget the other variation. They also sell burgers, but I don't know why; the runza roll or sandwich or whatever you want to call it is pretty damn good.

The only other thing I'd planned to see in Nebraska City was a Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center, which closed at 4pm, so I was too late for that. But it was one of those things that make it onto the trip plan just in case I feel like going there: one of those awareness locations that are easy to skip. I was not in the mood for Lewis & Clark anyway, and had no regrets about passing on it. Even with all the stuff I'm skipping -- all of Tulsa, all of Lincoln, lots of other places along the way -- I'm still roughly on "schedule" with this trip. Or, I guess, because of all the stuff I'm skipping. Being "on schedule" only matters because I have to be back in San Antonio by a certain date, and let's face it: there's nothing on this trip, absolutely nothing, that I have to see or do.... I could abandon this trip at any point, now that I've made my delivery; and I've been this close to doing just that at least twice now. Well, except for stocking up on moonshine in Ohio on the way back. I do have to do that. That is absolutely necessary....

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An Unexpected Bonus

So we've been a few days in Colorado, visiting our peoples along the Front Range, and our daily plan goes like this: What are we going to do today? And then like this:    .

So, feeling a little restive, I decided I would strike out toward the east and visit a few of the less interesting counties in the country; specifically, two of the five counties in Colorado that I haven't already been to. And then, since I'll be out that way and already bored, I'll go up into Nebraska and travel through three of the remaining counties in the western part of that state, before stopping off in Cheyenne to visit the grave of someone who was, in life, very important to me.

My wife decided to come along. So we drive over to Yuma county and up to Sedgwick county, and into Nebraska, to Garden county. Then we turn left along the North Platte River, planning to head west to the next two counties, then to Cheyenne.

So there's a "police emergency" on the road, and we have to detour along a couple of mud roads (they've had way more rain than usual out this way lately), then up a paved road, across the railroad tracks, back to the road we were on.

What we hadn't realized was, the paved road we took at the end of that detour was the road we'd planned to turn onto going the other way. Of course, there was no sign at the mud road's end, so we didn't realize that until we came to a sign that said "Chimney Rock, 12 miles."

At that point we checked the map and learned that we were off course. But (1) travelling in this casual fashion means every intersection is an opportunity to change plans; and (B) the general rule of thumb, only recently articulated but long in effect, is that if you are close enough to see a sign like that, you're close enough to go see it. So we went to see Chimney Rock.

I've known for decades that Chimney Rock is a locally important landmark, and that it had something to do with the Pioneers. That's about it. Now I've seen it, and understand why it's an important place in our National story. Out there on the treeless plains of this continent, there are very, very few reference points; and very few Conestoga wagons were equipped with GPS. And this was all before cellphones, you know. So having a distinctive and easily visible landmark would have been very important to those folks trudging the plains alongside their oxen. And this is, certainly, distinctive.

There's nothing else out there that it might be confused with.

So that brought a little interest to this county-counting drive that I'd expected to be barely a distraction.

Then, in order to get back on course for that last county in western Nebraska, we had to go up the road a piece --- not very far --- to Gering. And there, on the far side of Gering, was Scotts Bluff. Not the town of Scott's Bluff, which I'd been to 30 years before (by accident), but the National Monument. Well. Who, in their right mind (a classification which, I like to kid myself, includes me), would pass within three miles of even the most meaningless National Monument and not at least get a stamp for the ol' National Parks Passport?

Scott's Bluff, it turns out, is big and beautiful and interesting, and all of you should go. It's actually two bluffs, separated by Mitchell Pass. There's a nice road that takes you up to the summit on the northeastern side, where you can walk the easy paved trails and soak up an appreciation of what travelling was like for those people who settled this country. Well worth the $5 car permit fee.

Mitchell Pass, between Sentinel Rock and Eagle (?) Rock

Day 3 of the 2014 Condo Week Pre-Trip

 for maximum coherence, read all the posts from this trip in order, starting with THIS ONE.

 

Drove up from Kansas into Nebraska today. This is the part of the country people think of when they hear the term "Flyover Country" but it's actually quite pretty, in a sedate sort of way. First stop was in Gothenburg, Nebraska, where there's an old Pony Express station that was relocated to a city park and restored. Nice little tidbit of American history. Always surprising how the pony express fixes itself into the national consciousness, even though it only lasted a few months. The three originators of the idea went bankrupt after 9 months of service, but the people who would later create Wells Fargo took it over and operated it at some profit for a further 9 months (by cutting the price of mail by 80%, which vastly increased volume and thus revenue), until the telegraph lines were completed coast-to-coast; at which point it became moot.

Just north of the tiny town of Arnold, Nebraska (where I made a short detour for the sole purpose of visiting Logan County), the northbound highway ended, but a city street that becomes a county road runs north. I took that. A couple of miles along, the road suddenly (and I mean suddenly) rises into the Sand Hills, several hundred feet higher and starkly gorgeous: rolling grass-covered hills with deep valleys, vistas in every direction. This goes on mile after mile (especially along the route I took), with only a few small towns to interrupt.  I wouldn't mind living in a place like this, if it never got colder than it was today (60 degrees when I left Kansas, 70 by late afternoon), or hotter. But that's pretty unlikely.

East of Valentine, Nebraska, I went out to see Smith Falls, the highest in the state. You reach it by 15 miles of good road under construction, followed by 4 miles of washboard gravel road, which must keep a lot of people away. The web site for the park claims the height of the falls to be 63', but there's a certain amount of unnecessary puffery in that. The main cataract, where a stream cascades off a cliff in a fascinating bell shape, is only about 30 feet high. The rest of the advertised height is made up of an unimpressive series of small cataracts dribbling away into the Niobrara River, a couple of hundred yards downstream. If they were bigger you might call them rapids.

see the other pictures

Still, it's a beautiful sight. The water on the left side of the falls courses down the rock in small sheets; in the middle, it falls through space in a bridal-veil cascade that spreads wide as it comes down; while on the right, the water is funneled into a sort of flume that gushes out and down, so the three parts of the falls seem to all be moving at different speeds. They all flow into a basin at the bottom and a stream carries it along to the nearby river. The whole falls is contained within a circular hole in the sandstone, making it seem utterly remote from the world. Certainly worth the drive, even if I didn't get a new county by going there.

The Saga Continues: Day 3

It feels like ages since that last travel post; so hard, after ten days or so, to go back and recollect what all we've done. But here goes:

After a restful night (I assume; actually, I can't even remember where we stayed, except that it was in southwestern Nebraska, in a town called McCook), we were up and off, first to an excellent and inexpensive breakfast in a little cafe in a depressed little farming community called Bartley, to eavesdrop on the local kafe klatchers as they traded reminiscences about the pranks they pulled when they were in high school; then to the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima.

This shrine was built by a priest who had been a prisoner of war, and who swore he would build the shrine if he survived the German camp. He did, and he built it. It is mundane in many ways, but lifted above the mundane by the presence of beautiful gardening all around, and an excellent bronze of Rachel. What her connection is to the B.V.M. I couldn't say, except that both were women and both figured in the Bible. That seems sufficient for the good Catholics of Arapahoe, Nebraska, and I'm disinclined to grouse about it any more than I've just done.

Heading east from there, we came to the small burg of Superior, just above the Kansas line, where the draw is an entire building at the Nuckolls County Museum dedicated to the work of a single man: one Marvin Marquart, a bachelor farmer who, lacking the distractions imposed on us more worldly men, carved, assembled, and painted over three thousand model airplanes in the space of about fifty years. Some hang from the acoustical-tile cieling, but most are displayed crowded together in glass cases, wingtip to wingtip, arranged by nationality. While Mr Marquart's painting skills were rough at the outset, they got much better, although his hands apparently started to shake with age and the detail suffered slightly toward the end. Still, it is a most impressive display, and as a life's work it is far, far more than most of us can point to. It makes me glad for television and the Internet, and at the same time sad for those same things in my own life. (It also makes me very glad to have married, especially someone who likes soccer.) (And that reminds me: my special someone, playing forward for a new team, scored a goal yesterday. Congratulations, and I hope it's just the first of many.)

After that it was straight in to Kansas City, as the two odd sights I'd picked out along the way ended up not seeming worth getting off the highway for. This impression seems justified, in hindsight, as it pertains to one site, but I wish now that I had stopped to see the other. Fortunately, there are still counties in nearby southern Nebraska that I haven't been to yet, and it'll be just a short side-trip to visit Belleville, Kansas.



That got us in to Kansas City; we spent the weekend there, having dinner with friends at Accurso's Italian Restaurant, and visiting the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, one of the most impressive public collections I've seen, and watching, at perhaps the least inviting sports bar in the entire world, Barcelona beat Manchester United in the UEFA Champions League final. Boooo! Hisss!

overpriced ceiling

It being Memorial Day weekend, we stayed through Sunday to attend the annual concert and fireworks show at the Liberty Memorial. After a short tour of the city between home and show, we got there early enough to get a reasonably good parking place and a reasonably good spot on the lawn, where we were eventually joined by sixty-six thousand of our closest friends in the town. Ahead of the show, David and I toured the refurbished Union Station, which is now part Amtrak-station, part entertainment venue. I heard that the price tag for the restoration was $250,000,000, which smacks of snouts in the public trough and leads me to think we should be able to require absolute transparency for public works, or the right to sue for recovery of excess costs -- and sue not only the beneficiaries of the unrighteous public largesse, but the political creatures that made it happen.

Anyway. So the Air Force sent a band to perform a warm-up act, and then the KC Symphony took the stage, with a couple of overfed specialty acts. I was expecting a concert of familiar patriotic tunes, but what I got instead was a medley of familiar patriotic tunes interspersed with new music of a purportedly patriotic flavour, not perhaps coincidentally written or arranged by the performers, who get royalties for music that likely would never otherwise be performed. I won't go so far as to say it was bad music; just that it was not as good, not as entertaining, as a rousing string of Sousa marches would have been. And I'm wondering what rock I was sleeping under while Amazing Grace became an appropriate tribute to our fallen warriors.

One other thing I noted: at the start of the show, the audience rose, as requested, for the playing of the Star Spangled Banner. Later in the show, the audience rose, unrequested, and as one, for the playing of God Bless America.

The concert ended on a definite high, with a marvelous performance of Tchaikovskiy's 1812 Overture, complete with the requisite actual cannons, followed by, at last, the Sousa march I craved; in this case, The Stars and Stripes Forever. And by one of the better fireworks shows I've seen.