We're in Nebraska Now

Location: Fort Kearney State Park, Nebraska

We rolled out of Springbrook State Park at about 8:30 a.m. This was considerably better than the 1929 crew who left Bagley at 4:15 p.m.! They drove 62 miles to Harlan where they camped for the night. We passed through Harlan at about 10:30. On the way we passed some beautiful rolling Iowa hilly farmland which reminded me of the Grant Wood painting that I studied for hours on the wall of our house as a kid.

 

We stopped at the town of Elkhorn, which is famous for the Danish Windmill which was reconstructed after it was disassembled and shipped over from Denmark in 1976. We were most impressed that the reconstruction was completed by a group of 300 local volunteers in one year.

 

 

Here's Debi on the catwalk outside the windmill, which impresses me since she used to be extremely afraid of heights.

 

 

 

 

 

The wooden gears inside the mill kind of amazed me. Apparently the building makes insane creaking sounds when they are actually grinding wheat into flour!

 

 

 

Usually Debi runs me through the mill, but as you can see from this photo, today I switched things up on her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another stop was at the Harrison County Historical Museum where we watched an excellent film about the history of the Lincoln Highway on which we had just started driving. The highway was established in 1913, as the first coast-to-coast improved highway, funded in part by Goodyear Tires and the Packard Car Company pretty much as a marketing scheme to get Americans to drive their cars longer distances. The film showed a very young Dwight D. Eisenhower making a coast-to-coast promotional trip on the highway with a group of other WWI veterans. In the 1950's, as president, he would lobby heavily for the Interstate Highway System.

Laurie recounts that just before noon they crossed the Missouri River into Nebraska "on the New Blair Bridge, a massive and wonderful structure that only had been opened to traffic for one week." We crossed there also and took a photo of the very rusty looking old train trestle which crossed the river. Ironically, we had to wait for a while to cross the newer car traffic bridge, since it was being repaired and was restricted down to only one lane.

Nearing our destination for the night, we decided to detour from Lincoln Highway which the Russell Clan had driven, and check out the Great Platte River Road Archway Monument (the "Arch"), which crosses over Interstate 80 near Kearney. Polly and Eric had recommended it when they drove this way in 2010. We were impressed with the exhibits which chronicle how this spot has acted as a gateway to the many migrations of different groups heading west.

 

 

The display that we found most relevant for us showed the look of a typical tourist camp along the Lincoln Highway in the 1920's. Laurie's journal tells that they stayed at a tourist camp called "Duck Inn" at Grand Island, and many more tourist camps on the rest of their trip. This gave us a nice visual of how that experience might differ from ours as we stay in state park campgrounds.

 

 

After leaving the Arch, we did have some trouble finding a campground to stay at for tonight, since it is a Saturday and camping season is now in full swing. However, Debi was instrumental in exerting some influence in locating a place for us to stay.

We found one of the last spots at Fort Kearney State Park, and feel very fortunate. This place is hopping with activity of families all having fun camping together.

 

 

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