Minneapolis/Yellowstone trip '09: Leg 8 Our Corny Trip

Corny as can be! Imagine South Dakota, to Minnesota, to Iowa, to Nebraska - WOW that's a lot of corn. I was reminded of the time we flew a customer into Minneapolis, I think he was from Kentucky - some place south - and he commented on all the corn he saw from the airplane coming into the Twin Cities. Then he went on to allow as how down his way, they had it drunk up already!

We would drive down the highway, slightly elevated so I figure the naked eye could see almost 30 miles, each way. That makes a 60 mile diameter circle with nothing but corn, and 60 miles later a 60 mile diameter of nothing but corn and ....... get the picture?

From Albert Lea, Mn we motored to Grimes Iowa, a suburb of Des Moines. Cutty's Des Moines Camping Club, another Coast to Coast reciprocity place. Nice place but old and spots were very tight and difficult to maneuver. This stop was mostly just for shopping, supplies and laundry. They did have a nice little pond, great for dog walking and a couple of photos.

Having re provisioned, it was off to Omaha. Just makes you want to say "Mutual of Omaha" which we did and we did see their huge headquarter building. We stayed at a City of Omaha park and camp ground, N.P. Dodge Park. Excellent camp ground and wonderful park (including 3 contiguous soccer fields that worked perfect as flight fields :-)). Once again we were on, almost on, the Missouri River, camped I'm sure right where Lewis and Clark stopped.

We enjoyed the park and several flights there (oh yes, I flew the new airplane way, way up into a tree where it comfortably settled in, looking almost permanent. A ladder and some Wild Bill type lasso work by yours truly eventually rescued the maverick airplane and returned it to its rightful hanger!).

We went out on a grocery shopping adventure and discovered there is definitely a bad part to Omaha. The GPS guides you to a grocery store, but no commentary on neighborhood quality! It was one of those role up and lock the window and don't stop for ANYTHING type places. Luckily we did discover and find some really nice parts of Omaha, especially the older, all most majestic homes around the campus. We had seen a liquor store on the Internet advertising a vast array of beers and scotchs. It was a phenomenal place, unfortunately with phenomenal prices. We were introduced to Nebraska's "sin taxes" yikes, I'll tell you the taxes are a sin! Bad place to buy booze, although the selection did seduce us into one or two "Sunday" scotches (Sunday = special scotch night).

Deer came through the park every night, unfortunately just a few minutes too late for pictures. Wonder if they plan it that way. There were also thousands of fire flys, what a light show. Nice camp fire each night, deer to watch, fire fly light show, marshmallows to roast, pleasant temperature...how good does it get!

This little feller kept chitting at me, I guess he thought he had laid claim to this spot. So, once again I shot him, with my trusty D300! Has to be the reddest squirrel I have seen, guess that is why they call them the American Red Squirrel (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus) (I always wanted to do that "Tamiasciurus hudsonicus" thing!).

Here is the camp site looking out, obviously some airplane mending and rebuilding work in progress (what a place to work).

Next stop Henderson, Nebraska. Basically just a stop over, but we had some fun exploring Henderson, a small farm town, and just poking around.

They really packed us in here. The guy to the right of us in the picture went way to the right since he was on the end. The rig to our left had to jockey so our slide outs wouldn't hit! Oh well, the services were good and it was just one night. Note the corn in the background.

Now here is a sight you don't see every day. We are driving down this back road and are stopped and asked to pull over when we see a HOUSE coming at us.

We continued down this road, and then another and stumbled upon the town's old cemetery, so we poked about reading headstones. Still don't know why this is interesting but we sure do enjoy it. I think part of is the kind of "living" history, reading the names (names often signify the times), going somewhere not crowded, and also sometimes just seeing what was said about a person in the final recording. Interesting to see how many child deaths there used to be, interesting to see how, would chauvinistic be the word, the wording might be; a lot of "wife of so-and-so" and finally we notice it is very common for the surviving spouse to pass on within 2 or 3 years of the other spouse.

1872 was the first interment at this yard.

Shelle's maiden name is Hale (yes she is related to Nathan) so we had to capture this one. Look at the chunk of granite they used. The death date is 1909, 100 years ago, the stone has survived well.

Next we are off to Ogallala, Nebraska. Dang, this Nebraska is a long state. We chose Ogallala because of the state recreation area. The North Platte river was dammed to form Lake McConaughy, a very large reservoir, and below it, it actually empties into, is Lake Ogallala and a very nice camp ground. We backed right up to the lake for a great view, complete with splendid sunsets.

While in Ogallala we did our usual exploring, some shopping and I finally got a haircut. Story book typical old fashion barber shop with barber pole and old fashion barber chair. Complete with all the gossip or local happenings or whatever you wanted to know. I used to do a little bird hunting and saw from about 3 dozen photos that my barber was a bird hunter too, so we swapped hunting stories even after the haircut was done. Fun! After that fun adventure, Shelle had a hankering for an A & W root beer float, and sure enough Ogallala has an A & W! Now I'm telling ya, this is down home stuff folks.

Here are a couple of shots of the camp site:

From the other side of the lake.

This is the water coming out of Lake McConaughy, into Lake Ogallala. Sure would like to know how many gallons per minute are coming out!

Roxy got to go for at least a daily swim, here retrieving the stick, one of our favorite games.

I love white pelicans and the lake had a large group of them, mostly they stayed in the less people populated part of the lake. Mixed in are some sort of duck and some sort of gull. They are all on a little sand dune, well off shore, nicely protected. Below you can see the water feeding into Ogallala, the white pelicans and some cows lazily grazing on the far shore.

Further down towards the end of the lake we found these nice Canadian Geese.

The first time we took the trip down to the end of the lake, we rode our bikes, fun trail, and only took the small Kodak for a camera. At the end of the lake I slammed on my breaks, I saw a beautiful Bald Eagle sitting like a portrait atop a tree. By the time I could get the camera out and working he took off, so better than nothing here is my eagle in flight.