Moving to Alaska: Day Eight

Today I started heading west across the plains of Nebraska, with an eventual destination about a mile higher in elevation in Wyoming. This is the start of the section that has had me most worried on the entire drive. I think I shed enough weight. I think my car can handle pulling a load over the mountains. But for now, I will ignore all that and worry about it tomorrow. Today is a bit of touristing, though still lots of miles to cover.

One thing I noticed is that it is very windy and very dusty the closer to the mountains and more and more of the roads are dirt, which doesn't help I am sure.

I had a few highlights for the day. One was a visit to an original (though relocated) Pony Express station. What is interesting about the Pony Express is that pretty much EVERYONE knows about it but in reality it only existed about 19 months. And after the brief tour I did, I also realized I don't know much about it other than the absolute basics. The entire purpose of this private company was to keep California up to date on news from the east since the Civil War was looming. Prices started at $5 for a half ounce, which today would be about $150. They would get letters 1900 miles from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento in 10 days. They had 120 riders, 400 horses and set up 184 stations approximately every ten miles. That was roughly the distance a horse could travel at full gallop. The riders had a special saddle pouch that held the mail and the compartments were locked; only someone at each end had the keys. So when they changed horses, they just grabbed the saddle pouch and kept going. Riders had to weigh less than 125 pounds (meaning most were teenagers) and would ride about 100 miles at a time, day and night, until their "shift" was up. Buffalo Bill Cody is the most famous of the riders. 

Another cool place I went is Bailey Yard, which is the largest "railroad classification" yard in the world. All Union Pacific trains go through here and they sort, service and repair them. This place is massive. The yard has 200 separate tracks totaling 315 miles of track. They also have "humps" which are used for sorting; for example if a train from the west coast comes in with items for the northeast, the midwest and the southeast, this is where they detach all the cars, change switches and let them roll downhill to the various trains below that are going in the proper direction. They average 140 trains and 14000 cars per day through here. If you like trains, you should visit.

The last of the highlights for the day was driving down windy, dusty dirt roads, literally with tumbleweeds blowing by, for 30-40 miles total to reach the Nebraska highpoint. It is amusing since it is in the middle of a field on a buffalo ranch and you can see all kinds of higher elevation in the area, including the looming mountains, but they are across the state line since this is in the very southwest corner. As with most things on this trip, towing a low trailer was not the best of plans for visiting here...

I also made a couple of dips into Colorado, one to plant a box and one to find a box, before making my way to about 8000 feet elevation for the night. I did not know this at the time, but I had bypassed the highest point on I-80 when I did my second letterbox detour.

Start: Kearney, Nebraska

Stop: Laramie, Wyoming

~460 Miles Driven

~3.9 Miles Walked
9 Letterboxes Found

2 Letterboxes Not Found

2 Letterboxes Planted

Pictures will be posted on Facebook in this album (and the link will be included in all future posts for this trip):

Moving to Alaska Photos