NOWHERE IN NEBRASKA

Written in the comfort of a Motel in Mullen, NE on June 16th 2005.

This morning I woke up in a city park, yes you read this right, a city park, and it is the official campsite of the town of Crofton, NE. A little farm-town way up in north-east of Nebraska near the Missouri river which separates South Dakota from Nebraska. Yep the city park with it's playground, a gazebo, covert pick-nick tables and nicely cut grass, just like a city park ought to be. With the difference that this one also serves as the local campground with 2 RV hook-ups and a sign with the rules... otherwise I wouldn't be sure that this is the campground. The rules says that camping is free the first night and thereafter a two dollar fee will be charged and a maximum of 7 nights is permitted. I could not agree more with those rules and I followed them for one night without violating them, not very usual for me! The bathroom facility where better than on campgrounds I payed 19 dollars, like the one in northern Wisconsin, in the middle of the forest with just a outhouse, a park-bench and almost no flat spot to pitch the tent, this one had running water, yes hot too, and a shower room with a coin-o-mate, charging a quarter for a 5 minute shower, hooks on the walls to hang towel and clothing while I'm enjoying a morning shower, what else could a guy ask for that is out and about like me.
There was a lot of noise in the morning, cars trucks and a lot of tractors driving in all kinds of directions, after all I'm in the middle of a square and so there are 4 streets that surround the city park. One of then was the main road through town, one was the main-drag into the business district, the third was the firedepartment with some other comercial buidings and the last street was residential with a few houses and yards surounding them. So I was awake but still too lazy to get out of the tent, instead I had to get in a few more chapters of the book I'm reading right now "I'm a stranger here myself" by Bill Bryson, just what I need!! He is returning to the States after living for 20 years in England, he is pretty funny to read and very inspiring, it may show in this few lines here. The coincidence is that the last book, it was the first one I read by him, "A short history of just about anything" inspired me to do this detour through northern Nebraska, more about that later.
Eventually I did get up, brake down the tent and put everything back in the car, take a shower and then off in surge for some breakfast. That, I found in the next town on my way to the west, a small cafe in the town of Niobrara. To get there I had to drive through a Sioux Indian Reservation, the Santee Sioux to be more precise. I found no evidence of any Indian activities, no teepees, no wild guys with feathers in their hair riding their horses on maximum speed nor was my scalp in any danger, all I passed was one of those Indian Casino. I didn't feel lucky and so I kept on driving towards breakfast, yet a bit disappointed about the lack of Indians but also a bit more hungry and so I ended up in this small cafe, ordered 2 eggs over-easy, 4 sausages and hash-brown with some toast and a lousy coffee. Looking around in this place it made ME feel like a stranger, a bunch of farmers and by the third time around the waitress was asking me which planet I'm from, as usually I say I'm from California in my funny accent, but that doesn't go by unnoticed and so I have to admit that I'm even further away than the west coast. The reason for me to come through these lost parts of the US are again a strange thing to explain, "oh, I did some mountain biking in the north-woods of Wisconsin and now I'm on my way back home" is my replay. That got her to go back into the kitchen to do what she has to do. Or should I have told her about the week in Camp with a hundred other folks listening to poetry and indian music??

On the road again, feeling a bit more satisfied and ready to tackle the next adventure. Not much time passed for that to happen. I saw this field with two tractors driving on it with all these huge rolls of hay, that's what I thought it was. So I stopped to get a closer look, I always wanted to see how these rolls are made, what kind of machine that would be. I was sure that this is not made by a bunch of field-workers rolling up the dried grass like you roll-up the snow to make a snow-man, no it had to be some-kind of a machine that handles this proper and I wanna see how that works. So the two tractors are buzzing around the field, it looks like there almost finished with what they had to do. The first guy is pulling a huge rake, probably 30 ft wide, behind and every once so often, like right a the place where the other tractor is about to go, he lifts that rake, hydraulic I assume, then the other guy has this trailer box that looks like a cut-off "Winebago", except its red and square instead of silver and rounded, he scoops up that hay swallows it into its box and once in a while the back of that box unfolds somehow and ejects a freshly rolled roll, just like magic. I watch for some time and took some pictures but by the time I was there, parked the car off the street, walked across it and start to take pictures the guys where done, finished all rolled up and ready to go. Go where, I don't know, the guy with the magic box behind his tractor is driving toward me.... oh, oh I think, either thats the way out of the field and he has to go this way or he is coming over to tell me to go where the sun no shine.... he stops a safe distance away from me, climbs down from his cush cab and walks toward me. I tell 'em that I was interested in how these rolls end up on the field everywhere and so we started talking. For about an hour and a half, and not just about these rolls no, no, we talk about just-about everything, starting with the weight of these rolls, about 900 pounds, the cost of such a machine, if you buy it new it runs you about 35'000, he bought his used from his uncle who is getting too old to farm, ninety something, he says, his uncle is and that this machine is about 20 years old. Wow, I go, what ever happen to the small hay-bales from the good old times, the one you can lift by hand and load 'em onto the truck like I used to do when I was helping out on a farm as a kid. Long gone, he replies, the new machines that make square bales making them about 12 hundred pounds heavy, so no lifting by hand again, but they are easier to load onto truck for hauling them long-distance, not like the round once. In the mean time his nephew who is driving his other tractor changed the tools on it, a fork lift looking device that is attached on the back of the tractor.This is how he is moving these huge rolls onto the corner of the field where the previously stacked once are. The farmer was very interested in my whereabouts, what is farming in Switzerland and California like, how is living and how expensive is it, most the time he was just shacking his head and we talked more about the differences between our worlds. And by the way, the rolls I thought to be hay are alfalfa, just to be clear what is laying all tightly rolled up on that field now. I think we both learned a lot from our conversation, to sum it up is impossible now but I'll remember what he said about farming, that "if you don't risk you don't gain" .... and isn't it always like that!

After this unexpected delight I was driving again, getting closer to where I was planing on going to for quite some time now. When I read the book by Bill Bryson about the small history, in the part where he explains the volcanic activity in the Yellowstone region, where the ashes from this volcanic eruption, a thousand miles away, covert this watering hole and all the animals there suffocated, died and got buried under a blanket of ashes, and this now is a archeological site where they found tons of fossils of all these animals, I wanted to go there and have a look for myself. So, here I am now at Ashfall Fossil Beds, a state historic park close to nowhere in Nebraska, the parking lot almost empty but once I approached the main building there was a ranger siting outside at a front-desk expecting me and another hundred visitors to show up and pay their dues, 5 bucks for the park and 3 for the Nebraska State Park permit for the car. Once that was all straightened out and I was free to proceeded into the building and got to see some amazing things. They are not kidding about the quantity and quality of the fossils, one employee pointed out the strange growth on some of the bones that tells you that these animals suffocated and died a slow death because of all the ashes they where breathing. This all happened about 10 million years ago, hundreds of rhinos, three-toed horses, camels and other animals died, also Turtles and other reptiles I saw. There is a 2000 square foot barn that covers part of the burial site and there it is all laid out in front of you, 14 complete or almost complete skeletons of rhinos, horses, camels and deers some with their youngens some trampled apart by the others, after all there must have been an incredible struggle going on before they all died. It's quite a time-warp and so was my mind after spending some time there, it was time for me to hit it again, the road that is. Still a few more miles to go to make it all the way back to Berkeley.

I ended up on route 20 going west where the road goes through small and very small towns, forgotten by most, specially by the politicians and probably our "deer" president, he not even knows that such places exist. I stop for some to eat and drink, I fill up the car with gas that is enriched with ethanol and costs about 1.95 a gallon at the cheapest places and I get to drink this hot brown water that they sell as coffee, life is good. Until I decide to take a shortcut that could get me to route 2 further south, on my map it is a county road with a short piece of it unpaved and so I turn south in this small town called Wood Lake, it was quarter to five, the sun still high in the sky and the tank is more than half full, it should be safe to do that and off I go.

So far I only drove 186 miles today and I was not about ready to drive through the night and so I thought to find a place to spend the night once I'm on route 2. It took me over and hour and a half to cover the 48 miles, the pavement stopped way before promised by the AAA Nebraska State map I had and there where no signs what so ever, all I did was following the road with the electric line, once in a while there was a split in the road goint to a farm out there. Once I see this mailbox, looking out to the road and waiting for the mailman to come by, there is hope I thought, then that road gets thiner and badly maintained, but still lots of tracks are visible. There was a stretch of pavement again, I thought that I'm on the right path here. That's when I saw one more of so many turtles crossing the road in front of me. I stopped and took advantage of having this whole road to myself and busied myself with taking pictures of this scared turtle, the poor guy pissed right on the road instead of crawling out of his shell and show me how fast he could make it to the other side, after a few poses, remaining in his shell I dropped him off at the other side... just in case there might another car come by before he gets there by himself, I continued in my quest to get to route 2, back on gravel again and pretty wet and slushy beneath, it gets trickier to maneuver the car around the corners without spilling out, after a while it gets worse, more water on the path, sometimes the road disapears into lake-like bodies of water with tracks go either side of the huge paddle into the grass. I decide that the water in the grass might be even worse with mud and dirt and so I dive into the lake that the road goes through, I was surprised how deep it gets at times but not a problem for poor little Honda on and on it goes. At one point I look at my cellphone that is laying on the dashboard and to my biggest surprise I had reception, not just a bar or two, no two providers and full strength, now that really puzzled me, because I had no signal all day and to have it here, all the way in Nowhere, very strange. But it does give you some security in case I get stuck here I can call AAA to tow me out of the mess I'm in. I can just hear myself explaining the operator in Bombay where in the hell I am, lets hope I don't have to do that. The peak was a huge mound of dirt, about 4 feet tall covering the whole width of the road, put there by a bulldozer or some like that. The end of the road I thought but could see it continuation on the "other" side of this monstrosity. I also see tracks from previous cars, or trucks more likely, that went to the left of this whole thing, into the muddy and soaked grass, but hey I thought why not do the same.... not even a slip in the system I pop out on the other side and see the little flags on that side that the maintenance crew put there, so I thought now I'm on the right side of this tour through "Nowhere in Nebraska" even though there where more lakes that covert the road, more mud that splashed all over the windshield and made it difficult to see against the setting sun. But hey I'm having fun, this is what it's all about, a little off-roading once in a while is the greatest thing, off course that is only as long as nothing goes wrong, right. Finally there was a paved road again, a crawling turtle and a oil-truck heading in my direction so that I had to drive out in the grass again to not get rolled over by this monster. At quarter past six I was at junction of road 83, went south and a few miles later my Honda turned 220'000 miles, we'll celebrate later in the motel. I had to smile a lot about this past experience, and to top it off, as I'm driving into the town where 83 ends up at route 2 there was one of those signs where it shows you what is in town, so like two tall posts with a plaque on top saying "TOURIST ATTRACTION IN THIS TOWN" and there was nothing underneath, no attraction at all, nothing, silch, nada like I'm still nowhere in Nebraska......

The link to the on-line photo album is: http://homepage.mac.com/reneschaub/PhotoAlbum55.html