Douglas, WY to Kearney, NE

Tuesday August 19th we left Douglas and traveled south to Cheyenne WY and the AB RV Park.

Wednesday we took a ride to Laramie and visited the old Territorial Prison which was the predecessor of the new prison in Rawlins. The state has made the old prison site into a park with a town site and other attractions. One of the most famous guests at the prison was Butch Cassidy.
From Laramie we drove west to the town of Centennial and the Snowy Range with elevations of nearly 11,000 feet and many beautiful mountain lakes and snow capped peaks. We also stopped at an old abandoned gold mine. This was another beautiful drive.
In the evening we went into Cheyenne to the capitol building which was designed to look like the US capitol in Washington DC. Cheyenne is also home of F.E. Warren Air Force Base.

Thursday August 21st we took a day trip down into Colorado and Estes Park and Rocky Mountain Nat’l Park. We traveled up through Thompson Canyon into the Park and traveled the scenic Trail Ridge Road which is the highest major highway in the U.S.
The highest point on the road is 12,183 feet and you are looking down on snow capped peaks. We have always wanted to see this part of the Colorado Rockies and it is as beautiful as we have always been told.

Friday we went to downtown Cheyenne and looked over the historic district and also went in the Nelson Museum of the West. This is one of the nicest small western museums we have visited. There is a really nice collection of cowboy and Indian, U.S. Calvary and some real nice Remington and Russell paintings and the owner of the museum is a dedicated big game hunter, so there is a large number of big game mounts from around the world.

Saturday August 23rd we left Cheyenne and moved east to Kimball, NE. This is near Sidney which is home and headquarters of Cabela’s Outfitters. We took a ride over to see the store and corporate offices etc. I thought this may still be the original store, but they are now in a modern building like all the other Cabela’s. The old store is still down town and is used for offices and storage.

Sunday we went up to Scotts Bluff at Gering, NE which is on the immigrants trail and you can still see the ruts here of the thousands of wagons that passed through on the journey west.
From Scotts Bluff we traveled east to Chimney Rock possibly the most famous of the landmarks on the immigrant trail. Chimney Rock is on the Nebraska state quarter minted in 2006. We then traveled on east to Bridgeport NE where we saw Courthouse and Jail Rocks, two more trail landmarks. Bridgeport got its name from Camp Clark Bridge where the Sidney-Deadwood trail crossed the North Platte River. We saw many fields of sunflowers growing in this area.

Monday August 25th we left Kimball and moved east to Ogallala NE where we picked up our mail and took a ride out to Lake McConaughy on the North Platte River. This is Nebraska’s largest reservoir.

Tuesday we left Ogallala and traveled east to North Platte, NE and the Holiday RV Park.
While in North Platte we went to Scout’s Rest, Buffalo Bills Nebraska ranch. He built this ranch during the heydays of his famous touring Wild West Show. The house was built in the 1880s for $3,900 on 4,000 acres. He then built the large horse barn that took seven train car loads of lumber to build. The house and barn have been restored and a wealth of Buffalo Bill memorabilia is on display.

Wednesday we went to the Union Pacific RR Bailey Railroad Yard and the new eight stories high Golden Spike Observation Tower. The Bailey Yard is the world’s largest classification (taking cars from one train and building new trains for various destinations.) yard handling 15,000 cars in a 24 hr period. There are 120 sets of tracks. Container trains and coal trains only stop to change crews and do not go through the classification process. We learned that 36 full coal trains and 36 empty coal trains pass thru each day moving to and from the Wyoming coal fields.
We also went to the Lincoln Co. Historical Museum, home of the famous WWII Canteen.
Women in the community worked hard to make soldiers passing through on the way to war feel welcome. They provided food, baked goods and hot coffee including birthday cakes.
There is also a Western Heritage Museum and village including a Sears Roebuck Catalog house costing $2,300. complete. There is also a section telling of the life and accomplishments of William Jeffers one time president of the Union Pacific Railroad. Mr. Jeffers also became known as the Rubber Czar for his work in developing the synthetic rubber program during WWII.

Thursday August 28th we left North Platte and traveled east to Minden NE and the Harold Warp Pioneer Village Museum and RV Park. Mr. Warp was a collector’s collector. He made his money by developing and manufacturing plastic film and related products.
Pioneer Village has more than 50,000 items covering just about everything you can think of concerning America progress since 1830 to the present. The exhibits are located in 28 buildings on twenty acres. This is nicely laid out in a village theme and also includes a 350 seat restaurant, motel and campground. We spent about seven hours over two days and could have spent longer, but we are about museumed out.

Friday we also went into Kearney and visited the Great Platte River Road Archway. This structure spans I-80 and is the only museum to be built across an interstate highway. Audio/visual effects trace the development of the American west exhibits of pioneers, the transcontinental railroad, the Lincoln Highway US-30 and finally I-80.