Quality Inn Kearney

... of rail in 1869 and cars in 1918 on highway 30 to now this mega highway I - 80.<br><br>Fort Kearny (notice the spelling has changed) Historical Park and State Park is about 4 miles south of town on the south of the Platt River.<br>The Fort was the only defence for the wagon trains going west in the early days so again all the different Trails converged here which enabled repairs and supplies. 

... had to go single file and left large ruts in the ground still visible today. Chimney rock was a unique looking landmark that indicated that the journey was about 1/3 over. &#8211; See Nebraska isn't completely flat.<br><br>At Chimney Rock, my powers as a rain god increased to include hail. While inside the visitor center a thunder storm came through ...

... village consisted of a collection of metal quonset (sp?) huts crammed full of "historical items" (i.e. junk). Some replicas of old-time buildings did exist but the only period dress we saw were some grandmas dressed in housecoats. (No offense to the Grandmas in our viewing audience.)<br>Enjoy the attached video for more historical sites (I mean, hysterical sights).

The drive to Kearney, NB today was very long. This was the first time in three trips West that I have encountered extended traffic stops on the interstate. My luck finally ran out. We stopped at Cabela's. This is my second trip to this store. It is fabulous. I bought some new assault rifles to defend myself when I get to California. Check out my photo with the bear. It is in the entrance of Cabela's store.<br>

Another cold and rainy day. Dave wanted to take me to the Lewis and Clark exhibit in St. Charles, but I wanted to hit the road. It turns out that I drove right past a Lewis and Clark museum in Nebraska City so I stopped. It was a very impressive. It seems ...

So after five weeks of enduring America's public transport system, it comes as a relief to head west from Chicago in a car. I'm sharing the petrol and driving with a fella moving West from Chicago, who turns out to be a bit of a character. The first day takes us 800 miles over the Great Plains through Iowa to Western Nebraska - thoroughly uninteresting landscape but pretty stunning skies.

Oil leak fixed, $45 motel, and within 1-day's range of our motel. Now we're doing a little better. Caught up to a storm front in Nevada around sunset, when thunderstorms are at their most powerful. As we drove past, under the rain-free base, just to the Southeast of the storm, a massive downburst developed with powerful straight-line winds and threatening-looking clouds. I pushed the ...

Today's blog is pretty boring. I left Dubois this morning and did get to enjoy some beautiful scenery for a couple of hours - cattle country straight out of the Western movies. By 1pm though I was on the I-80 heading east and after that there was nothing worth seeing, or taking pictures of for that matter. The only thing on my mind was making as much distance as possible. I hit two bad thunderstorms ...

Today was a long long drive. To make it worse, I was just plain sick. I did make a run by the famous "Rock City" that I always saw the "See Rock City" signs as a kid. I did not bother to pay to go in. I was not feeling well. I got to the hotel and crashed hard.

... an hour! As we left the gorgeous scenery we traveled in very high winds for quite awhile,but no more snow...... We were glad we had saved one more really good book tape(Thanks Micah) for this part of the trip that we knew would not be so much to see. It is called Dark Moon by John Sanders,and we should have just enough of it left to get us home tomorrow. A HIGHLIGHT of our trip through Nebraska was our stop at Paxton....we had to stop ...