July 16 Daycation - 433 Miles

We left Wyoming and headed east to Nebraska today.  Our goal today was to go to Scottsbluff, Nebraska.  Why?  Because we could.  It was so close, Joe had never been there, it had been about 12 years since I had and it would give us the opportunity to visit other places in the great state of Wyoming that we'd not explored yet.

I didn't pack a picnic lunch this time (but had plenty of frozen bottles of water just in case) because I knew we were going to be around civilization most of the day and wasn't expecting any back roads of dirt or gravel or cows standing in our way today.  I had even researched on the internet places to eat in Scottsbluff and it was perfectly clear that we were going to feast on chicken strip dinners or foot long coney dogs with tater tots today accompanied by a diet Cherry Limeade.  Yep!  It was going to be lunch at Sonics!  So off we went with a wing and a prayers and "Barking Bob" our unreliable GPS dude, binoculars and a freshly charged camera and the frozen water and Joe's meds AND a full tank of gas...

The summer flowers are beautiful right now.  These were growing alongside the highway.

The inscription reads...

"The Cheyenne-Black Hills Trail passed near this point between 1876 and 1887. Built to supply the Dakota gold camps, the road was constructed in violation of the Ft. Laramie Treaty of 1868 which reserved the Black Hills for Sioux Indians.  Stagecoaches and wagons carrying passengers, freight and gold bullion rumbled through nearby Ft. Laramie, an important stopping point along the line, until the arrival of the Chicago and North Western Railroad rendered the route obsolete".



When we were driving through Ft. Laramie this morning, we almost got caught in a parade.  It seems Oregon Trails Day was being celebrated in most every town along the route and they were all having parades and car shows or craft shows. 

This monument reads...

This monument marks the location of one of the earliest conflicts between the American Indians and soldiers in Wyoming. The fight broke out when Brevet 2nd Lt. John L. Grattan and 28 soldiers attempted to arrest a Sioux Indian for killing a crippled cow belonging to a Mormon wagon train. An allegedly drunken interpreter, who had grievances against the Indians, apparently mistranslated an offer by Chief Conquering Bear to replace the cow with a sound pony of his own.  Grattan ordered his men to fire and when the gun smoke cleared, Grattan, almost his entire command and the chief lay dead. This August 1854 incident led to years of intermittent hostility along the trail. An Oregon Trail crossing monument is located just beyond the Grattan marker.

 

One of the amazing things seen today was the amount of corn being grown in the southeastern portion of the state.  There were acres and acres of it.

And, we got stopped by a train with 82 cars in Lingle, Wyoming.

East of Torrington, near the Wyoming/Nebraska state line, is the camp site of Robert Stuart and

his party of Astorians. They were the men who laid out and first traveled the route from the West

Coast to St. Louis, which later became known as the Oregon Trail. Leaving Astoria, John Jacob

Astor’s fur trading post at the mouth of the Columbia River, the Astorians got as far as present-

day Torrington by December, 1812.  According to Stuart’s diary, the party constructed

a small shack and spent the rest of the winter on the bank of the North Platte River.

It's apparently time to harvest the hay as we've seen many fields which look like this.  We've seen bales of rolled hay, BIG rectangular bales and much smaller rectangular bales.