I did not have a good night sleeping. I couldn't find a campsite within the city limits and butdrove to three separate locations. Fort Collins is spread out and very green, with foothills to its west.P I didn't want to venture far because I wanted to do a quick morning walk east of town before heading out.
Fort Collins is surrounded by natural beauty. I went to the first preserve noted on Alltrails.org: the Kingfisher Point Natural Area off South Timberline Road on the town's east side. It's easy to find, with a large-enough gravel parking lot near a residential area. This is a free area I saw yesterday. It was just past 7am and I was the second car in the lot. Another dogwalker was just ahead of me with her MinPin. Those dogs are like chihuahuas on steroids, but the woman, Barbara, turned out to be very friendly. It just happened to be that she's from Hammond, IN and graduated from Morton Senior High School in 1975. I went there for my sophomore year, 1975-76. Her little dog Patch was swell-behaved. Barbara has lived in Fort Collins for close to 3re0 years and doesn't go back to Hammond much, but she knew some of the same places I did. The Woodmere mall, located several miles from our apartment, was torn down years ago. A modern Hammond Sports Complex is in its place.
Barbara likes to come to the lake early in the morning to walk Patch off leash. "I like to walk Patch off leash when there aren't any people around," she confessed. She wasn't the only one walking her dog off leash; there were others.
Parts of the two-mile River Ponds trail were still muddy. I walked most of the lake perimeter trail, noting turtles, herons, several fish in the clear water. The Poudre River flows through town here, and it was rushing nicely. Later an elderly man also walking his dog said that normally theyehe river bRockiesed is dry this time of year, but recent rains have sprung the river back to life.
It got hot fast. Even Zeke was getting warm. I was done in walking around the pond in an hour. I wanted to stay in town longer but still had to make it to Cheyenne, WY before noon, another 50 mpiles to the north. I drove backroads that meandered around housing divisions before getting back on I-25 by Wellington. The Rockies foothills were now moving away from me. I was now entering the high dry, desert plains. Fort Collins lies at 5003' and now I was at 6063.' The town opens up on a rise, surrounded by dry grass. Lush Colorado this is not!
My first mission was to find the entrance to the small Air Force bases on the west side of Cheyenne, Francis Warren AFB, and shower and change my clothes. Two days with no shower and I was ripe! The small base has one entrance off WY210, but I didn't see the sign the first time I got off the interstate. The base was one of many bases under the Strategic Air Command (SAC) during the Cold War, bases that kept long range intercontinental missiles ready should the Soviets launch a nuclear missile our way. My stepdad was a member of C
Now that I was feeling clean, I was ready to explore Cheyenne. It's a small town, and the historic section is only six square blocks, all of them being one-way streets. I was looking for the old train depot. The Accomplice Brewing company is located on the east side of the old depot. The west side is now a museum. The place was easy to find: just look for the parked trains in the back! The front end faces the market square and its large parking lot. Zeke was allowed inside, and with the heat rising, was thankful for that.
The set up of this brewpub is unique. The place has 30 beers on tap and customers four their own beer. The hostess asked me if I was going to eat and I said yes. She gave me a full-sized, authentic stop sign. The server took that stop sign once he took my order of vegetarian pizza. Zeke hid underneath the table and was very quiet. No one noticed him.
The beer was OK. Since one is charged by the ounce, I was able to pour just a few ounces of most of the beers that interested me. I ended up having 22 ounces total. The pizza took almost an hour to get to me, which was odd since I was the first customer at 11:30am. I'm glad I didn't have a deadline. At least four trains rumbled past me in the hour I was there.
I didn't see much else of Cheyenne and that was by choice. I had a long drive ahead of me. I was hoping to make it to Omaha before midnight, and I wanted to take a leisurely drive across the Sand Hills while I still had daylight. I stopped at a lonely-looking Nebraska Visitor's Center where the young blonde woman seemed happy to have a tourist come by. Dogs were allowed inside, so Zeke rested while I drank coffee before the long drive. It was 1pm and I was already tired.
Getting back on 1-80 from Cheyenne is easy, and then it's a long, fairly straight shot across Nebraska. The Sand Hills begin in the center-west of the state, though, and the scenic Highway 2 connects the west and the east end, from Alliance to Grand Island. That was an hour (60 miles) detour to get to the western terminus. Highway 2 would eventually end at US 30, better known as the Lincoln Highway.
I could see the distant Black Hills along the horizon. The Sand Hills are just an extension of this vast, open land, silhouetted with buttes on the western end and low grassy hills on the eastern end. In the middle are herds of cattle grazing, but recent rains have flooded the lowlands of Nebraska. There were a lot of cattle sauntering knee-deep in water, and plenty more turtles of various species trying to cross the road. I stopped when I could to carry box turtles and pissy snappers across the road to safety, but there were plenty more dead ones that didn't make it.
The first two hours of my drive across the Sand hills were fascinating. Buttes were interspersed with grassy hills, and occasionally I'd see a sand hill collapsed (called a "blow-out") and reveal the sandy-white contents of what once were vast sand dunes before centuries of grass seeds blew in from elsewhere.
This has to be brutal land in the winter, when the cold winds blow and no trees to stop the arctic blast. The road meandered in a gentle southeastern direction, passing through small towns in which the Sinclair gas station is the busiest business. There were no roadside rest areas where one could rest and gaze over the sand hills. Most of the land off the highway is private ranch and farmland.
The Sand hills are idyllic and worth a view, but three hours into my drive and I was ready to hit the interstate again and gain some mileage. Driving 55 mph on winding two-lane roads with no shoulders is mentally exhausting. The sand hills became less dramatic the further east I got. When I finally made it to Grand Island after dark, where I was hoping to catch a meal, I was accosted by the smells and noise of an agricultural-industrial town. I pulled into a McDonald's but pulled right out when I noticed a group of young people just milling around the parked cars.
I don't like driving in the dark in unknown areas. I had planned on stopping in Grand Island for the night, but I didn't feel safe there and continued east on US30. I should have gone straight to I-80 at this point, because the highway was a meandering diversion and I couldn't see much of the landscape.
Now I had Omaha as a goal, but US30 does not go to Omaha. It diverts around the city to the north. When I realized where I was, I cancelled plans to check out Omaha and just settle in somewhere for the night. I walked with Zeke down the dark streets of a small town and then settled for the night in a darkened parking lot. Nothing was open and I needed to walk. I was exhausted and it had been a long day.
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