The Union Pacific Railway and the River Platte were our constant companions today, driving through Nebraska. The long freight trains were still running despite the Independence Day holiday and just as back home in the UK on a holiday, rail repair work was going on. Another similarity to our bank holidays was the cloudy sky and some drizzle as we left Omaha. The Lincoln Highway leaves the city by R6 (passing through a community called Dundee) and then heads back up to R30 on R275. Here we could see signs of recent heavy rain with pools of water in the fields and irrigation machines standing unused. I overheard a local say that they had had 2 inches last night which was very welcome. Just out of Fremont there were rusting old motel signs by the road and anti-abortion posters which we had also seen in western Iowa. We passed through Rogers (population 95 and the smallest town so far) where for the first time on this trip I had no signal on my phone. Further on, we then crossed the Platte into Columbus and had brunch at the T-Bone Truck Stop. There were no trucks there today, just a few locals.

There was a speedway circuit nearby but nothing happening there today. We had at last started a gradual increase in elevation, with each town we passed through being a little higher above sea-level. My first view of the Great Plains was from a plane. I had been invited to give a talk in Santa Barbara in 2002 and having not been further west than Chicago before, was very keen to watch the landscape changing below. Our next encounter was on the California Zephyr which takes 2 and a half days to get from Chicago to Emeryville CA. I remember the excitement when an incline and a curve appeared in the track after miles of a straight flat line through the cornfields. Today, the sun appeared just before Grand Island. In the town, Kermit’s Car Wash were trying to sell fireworks and someone in a frog outfit was outside trying to entice customers in. We had another break in Cottonmill Park on the west side of Kearney where people were fishing and boating. It has a prairie reserve which you can walk or ride through. Hundreds of insects were buzzing in the grasses and feeding on the flowers and I saw a red bird which I think was a cardinal bird.


We now had prairie grass instead of flowers by the road and in Cozad, crossed the 100th meridian. I saw a raptor being mobbed by smaller birds but this was such a quick flash above the road that I could not identify them. Before our stop in North Platte we kept seeing persistent mirages of water across the road ahead and the temperature was up to 90 degrees. We were now in rolling hills with horses in the fields and the saw the first sign for a ranch. Our route also coincides around these parts with the Oregon, California and Mormon trails and the Pony Express. Tomorrow we are taking the Lincoln Highway loop to Denver.