Great Road Trip of 2017.....Part Five/Day Five

Part One of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Two of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE

Part Three of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE
Part Four of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE

We hit a local diner in Grand Island Nebraska for breakfast before hitting the road for the day so we could meet a reader who lives nearby, Gerlyn.

Gerlyn had emailed me about where to find good barbecue along the route of our trip since her DH is from Texas originally.  Her and her DH own a ranch outside of town here.

She was so sweet and brought me some quilted items her mom had made and she brought some home canned jam and such she had put up.  I left her with a bag of toiletries(mostly shampoo has she had a bevvy of teenage daughter at that time). lol

Then we got down to breakfast.  I had an unsweet iced tea(I don't "do" coffee), a fresh fruit bowl and grits.  

Gerlyn said she wasn't very hungry so just ordered a cinnamon bun.  Well, WTF!  That bun was bigger than our heads! lol  I believe she took at least half of it home.

The obligatory photo with the Big Cock. hehehe

Then me alone with Tommy's rooster making love to it. lol

Lastly a serious photo without any cocks(lol)of Gerlyn and me.  It was a real pleasure to meet you Gerlyn and I'm sorry it took me 6 YEARS to post this.

After we parted ways we drove about a block and I saw another ginormous animal I had to have Hubs take my picture with.....

The mascot for the Texas T-Bone restaurant.  That same shopping plaza had a discount food pantry store too!  Of course I had to go in there......

FAT-FREE Mayo???  Isn't that the point of Mayo?!  Isn't fat the point of Mayo?

Gigantic #10 cans of Gefilte Fish.  These could have fed every Jewish mother in the entire state of Nebraska I bet. lol

And this shelf was a head scratcher....

They had a DISCOUNT SHELF!  Um, I thought the whole store was full of discounted food.  How far past the sell by/use by date must have THIS stuff been!lol

So we blew out of Grand Island NE heading West and hit rain on 1-80.  Just as we were pulling off the interstate in Kearny, NE the rain stopped as we got out of the car to go to "The Archway".  Or the "Great Platte River Road Archway" experience as it's better known as.

On the grounds of the place were some fake buffalo......

And native Prairie flora(which was not fake)....

There was also a statue descendants of the Martin brothers who survived a Native American attack had had designed and created.  One arrow went through both of their bodies, pinning them together as they rode hard back to their prairie home.

There was an accompanying plaque describing the incident.

The incident from 1864 and what happened is described HERE in case you are interested.

So we went in and paid our admission and were greeted by this man.....

Some one dressed up like a mountain from the early days of the West.  Man did he look convincing and truth be told I thought he was a statue and when he moved I about jumped out of my skin!!

Then, with individual transmitters in hand we rode an escalator up to the exhibit.........

The West was settled by folks of all ilk.....those looking for land to call their own, those looking for adventure, those fleeing religious persecution, those looking for a fresh start in life, those evading justice, etc.

Then gold was discovered in California and that set off wave after wave of more settlers and adventurers.

At first there were only notable landmarks such as rock formations and the stars at night to point the way (besides a compass).

The Mormons set off for their promised land they called "Deseret"(later to become the state of Utah)after their leader Joseph Smith was killed in Nauvoo, Illinois. Many of these travelers had no animals for transportation and just a handcart to drag their possessions in.  Setting off too late in the year on foot saw many would-be settlers freeze to death along the way.

After a few years travelers could also use the trail of discarded home goods as a guide as well.  If your oxen or horse or your wagon broke down, you left treasured possessions along the trail.  You had no other choice if you wanted to keep going and survive the journey.

And there were many deaths along the way.......

If the Natives didn't kill you or you didn't get some disease that couldn't be cured, some other disaster may be fall you along the way.  You'd be buried as best your traveling companions could and left out along the trail in the wilderness.

I found this particular exhibit above interesting.  You had to decide which shortcut to take by sliding little windows to reveal your fate.  The shortcut you took might not necessarily take miles off your journey and if you chose wrong, it could mean your death.

My 1st cousin 6 x removed, William Lewis Sublette, was one of the original "mountain men" who explored the West beginning in the 1820's.  We share a common ancestor in Pierre Louis Sublette, a French Huguenot, who came to Virginia in 1700 escaping the persecution of Protestants in Catholic France.  I descend from "Peter's" son William Abraham and Bill the Mountain Man descends from Peter's younger son, Lewis. Bill did trapped beaver for John Jacob Astor's American Fur Company among other activities and is said to have guided the first wagon train of settlers West from St. Louis to Oregon.  He was known as Bill or "Cutface" due to a wound he received on his chin.

And something I didn't know is that one of the shortcuts or "cut offs" is named after him, the Sublette cutoff.  Taking this cutoff near South Pass Wyoming took about 50 miles off your journey to Oregon.

I have lots more photos of the exhibit and if you are out that way it's worth a stop.  But avoid the gift shop downstairs.  A bunch of Made in China crap!  And waaay over priced.

Let's leave Kearny, Nebraska with a picture of Hubs next to a statue of a buffalo on the grounds of the exhibit outside.....

We hit the road once more........

We stopped for gas in Ogallala.  Mmmmm, gas station fried chicken. lol

We stopped for lunch in a quaint fake Western town front with a restaurant.  A tourist trap for sure and the restaurant was so dark inside you needed a flashlight to see your food!  Probably by design so you didn't notice how dirty the place was. Pondering that awful lunch I got to thinking that gas station chicken might have been a better choice after all. 8-)

We then took a turn North.....to get to "Carhenge", America's Stonehenge.

 It's located in Alliance, Nebraska, in the Northwestern corner of the state.

They talk about Carhenge's creator and the site HERE.

This was a very interesting stop but way off our route.

Next time we'll pick up from here.

Sluggy

Great Road Trip of 2017.....Part Five/Day Four

Part One of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE.
Part Two of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE.
Part Three of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE.
Part Four of the Great Western Road Trip is HERE.

The following morning we had our motel breakfast and conversed with the breakfast lady a bit.  She was so nice and sweet.

Then it was off again heading West on Route 30.  We made a quick stop at a local Walmart we passed to pick up a few things.

Only in Nebraska will you see prairie dresses for sale in a Walmart! lol

And this was an astonishing sight)  In PA we have a dairy lobby that price fixes fresh milk products.  At that time milk in PA was hovering at the $3 mark(It's now $4+ a gallon).  If I had a small refrigerated truck with me I'd have hauled a load of milk with me back to PA on the return leg of this trip! ;-) 

Passing through Schuyler Ne...because the water tower says so. lolz

Along the road I spied this oddly shaped barn.  The sides were curved.  Having seen a LOT of barns in my life this was a truly strange sight!

Yet another train passing us on the tracks that ran parallel to the road we took through much of Nebraska.

About an hour after leaving Fremont, we made it to Columbus, Nebraska.  

A funny named building, Dickie Doodles, as we rode into town.  Turns out it's a convenience store/gas station that serves food too.

We made a stop in Columbus to see an old friend, Randy, who I had met in Delaware at the 2nd Bloggerpalooza in 2014.  There was some excitement for Randy the week before we got there.  A woman driving down his street had plowed into his car, parked along the road in the residential neighborhood and totaled it.  Randy had just bought a new car earlier that week with the insurance claim proceeds.

Randy with his new car.

After visiting for a bit, Randy whisked us off to lunch...

The 1920 location/building for Max Gottberg's automobile dealership was renovated and turned into a restaurant called "Dusters"(a reference to the early vehicles wearing duster coats I suppose)with a brewery called Gottberg Brew Pub.

They have a website with the history HERE.

The Brew Pub is a large metal silo building situated inside of the restaurant! 

Metal old fashioned tractor seats in the pub.

The building retains many of it's original features and soaring ceilings.

Notice the table of elderly ladies all dolled up in this shot.  Dusters is quite the place in Columbus to be seen for the "ladies who lunch". 8-)

Here's a not so great shot of the mural painted on the curved wall inside of the dining area.  Randy treated us to lunch and I had a fish and chips lunch which was delish.  Thanks Randy!

Here's Randy with Hubs.......

And with me after lunch before we headed out to see the small town sights in Columbus.

                                       

It was an unseasonably warm July day so we headed here to get out of the heat, the Columbus Historical Society Museum.

Who knew there was so many styles of barbed wire?

A replica of an old fashioned barbershop.  I can't look at that photo without music from "Sweeney Todd" floating around in my brain. lol

A machine to make brooms.

There was a one room school room/house in the building with old books, desks, charts, etc.

Particularly interesting was this list of teacher rules form 1872.

The school room view from the teacher's desk.  That's Randy in the back probably misbehaving. Good thing the teacher has stepped out to use the outhouse.  ;-)

                                 

Randy spied a bunch of old school yearbooks in the back and found himself in one of them.  Not that he's old enough to have gone to this town's school when it was a one room school but it was pretty funny finding himself in there anyway.  

I enjoyed this display and information about a local resident who was an early woman aviatrix from the area.

Katherine Kuhlen was the first woman to Solo pilot an airplane in 1929 from a flight school in Topeka KS.  I loved the photo of her in her flight suit and googled labeled "Aunt Kate".

Of course I had to go do a geneaology search on Kate. ;-)

She lived her life in Nebraska.  The last census I can find her on is the 1940 one where she is 37 and lodging in someone's home in Omaha and working as a sales lady in a retail store. She married Clarence Ryan in 1942 at the age of 39.  The couple had no children and she died at the ripe old age of 91 years in 1994..  Their headstone is HERE.

Here's a torture device from an old beauty salon.  Imagine having that hooked up to your hair to curl it!?

Hubs admiring an old Indian motorcycle.

An antique telephone.

An antique buckboard wagon.  Behind it is the first cabin built in what would become Columbus Nebraska.  It was moved from it's original location in the center of town to inside this secondary building of the Historical Society.

Randy standing inside the doorway.  He's pretty tall so that door is small.

And here's an early Ford....a Model A or T?  I can't remember.

Here's a photo of some of the early log cabins in Platte County NE.

Now that's an old pressure cooker.  If I had to use one of these early models I'd have been scared of it! lol

An old copper still outside the backside of the log cabin.  What home back then didn't have one of these?

Here's an old switchboard from the town back when switchboard operators were necessary.

Up close of a windmill.  The Plains were a great place to utilize wind power for many things, from pumping water from wells to grinding grain or running sawmills.

Another antique from last century's home, an ice box.  First they were stocked with ice to chill foods but eventually they were converted to run on electricity.

Various home cleaning appliances through the ages.  That one in the back on the right behind the carpet sweeper must have been awful to try to use.  You had to use a pumping suction action and it looked like it picked up very little detritus at a time.  But you probably had killer bicep muscles as a result of using it. lolz

A poster advertising the Grand Opening of the Union Pacific railroads Platte River Route on May 10th, 1869, running from Sacramento to Omaha.

This display was poignant.  A railroad luggage cart with someone's possessions traveling on the Union Pacific line.

                                      

A close-up on someone from Columbus' ancestor who came here from Sweden.

Anna Bengston came to "Amerika" with her parents, Arvid and Lovisa and her siblings, Carl, Gustav, Sophia and Edward in 1886.  Two more siblings, Alexander and Hilda would be born in Nebraska.

Anna was listed as widowed in the 1910 census(married William Foster in 1898) and she and her daughter Mildred were living with Anna's parents.  Hmmm, William Foster was alive and well in the 1930 census living with his wife Serepta, whom he married in 1905.  Anna remarried and was living in Fresno CA with husband Otto Johnson in the 1920 census.

But I digress....

Randy drove us around town, first to see the new Hydroelectric plant.

Then a big windmill on the campus of some college.

A delightful Columbus history mural on the side of a building downtown.

And I made him stop the car when we went by another of these odd looking barns with the curved sides so I could take a photo of it.  Anybody know anything about these odd shaped barns?  Please let me know!

Soon it was time to wave goodbye to Randy and Columbus Nebraska and head on Westward to our stop for the night.

I saw this water tower as we sailed down the road through another small town.

It was quite the small town after all, Clarks, population 369.

We stopped in Grand Island, NE for the evening.  And we had a first for us for dinner there, a Runza sandwich.

Like the drink cup says, "The Famous Runza Sandwich featuring YES Cabbage". lolz

You can look up what a Runza sandwich is if you care.  Why Nebraska(plus one location in in Kansas where a NE native moved and lamenting they couldn't find a runza so they got a franchise)you ask?

Sally Brening Everett, the daughter of a family who came to Nebraska from Germany by way of Russia, started a food stand in 1949 in Lincoln Nebraska.  This grew into the Runza chain.  Currently they have fast food restaurants in Kansas, Iowa and Colorado as well but with the vast majority of them located in Nebraska.

Thus ends Day Four of our Westward Ho! Saga...

Sluggy