Winter Excursion 9, Day 229

We left Scottsbluff at 0830 and made the 290 mile drive to Buffalo, WY by 1400. The posted speed limit in WY is 80! Many folks are doing a lot more than that. I kept it around 70 towing the camper as the occasional wind gust will wake you right up! Think sway!

Here's a couple of pics on the highway. Most of the time you can see 10 miles of the road ahead!

We even got to see snow on the peaks of the Big Horn Mountains! It was 83 in the valley.

We saw plenty of cattle and antelope along the highway.

Our new campground is Deer Park. Here's Site #28.

The sites are a little tight, but there is plenty of shade. I think most campers use this for an over night stop along the highway. We will be here for three days. Tomorrow we will do some exploring, although Buffalo, WY is very small.
 

Winter Excursion 9, Day 228

We spent the morning doing some camp maintenance and cleaning up the truck. The bugs have been bad when driving and the front of the truck was covered in dead bugs! Most campgrounds will not let you wash your vehicles, but this time I didn't even ask permission. The truck front end looks good again.

In the afternoon we did a little exploring in the city of Scottsbluff and picked out our restaurant for this evening.

We did some supply shopping and unloaded them at the camper.

We headed to Flyover Brewing Company and had an early dinner. The beer was my favorite; Hefe Weizen! It was really good.

The meal was excellent also. Woodfired pizza, artichoke dip, and olives and peppers.

After a couple of those beers I needed the men's room. Here's what I found.

Yes, those are converted beer kegs!

This area has been fun, but we are off to new places tomorrow.

Winter Excursion 9, Day 227

Another day of exploring and we think we saved the best for last.

We drove northwest to see Fort Laramie, WY. 

There is a small museum and it's worth seeing. 

This is one of the barracks. At the heyday there were many of these. This one has been restored.

These are Officer's quarters and the Post Surgeon's house and office.

We headed back towards camp and Scotts Bluff. We saved this for the last of our exploring.

This next group of pics is driving up to the bluff.

There is a nice visitor center and a very interesting short video to watch.

Then we were able to drive to the top! It's a mile and a half of switch back city and three tunnels.

Once on the top the views are stunning.

This is the bluff that Scottsbluff City (where we are camped) is named for. This is the bluff we can see from the campground.

Winter Excursion 9, Day 226

Happy Father's Day!

We left camp to do some exploring today. First stop was Carhenge! Think Stonehenge.

This amazing craziness is 65 miles from camp. It was worth every mile to see it.

 My first car was an AMC Gremlin. the car on the top left is a Gremlin. This made my day.

Cath's family always had one of those big station wagons as there was eight kids. They turned this into a covered station wagon!

Zoom in on the yellow cars and you will see what they call this the "Fourd Seasons"!

This coming week the owners have some Graffiti Artists from all over the world coming to paint a few of the cars. We'll be hitting the internet to see the results.

From Carhenge we drove the five miles to the town of Alliance, NE to see Dobby's Frontier Town.

Zoom in and check out the sign at the steps.

These jail cells are really small.

This whole "town" is run and maintained by volunteers. There is no admission to see it. There was no one there while we visited.

Next stop was Chimney Rock.

It continues to erode.

We stopped at a small campground and had some ice cream on the camp store porch. Chimney Rock is in the background.

The entire trip today was about 150 miles. We had a great time.

Winter Excursion 9, Day 225

We didn't leave camp until almost 1100. Our drive today is only 120 miles so there was no reason to leave early.

Once again we followed the North Platte River (Oregon Trail). Some of the views were really great. This is the first time we have been in this area.

There are some more "views", but I'll save them for tomorrow as we are going to backtrack a little to visit some interesting sites.

We got to our new campground in Scotts Bluff, NE around 1400. Got set up and relaxed.

Here's site #17 at Riverside Campground. Full hookups and plenty of shade!

And here's our view from the campground. This is Scotts Bluff!

We will be doing some exploring tomorrow.

 

Winter Excursion 9, Day 224

We did a few loads of laundry this morning in Ogallala at the laundromat we checked out yesterday. After that we hit Wally World for a few supplies as we are leaving this area tomorrow.

We did a little camp maintenance and basically just chilled out. After dinner we sat outside and watched the evening storms start to roll in. Before the storms hit we came back inside as the bugs were getting aggressive! The storms did hit later with some rain and lots of wind.

Winter Excursion 9, Day 223

We left camp this morning to do a little exploring. First stop was for breakfast at the Oregon Trail Trading Post in Lewellen, NE. They do have an attached cafe and breakfast was really good! 

From there we drove to Ash Hollow State Historical Park, also know has Windlass Hill.

You can still see the wagon wheel ruts from the early settlers. 

From there we drove to Ogallala, NE, the closest town to our campground. We checked out the laundromat and checked out this "Old West Town", although it was closed. 

The last stop of the morning tour was the Lake McConaughy State Recreation Area Visitor Center.

We watched an interesting short movie about the lake and the dam that made it. 

Back at camp we sat outside in the shade, it was 92 again! The wind here never stops, but it sure makes the temps bearable.

We had some really good thunderstorms in the evening with lots of lightning.