On the Road: Ogallala, Nebraska to Manhattan, Kansas

Left Ogallala, headed east later than I had intended and made slow progress at first. Stopped at Sutherland Reservoir, but saw nothing of interest, except cliff swallows nesting under a bridge over the Platte River. Much of my route today followed the river, which runs in numerous shallow channels. The road crosses and recrosses many forks.

In North Platte, stopped at the Golden Spike Tower, which is an observation tower Union Pacific has constructed for tourists. It allows a bird's-eye view of the Bailey Classification Yard, the largest rail switching and classification yard in the world, so they say. Frankly, it wasn't much to look at, but interesting enough that I don't regret the detour (see photo).

Much of the rail traffic here seems to be coal trains bringing coal down from the area around Casper, Wyoming. They get routed here, mostly to power plants in the east, in places like Cincinnati, and Boston, and New York, and Washington. For the past two days I've been seeing the trains everywhere, some of them with as many as 200 cars.

Last night, coming into Ogallala from Scottsbluff, the road ran parallel to the North Platte River and more or less to the rail lines. I happened to start on the road just as the sun was going down. In the rear-view mirror, it was no longer visible, but light was coursing over the horizon, as various objects in the landscape were still catching the last glow. One of the coal trains appeared ahead of me at a point where the track was at a slight angle to the road. The coal cars are typically polished aluminum (or so they appear to be) with vertical, beveled ribs. Each car was neatly mounded with coal. The cars look like hundreds of perfect, but perfectly burned pound cakes in baking tins. The ribs on the cars began to catch the pink light and the whole train was lit up as if with hundreds of neon tubes standing on end--actually the bevels of the ribs reflecting the last pink rays of the sun at me. It was rather extraordinary. It lasted only about seven minutes. The first minute or two I wasn't able to understand what I was seeing. It reminded me of the gaudy neon lights at the casinos in Reno.

On the Road: Rock Springs, Wyoming to Ogallala, Nebraska

I spent most of the day today driving east on I-80, which is a fairly boring drive. Got off the highway in Laramie, lured by a sign advertising an art gallery at the University of Wyoming (Laramie Campus), but it was closed. Moved on to Cheyenne, and from there further east into Nebraska. It was more of the same, until I came to my senses and left the Interstate. I turned north on State Route 71, from Kimball to Scottsbluff, hoping to do some birding at Scottsbluff National Monument.

The scenery was immediately more interesting. Rolling farmland, vivid green, except where just mowed. Harvesters were cutting hay and making giant green rolls of it. Soon the bluffs appeared--big, eroded outcroppings of sand-colored stone. As it was late in the day, the light was very pretty. I got to the monument and took a walk of about a mile up into the bluffs. Saw a spotted towhee, hundreds of swallows, a pair of black-billed magpies--beautiful, big birds in iridescent black-green with flashes of white in flight. Also saw a mountain bluebird for the first time. I had seen the western and eastern varieties before, but not the mountain bluebird--a beautiful, all-blue bird. The other varieties have rust on the breast and sides. Then drove southeast from the bluffs to Ogallala, on highway 26.

[Update: Recently (in January 2011), I read Desperate Passage, a book about the famous Donner Party that was stranded for months in the Sierra Nevada mountains near the end of their trip across the continent. I realize in retrospect that I followed much the same route as the Donners and the families traveling with them (albeit in the opposite direction). Scottsbluff was an important landmark for wagon trains heading west.]