Monday was a pretty easy day. We had a nice quiet night at Papa Moon. Before departing I added a quart of oil to the Serenity and topped off the DEF. We have traveled 8000 miles and this is the first quart of oil I have had to add, not bad.
As we travel around the country we continue to bounce between Lewis and Clark memorials and the Oregon Trail memorials, we find both fascinating.
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| Scotts Bluff |
It was a short drive to Scotts Bluff and you can see it from a long distance.
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| Poor Hiram Scott |
The bluff is named after Hiram Scott.
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| Scotts Bluff location is the Star on this map. |
Scotts Bluff was the second most mentioned landmark in pioneer diaries, signifying the transition from the plains to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.
You can drive a vehicle to the top of Scotts Bluff as long as you are less than 25 ft long and under 11 ft in height. I talked to the Ranger at the visitor center, they were most concerned about turning radius and height. My height is only 10' 3", but with the bikes we are about 30 ft, but they let us go. It is nice to see that some government employees still have some common sense.
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| Scotts Bluff Tunnels |
Climbing the bluff there are 3 cool tunnels, thus the height limitation.
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| Scotts Bluff |
Nebraska, like Wyoming is windy, it is really windy on top of a bluff, it will mess with your hair.
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| Chimney Rock |
The other famous landmark in the area is Chimney Rock, it is the only landmark mentioned more often in diaries than Scott's Bluff. Chimney Rock is now a state park and we considered visiting it, but it requires timed entry and there were no immediate times open. However, we could see it from the top of Scotts Bluff.
While in the visitor center at Scotts Bluff, volunteer Doug encouraged us to stop at the Agate Fossil Bed which is only about 50 miles to the north.
We arrived at the Agate Fossil Bed visitor center and the first thing the Ranger said to us was "Did Doug send you?", too funny.
Agate Fossil Bed is a head scratcher, here they found piles and piles of bones from about 20 million years ago. They are not dinosaurs, the last dinosaurs roamed earth at least 60 million years ago. They have theories about why the bones are all piled here, but I think they are still guessing.
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| Agate Fossil Bed |
Since the early 1900s paleontologists have been sorting through the bones and constructing them into what they were 20 million years ago. They have some interesting beasts.
The Agate Fossil Bed was a quick stop but pretty interesting, I am sure kids love it.
Our next planned stop is a Lewis and Clark exhibit in Eastern Nebraska, but it was still over 400 miles away, so June picked out some BLM land in Nenzel, NE and we headed for it.
Once we hit RT20 east, it was an easy drive, it was still windy but was mostly behind us, giving us a nice push.
The BLM land, McKelvie National Forest, was about 10 miles south of RT20, then finding the campground was another 11 miles in the sparse forest. We nearly gave up but eventually found Steer Creek Campground. It is a nice self service campground that cost us $7.50 for the night.
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| Steer Creek Campground |
Steer Creek has about 22 sites, but we were alone, just us...kind of nice.
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| Camping alone at Steer Creek |
We had a nice quiet evening relaxing at Steer Creek Campground. There were no people, no cell coverage, a great place to disconnect. (yeah we had our Starlink 😊)
Tuesday we plan to visit another Lewis and Clark memorial.
There is a lot of pioneer history out here; very interesting. The campground was remote but we enjoyed the quiet.
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