Hoxie, Kansas

 

 



I had stopped to rest and eat in the negligible community of Edson, population 17, just down the street from its post office.  I was leaning against the wall of closed mechanic’s shop in the sun when a small, beat-up, black pickup truck pulled into the parking lot. A scrawny, slightly unkempt older guy hopped out and blurted, “Do you need a place to stay?  I live down the street.  You can pitch your tent in my yard.”

Realizing he might have been too forward, he added, “I went to Kansas State and work at a truck mechanics in Goodland.”  He opened his jacket and showed his overalls with “S & M Repair” on it.

He didn’t need to assure me that his forwardness was scaring me off and that I might take him as a homicidal maniac, though he might be.  I was immediately captivated by his enthusiastic friendliness, recognizing a character I’d be happy to get to know.  

It was just two in the afternoon, so I wasn’t ready to call it a day, but fortuitously my plan was to bike nine miles into Goodland, visit its Carnegie, get supplies at its Walmart, the first I’d come upon in a week, and head back this way, as the Goodland Carnegie was the westernmost in Kansas.  I was going to go east from there and gather the remaining twenty-one that I hadn’t gotten to in previous crossings of the state.  

I told him my plan and said I’d be happy to accept his offer.  “I can be your night watchman,” I said.

“No need for that, I’ve got a nine millimeter right here,” he said patting his side.

He told me his brother owned a bike shop in Goodland and that he had a lot of bikes himself.  He pointed out his house at the end of the lone street through Edson and said he’d see me later.  It was sooner than I thought.   Before I’d taken a couple more bites of my sandwich, he came flying into the parking lot on a Schwinn World Traveler.  “Give it a try, you’ll like it,” he said.  

I asked him if I could get him anything at the Walmart.  He said he refuses to shop there because he’d had a confrontation with the staff.  He urged me to go to the Dollar Store, saying it was behind the giant Van Gogh.

I didn’t ask him about the Van Gogh, saving that for later.  But I didn’t need to ask him about it as it was a huge 80 foot replica of one of Van Gogh’s more famous paintings of sunflowers.  Kansas after all is the Sun Flower State.  It was accompanied by a plaque giving its origins.  It was erected in 2001, painted by a Canadien artist, Cameron Cross. It didn’t hold up to the scorching heat and harsh winds, so he had to return in 2012 to repaint it with brighter, more durable paint.

It stood along the highway leading into Goodland.  Its Carnegie was a mile away just a block from the town center.  It was now an Art Center, its second tenant after the town built a larger library in 1975.  It had been a senior center for eight years and an outlet for art ever since.  The Italian Renaissance style building had been superbly maintained and also was accompanied by a plaque documenting its story.

When I made it back to Edson, Gary was in his yard preparing a fire pit for us to sit at in the evening.  His property was a junkyard full of old cars and dozens of beat-up bicycles. He proudly led me around spewing a story on everything—a station wagon he used to live in, a car he’d had when he lived in Boulder.  A couple of vans were stuffed with all sorts of riffraff. “I’m a dumpster diver,” he proudly said.  “I get lots of stuff out of the resale shop dumpster, clothes and bikes and stuff you wouldn’t believe, like this jacket I’m wearing.  Why would they throw this out?  I can’t tell you.”

He was talking so fast I couldn’t interject that I too took advantage of the bounty of dumpsters.  His property was an unimaginable mess on all sides. He proudly said, “I live in a state of chaos, always have.  I’m used to it.  I was the fifth of six boys.  I was a troubled child, and now is no different.  I’m really glad you came back.  I was having a terrible day.  I thought I was going to kill somebody.”

None of this was alarming.  I knew it was somewhat of an act, but not entirely.  He was having a grand time just being himself and I was having a grand time being witness to it.  I wished I had a camera crew along to be documenting this.  He was a character unlike any other. 

I had a choice of putting my tent up in a small clear patch beneath a tree with low-hanging limbs or in the path between his many cars.  The cars provided a better shield from the brisk cold wind from the north.  When it got dark he brought out three solar powered lights to put around my tent.  As it got colder, as sunset neared, I asked if he might have an extra sweater.

“I have loads,” he said. He brought out a fine grey zippered sweater, and said, “I was wondering who I was going to give this to. It’s all yours.”

An hour later as we sat around the fire looking at the starry sky, the cold began to penetrate once again.  I asked if he might have a spare blanket.  He dashed to the house and returned with blankets for each of us and a down vest for me.  “You can have this too.  I don’t ever use it.”  I was glad to add it to my reserves.

As he gabbed away at a mile-a-minute I learned he’d dealt narcotics but had never been busted even though the cops tapped his phone for five years.  He’d worked in the oil fields as a roustabout.  He’d gone to college to be a forest ranger, but that didn’t work out.  He’d never been married, as who would have him.

At one point he showed me a Romanian AK 47 he recently bought and had yet to use.  He was a bit of an artist and had decorated it with dabs of paint.  He pulled a tin of Altoids out of his pocket and asked if I’d like one.  Before I could reply he’d opened it revealing a cache of bullets. He said, “I’ve been drinking beer since ten this morning.  I couldn’t pass a sobriety test.  The headlights on my truck don’t work, so I can’t drive at night, which keeps me out of trouble.  I can’t drive in the rain either, as the drops on the windshield remind me of bad acid trips I’ve had.”

On and on he went and I knew he wasn’t making any of it up.  He wasn’t threatening in the least, only entertaining.  I’d certainly lucked into an evening to remember.  He mentioned several times that he’d had many concussions, “so many I don’t know why I’m alive.”  They were all from falling down drunk.  Just a couple days ago he’d collapsed in his bathroom and laid passed out for three hours.  “My dog didn’t know what to think.”

He called himself an outlaw.  “I’ve broken the law many a time but I’ve never been caught.  I was arrested once for giving a cop the finger.  It was just one of two times where I spent a few hours in jail.”

He announced that he had an army surplus down sleeping bag good to thirty below.  I was afraid he was going to offer me that too, but he said he would sleep outdoors tonight, as he hadn’t slept out for awhile.   He spread it out near the fire.  In the morning he confessed he woke up cold and went in.  The cold had gotten to me too.  I awoke at two with cold feet.  I tried stuffing the down vest in the bottom of my bag, but my feet remained cold.  I resorted to one of the packs of hand warmers Charlie had given me.  The directions said they took fifteen to thirty minutes to activate.  I wasn’t feeling any warmth from them at all stuffed into my socks.  But I eventually fell back asleep and when I awoke in the morning I could feel the tiny packets were still warm, as they are good for up to ten hours.

Gary had the fire going and was cooking up some sausages and burgers for breakfast, with beer in hand. Before I left he said I ought to return in late September for an annual music festival in Goodland.  He added, “We used to have a corner of the field where it’s held that we called the Den of Iniquity, where we sold drugs, but no more.”

I told him I’d certainly return on my way out to or back from Telluride before of after 

Labor Day.  I knew Janina would be fascinated by him and his scene.  Unfortunately I couldn’t stay in touch with him via email as he forsakes the internet, calling it “voodoo.”  But he does text.

It was twenty-nine miles back to Colby into an easterly wind.  I knew it was coming and had planned to ride until dark the night before when the wind was merely from the north, but was glad I’d taken up Gary’s offer.

I swung by Colby’s Statue of Liberty in the corner of its large town park and then retreated to its library to rest up for another bout with the wind.  It took me nearly six hours to ride thirty-four miles to Hoxie, where I knew a town park was available for camping.  Besides the stiff head wind I was derailed by three flats in five miles.  I was in goat’s head country and I had inadvertently pushed my bike into a patch at one of my rest stops.  That was the extent of my spare tubes.  I didn’t try to patch them as I was uncertain if the glue would hold in the cold.

Luckily there was a hotel in Hoxie, so I could do my patching.  First time I’d been forced into a motel by flat tires.  As I checked in the proprietor apologized for being a little
groggy as he had had to drive a snow plow on the road all Monday night and had yet to recover.  He had just a few rooms to rent attached to his house and charged just $37, the cheapest motel I’ve come upon in decades.  His wife waited to run my credit card until he returned from showing me how to work the heater, fearing I might refuse to stay.

I easily found the punctures and inflated the tires to make sure the patches held.  When I awoke in the morning all three tubes were limp.  The patches had held, but each tire had at least one more puncture.  One had three.  Good good thing I had done this in a motel and not attempted it in my tent in the freezing temperatures.  Now I have to escape western Kansas and these “puncture mines,” as these prickly tiny balls are also known.  I’d encountered them before in the fall and was hoping they wouldn’t be an issue in the spring.

Colby, Kansas

  

Turning south into Kansas hasn’t brought warmer temperatures.  Cold and snow has, in fact, forced me into motels the past two nights. The snow wasn’t predicted to hit until two in the afternoon on my second day in Kansas, so I made a seven a.m. pre-dawn start from Norton to try to make it to Colby 74 miles away, the first town with a motel in these sparsely settled parts, before the snow hit or got too heavy.  

Ordinarily when I’m riding in dim light it is at the end of the day and it is getting dimmer.  This was a pleasant contrast with the light gradually brightening.  I had to be wary of black ice, as it was just 24 degrees, the coldest of this trip, and what made me motel it that night.  I had ridden in cold all day with it never warming up enough to melt the snow that caked road signs.  I had been chilled all day.  Spending a night in a tent barely keeping warm had no appeal, though I did check if there were a town park with a heated rest room in Norton, where I ended up after 82 miles.  There wasn’t, but there was a bargain-priced Indian motel that Janina and I had stayed at last September on our way back from Telluride when Janina feared she was coming down with Covid and rather than camping wanted to be in a motel, preferably within range of a hospital, which Norton had. 

I had to keep my rest stops out along the road short before the cold started to penetrate.  At one a state trooper pulled over to ask if I was all right.  He seemed motivated by concern rather than suspicion, asking three times in the course of our brief conversation if I needed anything.  Before leaving he advised I wear something brighter than my dark blue jacket. 

A few flurries hit at noon, but the genuine snow didn’t begin until two, just as predicted.  I had turned onto route 24, and was within six miles of Colby.  If this snow was as light as the day’s earlier dusting I would have continued on to Goodland, another 34 miles, for a 110-mile day.  But this was a heavier, wetter snow. It wasn’t accumulating, so I didn’t need to let up too much, but it was sticking to my glasses, obstructing my vision, and beginning to soak into my shoes and pants.  

I needed to abort, nearly six hours before dark.  I had the choice of a Motel 6 along Interstate 70 or a local Indian-run motel on the outskirts of town.  Priceline quoted a price of $49 for the latter, but a rather gruff guy helping the Indians run the place, thinking I was desperate covered in snow, and would pay anything, asked for $75.  When I expressed surprise, he quickly dropped his price to $65, then $55 and finally $50 when I showed him a screenshot of the $49 price, all while the Indian owner and his wife stood meekly in the background.

Charlie missed out on the ride in the snow, as the 150-mile westerly haul to Goodland and its Carnegie, almost to the Colorado border, had no appeal to him, preferring to return to the sand hill cranes.  We rode a final nine miles together from Franklin with the temperature just above freezing and a light dusting of snow along the road.  He’d gotten a good introduction to the touring and already had in mind places he might wild camp with his bike along the Platte.  It had been his wish for ten years to partake of the sand hill crane migration, so he wanted more.

He was a stalwart companion.  I had to remind him from time to time not to ride too hard, as he needed to parcel out his energy making it last all day and then days afterwards, but he is an athlete who likes to push himself.  He was the captain of his Murray State University football team, playing linebacker at 215 pounds.  Even more impressive was his transfer to Syracuse, where he started at linebacker as well.  He has a picture on his phone of himself tackling Tony Dorsett, who won the Heisman Trophy and was the second pick in the 1977 draft by the Dallas Cowboys who he starred for the next eleven years. 

Charlie is forty pounds below his playing weight, but has lost none of the drive and dedication to excel at whatever attracts his interest. He will make a fine touring cyclist.  He has the salesman’s gift of easing into conversation with others, so is a natural at engaging with strangers who the touring cyclist is perpetually encountering and always enhances the travel experience.   I will be happy to tour with him any time.

Turning back, he fell eleven miles short of the Carnegie in Alma, which was a little more stately than the other two we had seen, adorned with ornate brickwork and other embellishments.  It was now the residence of the town banker.  When I stopped to give it a look, a guy passing in a pickup truck stopped to tell me it was no longer the library, even though “Public Library” still adorned its front, and gave me directions to the present library.

I didn’t need those, but rather directions to a cafe with hotcakes.  He enthusiastically recommended KayJayes.  When I ordered the full stack the waitress warned me off, saying she couldn’t even eat a single one.  She was right.  It was huge.  I could only eat half of it, putting the rest in my Tupperware bowl for later.  If I had gotten two or three, they wouldn’t have fit, as the half barely did.  Several people came by my table to comment it was cold to be biking, but inexplicably did not linger for more, not even asking where I was headed.  If Charlie had been seated with me and they’d seen us talking, they no doubt would have lingered for a genuine exchange.

Charlie also missed out on the “Strengthen the Arm of Liberty” Statue of Liberty in Alma. I’d mentioned them when we met the couple from Cedar Rapids along the Platte, as their town has one at the tip of an island in the Cedar River.   Oddly enough, the guy wasn’t aware of it, though his wife was.  This one stood vigil in front of the courthouse across the street from the Carnegie.  It was the first I’d come upon that gave credit to the Girls Scouts along with the Boy Scouts for raising the funds for its installation. It was one of eleven in Nebraska, which is one of six states with more than ten of them.

Franklin, Nebraska

  

All day on our first day of biking south from Kearney to the first Carnegie of these travels people were telling us how lucky we were to have a calm day.  Wind is such a fact of life in these parts, when there is none, it is a notable event.  I sure experienced harsh winds a year ago biking in the north sector of the state and into Iowa, Minnesota and South Dakota, accepting a ride from someone at one point after being forced to walk pummeled by a fierce side wind and retreating to a motel for a full day when the winds were near tornado strength, so I have been bracing for more and felt duly fortunate for a windless day.  

We asked one older outspoken gent, who was talking our ears off outside a supermarket, if there was any positive to the winds and he replied, “No, it’s nothing but the shits.”

When we got him talking on the sand hill cranes he said, “They kill ‘‘em in Oklahoma and Kansas, but not here.”

We saw none all day after we left our campsite along the Platte, though the sky was full of them at dawn squawking up a storm as they made their daily departure from their night time roosts in the river to go foraging for corn.  

People have been extra friendly to our traveling two-some, much more than I’m accustomed to when traveling solo.  A lone older touring cyclist bears the stigma of transient and hobo and someone to be wary of, but the two of us seem less threatening and more of a curiosity.  It helps too that Charlie is so personable.  A woman at Dick’s Grocery in the small town of Lawrence was so charmed by his affability that she wouldn’t let him pay for an apple and bag of nuts, not because she thought we were in need, but because we had warmed her heart making her want to endorse our efforts with a gift.

In a similar small town of three hundred residents on our route, Campbell, two different people stopped for a prolonged chat as we sat on the steps of its Community Center. Besides commenting on the lack of wind they were happy to pass the time of day with a couple of non-residents.

Charlie was gaining a fine introduction to the charms of travel by bike.  The motorists too have all been accepting and benevolent.  We haven’t had a single toot of “get off the road” and all but one have given us a wide, wide berth, often going all the way over into the opposite lane.

We were having such a wonderful first day we didn’t want to stop even after 81 miles, but an abandoned farmstead was too good of a campsite to pass up despite an hour of light remaining.  There hadn’t been a viable place to camp for ten miles in these wide open spaces, so we thought we should take advantage of it, though we had a town park as a back up six miles down the road in Nelson that a couple people had recommended.  The extra miles would have been nice, but Charlie was looking forward to an initiation into wild camping. We pushed past the dilapidated home and barn and other outbuildings and erected our tents well from the road along the fringe of a cornfield and could glory in a fine day of biking and a dandy quiet spot to sleep that none had slept on before.

Charlie also gained a fine introduction to chocolate milk. When we left Charlie’s home in Downers Grove four days ago his wife and daughter asked how I fueled myself.  I said I drank a lot of chocolate milk, as much as a half a gallon a day.  They were aghast that I could down so much and Charlie too.  

At out first supermarket of the travels Charlie bought a half gallon of chocolate milk thinking we’d share it.  He was startled when I came out with a half gallon too.  In the cold weather I assured him it would last for two days.  But by mid-afternoon he was surprised to discover he’d finished off his half gallon, and enjoyed it so much was looking to buy another.  He could have had some of mine as I’d only drunk a quart of it, but he waited until the next day and bought a full gallon, which we split.  It does go down easy and keeps the legs pumping and the hunger knock at bay.

It was eighteen miles from our campsite to Superior, near the Kansas border, and it’s Carnegie.  We planned on a stack of hotcakes at a diner for the ultimate of local color, but the town’s lone remaining diner wasn’t open on Saturdays.  Our only choice for breakfast was the Dairy Queen.  We passed on that and made do with our reserves and our fresh infusion of chocolate milk.

The Carnegie had a prime corner location with no other buildings encroaching upon it.  Its red brick exterior was much-weathered, adding to its distinguished air.  It now provided offices for local businesses, having been replaced by a new library a couple blocks away twenty-five years ago, though “Public Library” remained chiseled into its facade.

Its replacement didn’t open until ten.  As I sat outside using its Wi-Fi the librarian ducked out the door to let me know it would soon be opening.  I asked if the library acknowledged the renowned author Willa Cather, who’d grown up in nearby Red Cloud, in any way. “No, but we have many of her books,” she said, and added, “her good friend Evelane Brodstone, who in the early 1900s was the highest paid woman executive in the world, grew up here before moving to Chicago where she went to work for an English conglomerate, rising from secretary to a position of importance, traveling the world in the interests of the company.  She married one of the owners after his wife died.  He was an English baron, so she became a baroness. She donated a hospital here and Cather wrote the celebratory plaque.”

I verified it all on Wikipedia, which also mentioned she was an avid cyclist and racer and the only member of British royalty buried in Nebraska.  Her accomplishments were so wide varied that her Wikipedia page was longer than that of Superior.

We headed west out of Superior with only a minimal breeze from the north to contend with to Red Cloud 29 miles away.  The Willa Cather Museum on its Main Street wasn’t open, nor its library two blocks a way.  It wasn't a Carnegie, but it might as well have been, as a local entrepreneur was inspired by Carnegie’s largess to provide the funds for a library in 1918 just as Carnegie’s program was ending with the intention of upstaging the nearby Carnegies, which he may have done.  The library bears his name—Auld.

Just as we left town for Franklin and its Carnegie, 23 miles west, a few drops of rain fell from the sky, just as predicted, precisely at three o’clock.  We knew Franklin had a motel for a refuge if the rain persisted.  It let up, but an hour later began in earnest, whipping up from the south.  It was a cold rain with the temperature just forty degrees and had us shivering.  

As we closed in on Franklin Charlie suggested we stop and call the motel and reserve a room, not because it may be filling but out of concern that the proprietor might think we were too disheveled to rent to and turn us away.  I wasn’t concerned about that in the least, having many a time inflicted myself on a motel in a similar state.  My only concern was that the motel might have closed down.  Nor did I wish to fumble around in the rain trying to call the motel, so we pushed on.  The neon “open” sign in the motel window was a great relief.  And the owner had no qualms of letting us have one of his fifteen rooms with only three cars at that point outside his rooms.  I was expecting a South Asian proprietor, as in common these days, but it was a husky local wearing a baseball cap. 

It was too dark and cold and wet to pay a visit to the Carnegie.  That had to wait until the morning.  We were greeted by a slight dusting of snow. When we pulled up to the Carnegie a guy stepping out of his car commented, “It’s a bit cold to be biking in this weather.”  

Charlie replied, “No it’s fine.  We don’t have to worry about sweating.”  That wasn’t entirely true, as some of the long, steep climbs in this hilly terrain brought a few beads of perspiration, but his positivity was the right spirit.

This was another Carnegie given over to the private sector, but that didn’t diminish its luster in any way.  It had none of the grandiose accessories such as the columns of the Red Cloud library, but it had the noted Carnegie high windows letting in an optimum amount of natural light and distinctive light fixtures by the entry.  As is generally the case, there wasn’t another building in town to compare with its majesty.

Kearney, Nebraska: Sand Hill Crane Central

 

Rather than the Cornhusker State, Nebraska could well be known as the Sand Hill Crane State, as more than a million, eighty per cent of the world’s population, congregate along the Platte River in the middle of the state each spring on their migration north to Alaska, Canada and Siberia.  They hang out for several weeks feasting on stray corn kernels and worms and insects,  gaining up to a pound each, fifteen per cent of their body weight, for their push north.

Their migration season in the one hundred mile stretch along the Platte is from Valentines Day to Tax Day.  It peaks right about now.  The Crane Trust aerial count was 450,000 cranes last week,  but had inexplicably dipped to 375,000 this week, as their numbers usually exceed 600,000 at the peak.

They attract hundreds of bird enthusiasts who feast on their antics, soaring all over the sky and congregating in the wide open fields during the day before retreating to the sand flats in and along the Platte, protecting them from their predators.  Humans are not among them in Nebraska, as it is the only state in their migration path that prohibits hunting them.  They are said to taste like prime rib, making them an added attraction to hunters.

I was unaware of the magnitude of this gathering until my friend Charlie, a fellow cyclist, proposed making a bicycle trip of it.  Charlie had the urge to join the cycle touring fraternity, attempting a ride last summer to his 50th high school reunion in Evansville, but had to abort on day one when his tent poles slipped off the back of his bike.  He proposed this as another attempt.  I can never say no to a bicycle tour, and though I had plans to bike up the east coast in warmer temperatures from Orlando completing the slate of Carnegies in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas, this would give me the opportunity to finish off Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky and West Virginia and almost Nebraska. 

Eight of the eleven Carnegies in Nebraska I had yet to get to were strung  along the southern border of the state and would be on the way to Kearney from Lincoln if we took the train to within 150 miles of the cranes.  After much consideration we opted to drive, as  Charlie needed to be home much earlier than me and scheduling a train back was tricky during the Easter/Spring Break season, particularly not knowing how many miles we’d be bicycling.  It would give him great peace of mind knowing he had his car to get him home when we were done birding and biking.

The 650-mile drive was nothing for Charlie, as he has driven that distance up to the Boundary Waters to go canoeing at least once a year for the past thirty-five years and often twice a year in spring and fall.  Those waters have such allure for him, he made the drive four times one year.  With all that camping experience I knew I’d be traveling with an outdoorsman of the highest rank.

We whipped off the drive in ten hours, stopping just twice for gas and Charlie not once relinquishing the steering wheel, though it was a consideration, as before we left he asked, “I don’t mean to insult you, but do you drive?”  It was high praise that he thought I was such a committed cyclist that I totally forsook the car. 

The miles flew by as he told me stories of canoeing and his triplets and owning a battery store and and his days in the Toastmasters Club and elaborating on his eldest daughter, who spent three-and-half years traveling the world, extending her travels by working at hostels along the way, including a year in Australia. She and her partner, skydivers both, were visiting and sent us off.   Her partner coaches the Quatari skydiving team and had just returned from a session with them.  Meeting this fascinating pair was a great send-off. 

When we came within fifty miles of Kearney on interstate 80 the sky began to fill with hundreds of cranes flying in formation and at a host of altitudes as if coordinated by some air traffic controller.  There were hundreds more in the corn fields with heads bowed, pecking away.  It seemed as if we had arrived in an alternate universe.

We resisted pulling over for photos as no one else was and we knew many more awaited us at the prime viewing spots, one of which was within Fort Kearney Recreational Area where we would be camping.  Charlie had called ahead and was assured there’d be no problem camping, as few spots were taken with the temperature still hovering around freezing this time of year.  The vast majority of those drawn to the birds stay in hotels.

We got the last of the three non-electric campsites.  Not even a quarter of the more than hundred other campsites were occupied.  Our neighbor was a couple from Denver who  were back for a second year, better prepared this time with more warm clothes and lots of firewood.  They gave us the lowdown on the best viewing spot and time.  It was just a mile away on a former railroad bridge over the Platte that was now a paved bicycle path.  Just before dark was when the birds came flying in and then just before light they departed en masse to their feeding grounds.

The bridge was lined with people when we arrived at 7:45, everyone bundled up and many shivering. The sky was filled all the way to the horizon with squadrons of birds in formation, though none were descending just yet.  Most of the viewers had binoculars and many had long-lensed cameras. A guy with a mini-telescope on a tripod nudged me, noticing I didn’t have binoculars, and said, “You got to see this.”  And he was right, the close-up was stunning.  Later someone else offered me binoculars, reflecting the strong community spirit.  Though there was a general hush, all the better to hear the symphonic cacophony in the sky above, there was an occasional gasp of “Wow” or “My god.”

After twenty minutes I needed to take a spin on my bike to warm up, as the windchill from a strong north wind had penetrated to the bone. I sprinted the three tenths of a mile back to the parking lot to circulate the blood.  I scanned the license plates of the fifty plus cars.  I didn’t see a one from east of the Mississippi, at least until the next day when two from Wisconsin and one from Maine showed up.  Until then we thought we had come the furthest, except perhaps for one from Texas.  There were a few Nebraska plates, but most were from nearby states—Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Wyoming.

The next day we made a forty-mile circuit of other viewing spots and a swing into Kearney, seven miles away on a premium asphalt bicycle path along interstate 80.  Charlie ventured to the Walmart while I spent time in the library reading a few pages from a book on the Carnegie Libraries that I had missed when I snapped screenshots of it a year ago.  Charlie bought up the store’s few remaining hand warmers as emergency backups to our sleeping bags, if only to warm cold feet, in case our bags failed to keep us warm in the predicted cold of the low twenties in the coming days.  If there’d been more, we could have hawked them to the shivering bird-watchers, and paid for our trip.  

We took a different route back from Kearney via Windmill State Recreational Area that turned into a dirt road for six miles.  It was Charlie’s first “gravel” experience and he didn’t enjoy it in the least. It was barely a hiccup compared to the 1,200 miles of the unpaved Alaskan Highway I once rode, but I shared Charlie’s mystification that riding such roads is now a fad.  After a few miles of pavement we had another does of dirt to an Audubon Society site along the Platte that was a combination gift shop and information center.  We were told the one hundred places in its two evening viewing stands were booked until March 31 and it had some vacancies only due to a cancellation. They generally fill when they are made available the first of the year. 

We had passed another viewing stand along the river, that a retired educator and naturalist, who’d been coming for the cranes from Cedar Rapids, Iowa for years, told us was comparable to the one we’d been at the night before.  We were tempted to give it a try, but it would have required driving over. It had an added allure of talking with the educator’s wife, as she mentioned as we parted that she had ridden the third and fourth editions of RAGBRAI and then twice more, once with her mother and then with her husband shortly after they married.  I would have liked to have heard about those experiences.

Two more miles of dirt awaited us after the Audubon center, putting us at ten for the day.  It took us past wall of slats looking out upon a small lake and vast cornfield filled with thousands of cranes.  It was another boggling spectacle.

We returned to our campsite in time for a quick dinner and then a dash for a second dose of cranes settling in for the night.  It was a clearer sky than the night before streaking the horizon with a band of colors adding extra pizzazz to the photos. 

Curiously not so many birds came in from the west from the sunset, but were concentrated this evening in the east, adding all the more wonderment to this phenomenon.  It would be tempting to see what the next night would bring, but the road beckoned, so we’d be seventy miles south closing in on the Carnegie in Superior near the Kansas border.