Who knew?

Here I am in a place I never heard of until this afternoon: Nebraska City. Turns out that:

• It was already settled by non-Indians when Lewis & Clark passed through in 1804.
• It was the original site of Ft. Kearney, which the Army moved farther west (now Kearney, NE) about 1850.
• It was incorporated in 1857 through the merger of three earlier cities, one of which was also called Nebraska City. I'm leaving out a bunch of other stuff I found in Wikipedia, including the city's role in both the slave trade and the Underground Railroad.

It's on the Missouri River across from the Iowa/Missouri line. Tomorrow I'll leave Nebraska in about five minutes and be in Missouri about ten minutes after that, heading downriver to Kansas City.

I'd hoped to be in a KC hotel tonight and with luck to find some good live jazz to listen to, but the fates didn't cooperate. The snow fates, as usual for this week.

My trusty GPS didn't send me 50 miles due south from Scottsbluff the way I'd come from I-80 last night but instead routed me southeast on what turned out to be a 125-mile trip on U.S. 26. For some reason it detoured me onto a couple of county roads just after leaving Scottsbluff, with the serendipitous result that I saw Chimney Rock, a National Historic Site not to be confused with other Chimney Rocks in the U.S. I didn't detour further to visit it up close; this photo is from a nearby farm lane. As you can see, yesterday's haze was still around this morning. Yeah, I noticed what it looks like but it's not here as a joke. Click for a larger image.

Under good conditions the diagonal would probably have been the fastest route but even if you don't count two one-lane bridges due to construction, controlled by traffic lights (the sign said "three-minute wait" and it was), and one long wait at a railroad crossing as one of the countless trains of coal or ore cars ambled through, today's trip was slow. Everything went fine until about 25 miles before Ogalalla, where 26 meets I-80. The highway left the flat brown farmland and climbed up a miniature version of one of yesterday's mountain ascents. Then all at once it came out on top - of a science fiction landscape -  the methane-capped mountains of Saturn's moon Titan, perhaps.

There was no brown, no horizon even, just a sea of seething white in every direction. Violent gusts pushed Penny from side to side while snow swirled in all directions across hillocks and, worst of all, across the road. I hit the brakes before the first rushing white stream, but the pavement was dry underneath. The next one was more solid, and for the next 20 miles or so I crept across flat snowdrifts at 25 mph or so, then sped up in the rare bare patches only to hit the brakes before the next drift. Others had been less cautious: I saw a semi tractor stuck with its rear wheels in the ditch, and skid marks ending in churned-up mud where someone had struggled back onto the highway. Two snowplows were at work but the drifts quickly filled in behind them.

Five miles before Ogalalla the road descended once more from the high plateau and the drifting gradually came to an end. Then I was on I-80 and there was no snow at all, only a constant fight with the wind. I saw a semi in the median with emergency crews standing by: it was picking up the cargo of an overturned semi that had apparently been blown off the road.

The 125 miles had taken me from about 8:45 to 11:30 a.m. There was no longer a chance of making it to KC, considering that I would enter the Central Time Zone before I reached Lincoln, losing the hour I'd gained on that crazy drive from Houson to El Paso the week before last.

I managed one side trip into Gothenburg in search of the "original Pony Express station" announced by official signs on the Interstate. I was impressed when I found it - until I read the 1960-61 plaque announcing that it "once stood on the Upper 96 Ranch west of here...on the original Pony Express route. It was moved and restored by Gothenburg Post No. 64, American Legion." Sometimes things are real, and sometimes not so much.

Then the heavens opened up - mostly rain but with a few snowflakes mixed in, accumpanied by the same wind gusts, for all of the remaining 200 miles down I-80 to Lincoln and most of the 50 miles south on Highway 2 to Nebraska City. At least the morning's 32-degree temperatures had risen to 36, and that's where they are now.

The daily food report seems to amuse some of you. Today's lunch was at the Western Cafe at the Western Truck Stop off Exit 145 near Paxton: just a larger, more modern-looking version of yesterday's Chuckwagon - almost the same menu, the same calls from the kitchen when the waitress's order is ready for pickup, even the same dog-eared books of wit by Ben Goode (amusing titles!) in a rack on the counter to help us pass the time.

The desk clerk here at the Best Western sent me to the Three Oaks Steakhouse and Lounge for dinner because it met my criteria for "something local, not a chain." It was a bit on the elegant and expensive side, with Sinatra-type music coming from the speakers. The food was quite nice, especially the sauteed scallops on top of almost-perfect gnocchi in a nicely creamy sauce. "Almost" because the gnocchi were light but not very tender - maybe from a box?

OK, my shoulders are killing me after today's tense driving and I can't type anymore.