Saturday night outside Humphrey, Nebraska

(posted Sunday as I had no Net access Saturday)

But first, an update on Friday. My sendoff from Scottsbluff was a backyard barbecue last night in honor of the birthday of one of Dorothy's adult granddaughters. Of the 15 or so of us - four generations of Dorothy's family, spouses, and I think an unrelated friend or two - I was the only one not raised on a ranch in Wyoming or Nebraska or currently living and working on one. I was almost certainly the only adult there who has never ridden a horse and one of maybe three liberals in the crowd. Still, I have rarely felt as quickly and warmly included in a family as I did last night. No one discussed politics, unless you count University of Wyoming alumni politics. I had a wonderful time.

Today, on the advice of one of those ranchers, I headed north 51 miles to Alliance and then straight east through the Nebraska Sand Hills. And I do mean straight - highway 2 and especially 91 barely waver from due east for the 306 miles to this motel or the 88 miles of 91 that remain to the Iowa state line. Davy described the sand hills accurately: beautiful country, but after a couple hundred miles it did all tend to look the same. Also, its beauty isn't as striking as that of, for example Scotts Bluff, so I ended up taking just a few photos.

Here are the hills at their most impressive, where I turned off the highway to Seneca, a tiny town nestled at the foot of one of the hilly ranges. Ellen reached me by phone at this spot but I had to call her back a half-hour later due to a weak cellphone signal.

Here's a more typical view, earlier in the day. The rolling hills are fenced between ranch entrance lanes and sometimes I saw cattle grazing, scattered far apart in the 90° heat.

In spots the hills reveal patches of bare sand in what appear to be small blowouts. I saw no drifting dunes, though it seems to me that a very small change in rainfall could weaken the thin cover of grass and turn these hills into a Sahara.

For a while I turned off frequently for roadside historic markers like the one marking this former potash production plant beside the BNSF rail line at Antioch. A boom town sprang into being during World War I to feed fertilizer production, and vanished just as quickly after the war when cheaper European potash was again available. Other markers memorialized other disappeared towns spawned and abandoned by the railroad.

My last turnoff was to the Nebraska National Forest near Halsey. I saw signs aimed at campers, anglers, and maybe hunters, but no visitor center or pointers to interesting views. On my way out I stopped and shot this image of the Middle Loup River, looking downstream toward a swimming hole that sounded full of joyous kids. Like the North Platte, the Midde Loup runs fast and almost up to the top of its banks but with remarkably little turbulence.

So here I am in very rural eastern Nebraska in the cheapest motel of this entire trip ($40), old-fashioned but tidy, no Net access but my room is otherwise comfortable. Around lunchtime I crossed into Central Time. Iowa is getting close - a faint hog farm fragrance is evident even inside my room.

Tomorrow morning, August 1, I will cross into Iowa at about the same time my trip odometer clicks over to 10,000 miles since I left DC two months and 11 days earlier. By mid-afternoon I should be at my motel in Iowa City and with luck will be able to post this blog entry for you.

Tonight I enjoyed the second Broasted chicken dinner of this trip, a favorite of my teen years that I thought had vanished forever. It's the specialty of the Klub 81 Restaurant across the street from my motel, the only restaurant within miles - a box of a place like a Midwestern church basement, filled with Formica-topped tables and stackable metal chairs, packed with men in cowboy hats and the reverberation of children's voices. Three women raced in and out bringing food and clearing tables but took time to chat with customers whom they addressed as "sweetie," even a stranger from DC. The chicken was as crunchy and delicious as I remembered and the salad of creamed corn and peas was a cool surprise.