Tire Trouble (Again)

I thought: We're on our way back home, there's nothing to blog about anymore. I now know: A lot can happen when you're on the road, no matter which direction you're headed.

While southern Minnesota proved to be relatively uneventful, Nebraska did not. It started out fine. In fact, this sounds strange, but we stayed overnight at a really great rest stop just east of Adair, Nebraska. Not only was it large and immaculately clean, it doubled as a monument to local wind farming, with a wind blade more than 100-feet high welcoming visitors, and picnic areas covered with metal canopies sporting windmill-like arms much like you'd see on an old Danish windmill.

Scattered throughout the picnic area were large rectangle light boxes that glowed in ever-changing colors, from white to green to purple to red and so on. It made me happy that someone had taken such pride in designing and building a roadside rest area that would entertain and inspire, rather than exist solely as a place to take a shit or a nap.

We left in the morning on Interstate 80, and traveled for about 300 miles when we ran over this:

It's the hook end of a bungee cord that impaled our tire, which led to this:

Fortunately, we found a nearby tire dealership in Gothenburg, Nebraska, where we got the tire patched.  While I was waiting, I took in the local scenery.

Check out the size of the tractor tire leaning against the wall.

Grain silos are everywhere.

The tire store is in an abandoned gas station.

It turns out that Gothenburg not only sports a tire repair place, it also has one of only four of Nebraska's original Pony Express stations, where a rider would change to a fresh horse in order to keep up his speed. The Pony Express carried mail from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, from 1860 to 1861. It was essentially put out of business by the advent of the telegraph, but it is remembered for giving a start to Buffalo Bill and it lives on in our collective imagination of the great American frontier.

We followed the Pony Express trail as far as Julesburg, Colorado, before turning south, having a great dinner in Sterling, Colorado, and spending a beautiful night under the full moon at the North Sterling State Park. A good ending to an eventful day. And a lot to write about after all.