Nebraska East

Charles Edwin Bessey,1845-1915, American botanist. 

Bessey worked at the University of Nebraska where he ended up as Chancellor. His claim to fame is helping develop the method of naming flowering plants - taxonomy they call it. But what attracted my interest was the naming of this park, campground and plant nursery after him. 

Bessey’s advocacy created a place where plants are grown to reforest Nebraska’s Sand Hills to create what these tough plains people call wind breaks. Furthermore this place supplies trees to reforest national forests. 

And we got to camp here for ten bucks a night with our senior national parks pass. Pretty snug it was with hot showers and an electrical hook up which we wanted to run the air conditioning all night. The  summer heat is still fierce across the plains, more than a hundred degrees by day and only a bit cooler at night. 

Rusty rather enjoyed this wooded oasis and we walked a lot of it in the morning as the heat index rose in preparation for another over heated day.

I peeked into the pit toilet and saw what looked very much like one of the brooms made at the Territorial Prison Museum in Laramie. I wonder… 

I should have liked to stop and stay but we have moochdocking appointments in and around Chicago  which is not nearly as scenic as the places we have been. More sand hills for instance: 

Anselmo Nebraska has a population of 107 and lies in Custer county if that helps. The village made the news last week when a nasty wreck killed the driver of a pickup. 

A semi transporting cows clipped the back of a tractor traveling on the main highway and the semi tipped over killing three cows. An oncoming pick up couldn’t stop and the driver was killed. 

I had an inkling I might like to stop and walk but it was still early and we had some driving to do. 

So we drove on through. 

And here beginneth the corn and soy fields. We’d started to leave the sand hills behind. 

Albion Nebraska is full of churches and banks but surprisingly not many people were walking the burning sidewalks after lunch. 

1600 people live here and at a cooler time of day one might imagine it bustling. 

The three of us huddled under the rooftop air conditioning and took a nap. The heat was enervating. 

Cows standing suffering in the heat. We had Chinese style tofu for dinner. 

School is back in session which makes this the best time for pensioners to travel, no crowding no families no reservations needed. 

We stopped in Omaha to get cheap gas ($3:30) and then some P.F. Chang’s to celebrate our 29th anniversary. On the way out of the box chain store part of town we tripped into a neighborhood called Benson and that is where Ted had Wally sell some excellent ice cream. 

Actor Nick Nolte used to live in this historic neighborhood, and I bought ice cream there. That’s enough for anybody’s neck of the woods. But then Bruce reminded me Warren Buffett lives in some modest tract house somewhere in this city of half a million people. So there’s that too. 

We ended up in Iowa for the night across (“acrost” in the local dialect) the mighty Missouri and we were plugged in again to stay cool in this powerful heat wave. Not a bad day’s work and the ice cream was very good.