Scotts Bluff National Monument

-

Scotts Bluff National Monument was the last stop of the day. Scotts Bluff is a remnant of ancestral high plains that were hundreds of feet higher than today's Great Plains. Like Chimney Rock, Scotts Bluff was also a sentinel landmark encountered by emigrants on the Oregon Trail.

After stopping at the park visitor center, I drove the scenic road to the top of the bluff, where I proceeded to hike just a part of the Saddle Rock Trail to the tunnel cut through the bluff. (The trail eventually leads back to the visitor center.) The temperature at the time was about 102 degrees. Very hot. Fun fact: the scenic road to the summit was built in the Depression by the CCC which blasted three tunnels through the rock to get to the top.

Side note: the three stops today were not on my original itinerary. When I switched from Lincoln to Kearney, Nebraska, I gained at least two hours, plus another hour with the time zone change, which allowed me to squeeze in the three stops today. And a shout out to my brother Peter, who suggested that I visit Scotts Bluff NM. The one stop I thought about seriously but skipped in the end was Carhenge, Nebraska's answer to Stonehenge, located in Alliance, Nebraska. It would have added another two hours to my drive which was simply out of the question. If you want to see what Carhenge looks like, click here.


Sentinel Rock










Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Mark Twain Boyhood Home & Museum, Hannibal, Missouri

-
Image
After arriving in Hannibal, the boyhood home of Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, I parked the car and ventured into the Mark Twain Museum Gallery which I had conveniently parked in front of (though I had no idea where the museum was when I parked). I paid the $12 admission fee, and was treated to exhibits on Mark Twain's main works of literature, and other miscellany about his life, his works, and his influences.  After touring the gallery, I headed over to the other parts of the Museum , including his boyhood home, Becky Thatcher's house, the Huckleberry Finn House, an interpretive center, the J.M. Clemens Justice of the Peace Office, and Grant's Drug Store.  All in all, a true bargain at $12 if ever there was one! Before leaving, I asked a stranger to take a photo of me in front of Tom Sawyer's fence. She happily obliged.
Read more

Flight 93 National Memorial

-
Image
After the flawed exit to see Wilbur Wright's birthplace, I was determined to redeem the day with a visit to an attraction which was worthy of a road trip detour. In 2013, on the last stop on the way home from the Grand Canyon, Clare and Conor and I visited the Flight 93 National Memorial. That was only two years after its creation, and at the time there was only a wall of names and a parking lot. There was no visitor center and no other amenities. So I decided to fit in a visit on the way home as I knew that there were now more features to the Memorial.  The Memorial is located in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, about a 15-minute detour from the Somerset turnpike exit. Fast forward some eight years later, the Memorial is now full fledged, with a Visitor Center, a Memorial Plaza, including the original white marble wall with the names of the passengers and crew, a Memorial Grove of trees, and a giant tower with 40 wind chimes called the Tower of Voices.  The Memorial is very solemn ...
Read more

Breakfast at Kumback Lunch

-
Image
The hotel offered only a cold breakfast, so on the recommendation of the lady at the hotel, I headed to downtown Perry, Oklahoma, for a full breakfast at Kumback Lunch, a cafe with the same name and location since 1926, and billed as the oldest cafe in Oklahoma. The 1930's gangster Pretty Boy Floyd apparently ate at Kumback, and his photo hangs on the wall. As did Charlie Hanger, the state trooper who arrested Timothy McVeigh in 1995, after the Oklahoma City bombing.  When I finished breakfast, I took a stroll around the town of Perry and came across another Carnegie library and a mural of the state of Oklahoma which was situated on a wall next to the Perry Wrestling Monument Park , which honors a history of extraordinary high school wrestling champions at the local Perry high school. It's an homage to small town America for sure. Carnegie library in Perry, Oklahoma Mural at Perry Wrestling Monument Park
Read more