After a good night’s sleep in Scotts Bluff, we headed out to continue our trip eastward towards home. The purpose of coming further north in Nebraska before heading east was pretty much two-fold. First, it gave us a chance to explore the western reaches of the Platte River valley; generally, our trips back and forth between Sussex and Colorado stayed close to the interstate, which swings away from the river at Ogallala. Second, I really wanted to drive through an area of Nebraska called the “Sand Hills”.
As I researched the region, it became more intriguing. I always thought of the “Sand Hills” as simply a rolling countryside, similar to what you might find in central Wisconsin. Wrong! The region, relatively large (covering over one fourth of the state of Nebraska), is essentially a natural area of grass stabilized sand dunes, probably the base of a huge inland sea that used to cover the great plains in prehistoric times.
I initially expected the area to be a huge farming area, but I found the region was long considered effectively a desert. There are reports that most of the Sand Hills have never been plowed. In the late 1800’s cattlemen started to discover the region as good rangeland; it’s still a large, productive cattle ranching area today.
It was an interesting drive despite being a somewhat desolate area. Knowing that the rolling hills were grass covered sand dunes gave the scenery a whole different context.
Along the way there were a few things that caught our attention. Apparently, the Sand Hills were an important pot ash source during the first world war.
A desolate, near forgotten, family grave yard also caught our eye.
Unlike our typical trips across Nebraska on the interstate, where trucks and cars were our constant company, the bulk of our company through the Sand Hills were the coal trains from the Wyoming coal fields that snaked along the rails that bordered the highway.
We quietly traversed the state through the Sand Hills, pulling into Grand Island late in the afternoon. Our route gave us an opportunity to see a side of Nebraska that we had not seen before, and a new appreciation for the vastness of the Great Plains
After a good night’s sleep, we’d be back on the road to Wisconsin via our typical route along the interstate through the rest of Nebraska and Iowa. We’d wrap up our inaugural retirement trip with almost three weeks on the road and a taste of the traveling we could plan now that we didn’t have time constraints.