Touring Pioneer Village, Kearney, and Sandhills Scenic Byway

It was only 11C at 7am, but not raining. We stopped at the office and registered for 2 more nights, as it's a pleasant place to camp and we figured it would take us 2 days to see the PV displays.

Apparently there are 50,000 items in 26 buildings, and I don't doubt it! 

An early car. The drive wheel was the middle (5th) wheel at the rear.

Many early autos and flight attempts

This "soddy" was surprisingly comfortable inside, not damp.

We went around for 2 hours, and were tired enough to call it a day. Back to the site for email and laundry.

After a good soup and sandwich lunch at the PV restaurant we headed to the Kearney Walmart. We had a Net10 US phone from a previous trip, and wanted to reactivate it with a new time card. We got the new phone card, then the poor clerk spent about ½ hr on a store phone struggling to reactivate our phone, with limited success. We never were able to make calls to Canada, in spite of many later  calls to Net10 support. There has to be a better way for us to get basic US phone service on trips.

(2017 note: Koodo Prepaid works well with US add-ons!)

In the late afternoon we headed up to hwy 2, to have a look at the Sandhills Scenic Byway. We drove a section from hwy 10 west to Broken Bow, then back down #21, past a HUGE beef feed lot, which really stunk of cow (no surprise there). Then onto #40 back to Kearney, and on to our Minden camp. 

The Sandhills area was nice rolling grassy hills, lots of cattle and horses, very pastoral settings:

We saw a work train along #2, with backhoes on top of the cars, unloading new rail ties:

The backhoes could move themselves along the cars and even move from one car to the next. 

Instead of a regular train engine, the work train was pulled by a large truck, with adapters to ride the rails.

The sun came out about 3pm, making it a nicer drive. It got up to 20C today.