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.

Avoca Iowa to Pioneer Village, Minden NE

A quiet night, we slept well. Oatmeal for breakfast again. Away at 8:40 CDT, 16C with light rain.  Rain stopped about 20 minutes later.

Good stop at the Nebraska Tourist Info in Omaha. Many buildings looked  tornado-proofed, likely real useful in this area. Easy I80 traveling again, partly due to the absence of construction workers. Lots of signs about lane closures and slowdowns, but not today!

We stopped about 2:30 at Pioneer Village (PV) in Minden NE, about 13 mi south of I80 near Kearney NE. They have a campground, motel and restaurant there as well as the Pioneer Village. 

A full-hookup campsite was the equivalent of about $30 Cdn/night, with WiFi. Camping included 1 admission to the PV exhibits too, with free entry next day for both of us. All in all, very reasonable. We just took it easy this aft, some rain around. 

We did drive in to see the Archway over I80. $10 each to go in so we didn't, as it was almost closing time. 

I80 runs right under the Archway

The bearded ones

Davenport to Avoca Iowa

14C at 6am. Why are we awake so early (7am Eastern)! 

A gorgeous sky this morning. Oatmeal for breakfast. We're trying to pace ourselves better this trip, so more breakfasts at the cg. Nice slow start, away at 8:50, 15C.

Another nice clear day, and another tailwind. We've had more-or-less a tailwind since Lansing MI, totally unheard of for us on western trips! What a difference that makes to the driving, so much easier and quieter. 

The I80 drive is pleasant, not spectacular. It seems very similar to our 2005 route via hwy 24 which parallels I80 further south. Lots of the typical large power-generating windmills. In one service center interchange there was just one large windmill, it looked like a local project to provide power for the businesses there.

We stopped for the night at a rustic cg right in town in Avoca IA. Self-serve, $14 incl tax for w/e. Passport America too, but seemed the same charge as the self-serve price. No WiFi. One other camper was there when we arrived; later a large motorhome stopped too. 

The Avoca town cemetery was bedecked with many large flags, we assume for Memorial Day. 

A small but steady number of cars drove slowly through, paying their respects. Quite moving really. The Americans seem to treat Memorial Day much more seriously than we treat similar holidays in Canada. It's not just a free day to go camping. There are lots of community activities to involve the whole family. A friend tells us that even some of the churches close, because there are many special events.

2017 note: it seems like the little teardrop trailers are getting quite popular these days, but they were pretty rare in 2009 when we saw this home-built (?) one along the way:

MI to Davenport Iowa, and a close shave from an airplane

15C at 8am. It rained for a bit this morning. Swans on the lake. 22C at 10 am.

Our water heater wasn't working last night. It would start on gas but would shut off within a minute or two. Lucky I didn't burn it out! The problem was that I had bypassed the water heater as part of winterization but forgot to open it up again for our trip, so there was no water in the heater tank. 

There must be a good sensor in there that shut the burners off before they damaged the tank. In the morning I opened the valves to fill the tank, and all worked ok. In fact, since then the gas burner has started up better than before. 

$1.90 toll on a short section of I94 to I80. This is the first time we've cut across the bottom of the lake, and it worked well. It saved some distance when heading west. We expected to brush by Chicago and I guess we did, but really didn't see any city or any significant traffic today. It would have been tougher because of all the construction, but being Sunday AND Memorial Day weekend, no construction workers were present.

We did almost get sideswiped by an airplane on the highway! 

The U-haul truck shown here with the airplane fuselage in tow passed us. When he pulled back over in front of us I think he forgot about the trailer! It was a near miss, good thing our brakes work well.

Good lunch stop at a Denny's from their seniors menu. 80F at 1pm CDT. The fields are getting bigger. We stopped and changed into shorts. A Walmart stop later too.

We had to try 3 times for a cg tonight. We think we found the sign for our first try, but there was no cg there (we think now we didn't go quite far enough out that road). We got back on I80 for a few miles, turned off to another cg, only to see a sign that they were closed. Back on I80 again, crossed the Mississippi into Iowa to a nice cg near Davenport.

Interstate RV Park is only ½ mile off I80, nicely treed and pretty quiet. It's a Good Sam park, so we signed up again, $12 for a “new” member. $34 included full hookups and WiFi, and a 1 yr Good Sam membership.

*START* of Yellowstone trip, May 2009

A great trip out west via Nebraska, Yellowstone, southern BC, Jasper National Park, southern Alberta, Drumheller and home. 5 weeks in all. 12,877 km, about half in the US and half in Canada. 2005 Tahoe, 2208T HiLo trailer, just us and our Yellow Lab. 

We left on the US Memorial Day weekend, but no problem with campsites. Holiday traffic didn't seem bad, and no construction workers. I69 to I94 to I80, very straight-forward and well-signed.

The timing worked well for the whole trip. The weather was warm enough without being too hot. Very few bugs except for eastern Manitoba and northwest Ontario. Things were open but generally not too busy. No problem finding campsites. We got back home just as the kids were getting out of school. There was still snow at some of the higher elevations, but no problems.

Sat May 23

12C at 8:15. We headed to Waterloo to drop off Gavin's birthday cabinet, and Cath's old bike for Heather. Pretty good timing, we were away from there by 10am. It was sunny and 23C when we reached the Sarnia border crossing about 12:30. $8.25 toll to cross the bridge.

Very pleasant drive along I69, except for the rough surface we usually find on MI roads. Major-looking work is underway though, likely part of the recent infrastructure incentives.

We got camped at Moon Lake Store campground, just off I69 between Flint and Lansing MI. It's a very nice spot with very poor washrooms, at least when we were there. We only visited the flooded washroom once and were really glad to have our own facilities. We didn't want to trust the campground tap water. 

Transient sites were grassy with a view of a lake. It's open year round apparently. Passport America, $20 with electric and water. No WiFi.