Trip From St.Joseph, MO. to Alliance NE.

Jackie has produced a great write up for her Face Book page and since we are both here, seeing the same things I thought I would start with her write up and adapt it to the blog & add pictures. I’ll probably have to add her name to the blog to insure proper credit .


We left St. Joseph on Monday June, 14 heading north 0n I-29. We crossed into Iowa for a few miles but those miles took us past their Visitor Center. Then on to Nebraska.

Shortly after entering Nebraska we had stopped at the Missouri River Basin “Louis & Clark Center” and saw a replica of the boat used by Lewis and Clark on their journey west. They also had a display of the wildflowers that they sent samples of to Thomas Jefferson. Each State so far has had an abundance of wildflowers (side-of-road-ums) in pink, yellow, white, lavender, orange, or red and any combinations of them.                               

The first day was just a beautiful relaxing trip over the Missouri river and some small rivers in Nebraska, stopping for the night at the Double Nickel Campground, a quiet country park overlooking a lovely pond and lots of blue sky with green trees and farms. This campground, like many that we have stopped at, Have a shelter to go to if severe weather, like tornados, occur. This shelter consisted of an entrance made of wood and a large cylinder. In case of a tornado, you sure wouldn’t want to be too close to the entrance, it would blow away in a heartbeat.

Pictures at: http://picasaweb.google.com/jackbarbic/16DoubleNickelRVParkWacoNERS#

The second day we traveled thru the first of the Sand Hills and they are lovely. We traveled thru a valley surrounded by hills, crossing over fast flowing rivers of the upper and middle loupe of the Platte. The water was very high and some roads were beginning to be washed out. We stayed at the Willow Springs RV Park. No cable or wi-fi but the people were great.

We spent the afternoon exploring a restored frontier fort used by the army during the Indian wars of the late 1890's.

The RV park manager recommended a good restaurant where they raise their own beef with no hormones and all grass fed black angus cows. Our steaks were delicious and tender. Had a quiet evening and woke up to very cold temps.

Pictures at: http://picasaweb.google.com/jackbarbic/17WillowSpringsBurwellFortHartsuffRS#

On Tuesday June 15, we took off early heading up route 91 and encountered a detour, soooooo, The adventure of the day began. We drove way out into the country side with the motor home towing our car and wound our way around for about 45 minutes. The detour took us past the Calumus Reservoir which is really a very large lake and while driving over the bridge we saw the emergency overflow hole draining off the high water. It was fascinating to see. A huge hole like a whirlpool sucking water from the lake down into it. We figured it was worth the detour to get to see that so we journeyed on to our correct route finally and were blissfully going along until we came to a road closed sign.

Now there had been no warning that this road was closed but we could see that the center of the bridge was missing, washed away by the fast flowing river. There was a dirt road to the left and after Jack unhooked the car and conferred with some road workers, returning, he drove the car down the dirt road to check and see if we could get thru with the motor home. Now normally a gravel road is no big deal, but a motor homes isn’t an off road vehicle and a wet, soft, muddy road with some water cutting through it in two places is not a good thing. Yep, we could do it if I followed exactly in his wheel tracks. There were two spots underwater were muddy but the bottom seemed solid. Well,,,,, we made it down 5 miles or so of dirt and mud, now the steps of the motor home were coated with mud from the dips under water but we did it. Finally we were on our way. We did have to drive thru some water that had overflowed the highway but the rest of the trip was just beautiful.

Pictures at: http://picasaweb.google.com/jackbarbic/18WillowSpringsToSunsetRVRS#

Now we are tucked and are currently in the Sunset Motel & RV Park, using wi-fi while we are under a tornado watch. Lots of thunder and lightning and strong winds. Temp is supposed to down to the 50's tonight and the 40's tomorrow night. Oh well we wanted to escape the Florida heat. The motel has an indoor swimming pool so we can swim whenever we want to. Tomorrow we plan to explore the panhandle and see giant rocks, and Oregon Trail artifacts.