Vacation 2009 - First Stop Nebraska

This is the second page of our vacation 2009 blog. The first page is here.

North Platte

When you are from the Midwest, you don't really feel like you are on vacation until you cross a good portion of the Great Plains. North Platte isn't all the way across the plains, but it was our first real stop. It is home to Bailey Yard, the largest railroad hump yard in the world. It was also home to Buffalo Bill, but we saw that site a couple years ago. This time we were here for the new observation tower near the yard, and a park with a railroad display that we couldn't get into before. (Motorhome exceeded the weight limit, and at that time we had no other transportation.)

Cody Park

First stop was Cody Park, where the steam engine Challenger was on display.

Here are some vital statistics about this beast

I got to play engineer...

The museum also had a DDA40X Centennial diesel engine on display. This was one of only a few dozen eight-axle diesels ever made. There are only about 10 or 11 remaining, all in museums now.

Many of the cars were open inside, including a caboose, and a railway post office. There were also a few artifacts on display inside the depot building.

City Park

Another little park was nearby, with a display of a smaller steam engine, the 480. This one is a bit smaller than the Challenger.

Golden Spike Tower

This tower was built to allow visitors and railroad aficianados the opportunity to view the yard in action. Bailey Yard is the world's largest classification yard. According to the tower's website, they handle 10,000 cars through this yard every day, 3,000 of which are sorted in this yard - the rest of them just pass through as is. It was a little hazy the day we were there, so the pictures aren't great, but here they are:

Entering Colorado

After spending most of the day in North Platte, we continued our journey west into Colorado. I grabbed a couple pictures at the "Welcome to Colorado" rest area on I-76, as a reminder that not all of Colorado is mountainous.

This is the part of Colorado that I always thought should have been still Kansas. Or in this case, Nebraska.

Are these sunflowers, or black-eyed susans? I think sunflowers, but they're kind of puny, even for wild ones.

We spent Sunday night at a Wal-Mart parking lot somewhere in Eastern Colorado. It was a little way off the highway, but it was getting late, and we were ready to stop. Monday is not only Labor Day, it is also Dale's birthday. So while there, we picked up a birthday cake, and also some dried-out chicken from the deli that had probably been there since supper time. It didn't look that bad in the case. Oh well.

Next page: On the Way to Glacier