Tag Archives: bnsf

Thursday 8th August 2019 – I’M HAVING …

… a major change of plan. And so I’m turning round and going back the way that I came – about 275 miles in fact.

Despite the rather primitive motel and fittings last night, I had the best night’s sleep that I have had yet. And had it not been for a bad attack of cramp in the right calf at round about 05:20 I would probably be still asleep now, so good was it.

But anyway I made a good start to the day with the medication, a shower, breakfast (there was coffee in the room) and uploading all of yesterday’s files from the 2 cameras, the dashcam and the dictaphone.

With no freezer compartment in the fridge, the landlady had very kindly put into her freezer my bottles of water that I use as coolpacks, and she also gave me a small polystyrene frozen food carrier for my lunch stuff. That was really nice of her and I appreciated it.

Off down the road as far as Safeway where I did another pile of shopping. Mainly lunch stuff but they had some good nourishing soups on sale. I’m living on soup, pasta and bread for tea right now and it’s doing me good.

Back on the road and there were several delays, mainly to do with tracking down the possible route of the Oregon and California Trail and also to identify the livery of a railway locomotive that I did not recognise (it’s an old blue-and-grey Burlington Northern and Santa Fe livery).

A quick perusal of a map identified a possible crossing of the Oregon and California Trail down a dirt track some 10 miles out of Guernsey, so I headed that way. And much to my surprise (and delight) it was withing 5 yards of where I estimated it to be. The old trail was quite visible.

Pushing along the dirt road (now that I knew that I was on the right road) I surprised a sleeping locomotive crew and was able to finally photograph the elusive Kansas City Southern train that I had seen a few days ago.

But that wasn’t why I was here. Crossing the railway line I came to what I guess is Bitter Creek. Known to travellers on the trail for many years as totally unpalatable water.

Yet it was the favourite stop of many of the teams, mentioned in particular by many emigrants but, curiously, not by Edwin Bryant in his “What I Saw In California”, because of the cottonwood trees everywhere, and the dried-up sandy creek (that they called Cottonwood Creek) that they dug into to find pure fresh water.

The cottonwood is still there – tons of it, some growing and the rest lying scattered about, brought down by floodwaters from upstream. No wonder that the travellers loved this place.

In fact, I had my lunch there, sharing with the spirits of the hundreds of thousands of emigrant who passed that way in the 20 years between 1841 and 1861

This afternoon I went to see the grave of Lucindy Rollins and some other unknown people, the trail ruts carved through the sandstone, the remains of the Pony Express station on the North Platte River and Register Cliff, where thousands of emigrants carved their names on the rock as they passed by.

We’ve seen all of this before so I shan’t repeat myself, even though things have changed considerably since 2002.

After this I shot off down the road to see the famous iron bridge over the North Platte River and then to Fort Laramie, but here I decided on a change of plan.

The original plan had been to go on tomorrow down towards Chugwater and look for the ranch of “Portugee Phillips”, but then looking through my notes I had other ideas.

Where I am now is within 2 days driving of Denver. And if I want to do the eastern part I can fly there in the future.

The western part has always been accessible from Seattle or San Francisco if ever I plan to be that way, but the bit that is really difficult to reach is that from Casper (where I was yesterday) to South Pass in the Rockies.

That’s about 460 miles from here to South Pass, and then about 1400 miles to Winnipeg – and I have 7 days before I need to hand back the car. With a day or two for looking around, that works out at about 350 miles per day, much of it on the Interstate.

Consequently I headed back to Guernsey.

The first motel, I and several other people tried to raise the owners but it was like the mary Celeste back there. Place all locked up and gone leaving the guests behind.

Down the road though was a better (and more expensive of course although breakfast is included) place where the delights included having a hoverboard lesson from a 9 year-old girl (not a success).

So in the words of Marechal MacMahon – “j’y suis – j’y reste” or crudely (and if you want anything doing crudely then in the words of the late, great Bob Doney “I’m your man!”) translated into the vernacular by Yours Truly as “here I am and here I’ll stay”. I’vr had a shower and had tea and now I’m off to bed.

Or I was, but a huge thunderstorm has erupted and it’s pouring with rain outside. So much so that the racket is astonishing. If I can sleep though this I’ll sleep through anything.

Monday 5th August 2019 – I’M BACK …

… in Sheridan again tonight.

Not at the same motel as last time though. At probably the cheapest in the town and certainly the cheapest in which I’ve stayed.

“So what’s it like?” I hear you ask.
“The cheapest motel in which I’ve stayed so far” reply I

But seriously, it might be old and dated and worn but it’s clean and everything works. The shower is good too, and what more can any man desire?

The air conditioning is much quieter than last night’s motel (although that’s not saying a lot). Last night it was a case of “turn off the aircon and lie awake sweltering” or “turn on the aircon and lie awake because of the noise”.

But I did manage to drop off a few times.

Much to my surprise I dropped straight back into exactly the same place where I had left a nocturnal voyage the previous evening. And even more interestingly, after I went back to sleep after an awakening, I stepped right back into where I had left it a couple of minutes earlier.

And I did get the girl too. Not ‘arf I did!

It was a struggle to awaken as you might expect and I vegetated for quite a while. I made it into breakfast (a couple of rounds of toast with jam but included in the price) then came back for a shower.

By now it was time to phone the bank and I’ve no idea how much it’s going to cost me but my card is now unblocked and I can use it.

Heading into town I went to look at the “exhibition” locomotive where the railway station used to be. It’s a 4-8-4 “Northern” steam locomotive and, rather like “Big Boy”, who we met in Southern Wyoming in 2002 it’s in pretty miserable condition, slowly rotting away – a stain on the character of the town.

And it might not be there long because they have now “discovered” that it’s full of asbestos.

From there I went shopping in Walmart (my card does now work) where I found some vegan cheese and broke the weighing scales at the check-out.

From there I headed north, stopping every 10 minutes or so to photograph a locomotive. I’m in the deep open-cast coal mining area and they run merry-go-round trains to move the coal. Most of the locomotives are Burlington Northern and Santa Fe outfits although I was taken by surprise when a Kansas City Southern locomotive went rattling past, miles out of its territory.

Eventually I reached the Little Big Horn battlefield where the miserable bar stewards refused to give me the senior citizens’ discount. “That only applies to US citizens” – the first that I’ve ever heard of that in a National Park. I had to pay the full $25:00.

But I was there for hours. I had a good walk down to the deep ravine where the final deaths took place as the native Americans mopped up the surviving troopers, a good walk around Last Stand Hill, the cemetery and the Native American monument, and another good walk around Benteen’s final hold-out position where the survivors hung on (and there were survivors, despite what people think. It was only the troops with Custer, about half of the 7th Cavalry complement) who were lost.

The drive between the various points was interesting, and the trail of bodies along the route and down in the Deep Ravine only goes to confirm that apart from a couple of isolated actions, it was basically a panic-stricken rout. Why else would 41 troopers be running down the hill TOWARDS the native village if they weren’t running away from the fighting up on the ridge?

That took all afternoon so I set out to find a motel. None in Busby, which really is a miserable one-horse town so I headed for the mining town of Decker.

Nothing there either so calling at the site of the “battle” of the Rosebud (which I’ll be visiting tomorrow) to say “hello’, I came back here.

In my room I noticed a “do not place anything on the heater”. I don’t recall having been here before, have I?

But the room is cheap, old and worn out. But then again so am I so what’s the difference? It’ll do me until tomorrow and then I can think again.