Day 8: Douglas, Wyoming to Valentine, Nebraska

We came down to the Morton Mansion’s comfortable dining room for a homemade breakfast made by the innkeeper. We were greeted with morning beverages of coffee and juice and a copy of the Casper Star Tribune. Out of consideration for one of the other guests, the innkeeper had to use a bit of ingenuity in creating a meal with no dairy. She made an egg, ham, and potato casserole with optional cheese and salsa and some no dairy apple cinnamon muffins. The other guest eventually came down and joined us for breakfast. John, the oilman from Oklahoma on an extended business trip, came down first followed by an older couple from “the people’s republic” of Boulder, Colorado who had stopped for the night on their way to visit a relative in Montana. Although John had to leave quickly, we lingered and chatted for a while with the couple. We talked about Yellowstone (where they had spent their honeymoon) and about the increasing trend of efficient cars and public transportation. One of the best parts of staying in a bed and breakfast is getting to meet other travelers over a home-cooked meal.
We left Douglas and headed back into the Wyoming back country. Today was going to be a relatively short day, only 240 miles, which at Wyoming highway speeds of 75 miles per hour, would only take about 4 hours, maybe less. As we crossed into Nebraska, we gradually began to notice the towns getting closer together. I wonder if there are people who don’t have a town name in their address, just a state and a zip code, because there are long stretches of ranch land that don’t appear to be in the city limits of any town. After a little consideration, it occurred to me that these people probably had post office boxes, but I enjoyed the though that you might be able to send a letter to “John Jones, Highway 20, Wyoming 82422 .” In Nebraska, the craggy mountains began to shrink and become rolling hills, dotted with yellow wildflowers and herds of cattle.
You may be wondering what we do to entertain ourselves during the hours of back country driving. To pass the time in the car, we’ve started a few running tallies. We have passed 9 McDonalds. We started counting McDonald’s on the assumption that they would vastly outnumber other fast food chains. In retrospect, we should have also been counting Dairy Queens and, surprisingly, Subways. Some towns are just too small to have a McDonalds. They don’t generally show up in towns with populations less than a couple thousand. But Subways can pop up anywhere. We’ve also been on the look out for the smallest towns. So far we have a tie between Emblem and Hiland, Wyoming, both at population 10. Honorable mention to Nenzel, Nebraska, population 13. We may have passed through the smallest of the small already, but we will keep you posted. Also, funniest town sign goes to “Cody, Nebraska: A Town Too Tough To Die.” Because I forgot to bring any CDs on the trip (my bad), we listen to a lot of NPR. I always have the option of taking pictures of anything we drive by, fields, silos, towns, signs, but Aaron has to be a little more original in entertaining himself. Every once in a while, he swerves hard on the empty road. “Tumbleweed?” I ask. Sheepishly, he admits “Yes.” “Did you get it?” Boyish pride “Yes.” And we have a scrap of it in our grill as a trophy.
Eventually, the mountains disappear entirely as Route 20 enters the Sandhills of northern central Nebraska. Chris Welsch, a reporter for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, said of driving through the grass covered sand dunes that roll ceaselessly toward the horizon “one minute my station wagon was a car, and the next, it was a boat.”
Near Merriman (population 118), we stopped at the Arthur Bowring Ranch State Historical Park. The park is a 7,202 acre working ranch originally belonged to Arthur and Eve Bowring, prominent local politicians and devoted ranchers. When we saw the sign for it, we turned off the main road and headed north, coming within 5 miles of the South Dakota border. As we entered the ranch, we were met by a small group of Hereford cattle, grazing near the side of the road. We parked the car and walked toward the visitor center, where we were greeted by a very friendly Boston terrier named Minnie. We went inside and asked the woman at the counter what we could see while we were here. She said there was a video and a museum, but we couldn’t see the rest of the buildings because they were under renovation. The video described the park as a “monument to a way of life” and explained the workings of a cattle ranch and the history of Mr. and Mrs. Bowring. After the video we made a quick of the museum. The most interesting part was a set of books recording the birth of every purebred Hereford since the inception of the breed. Each entry gave the name of the animal, whether it was a cow or bull, when it was calved, and a few other statistics about it. It was amazing that all of this information was gathered and maintained about cows. It’s not anywhere near that easy to find biographical information about people from that long ago. After we left the museum, we took a quick walk around the property. We didn’t see any other visitors while we were there, and judging by the guestbook, the park doesn’t generally get more than one visitor a day. When we stepped outside, we were amazed by the quiet, except for Pink Floyd on the radio of the maintenance workers.
We continued on to Valentine, Nebraska where we checked into the Dunes Lodge, directly on Route 20. Valentine’s main attraction is its water sports on the Niobrara River, but because we only had a few hours, we decided to walk through the town instead. Valentine takes its name very, very seriously. There are hearts painted on the sidewalk. There are hearts on the lampposts. The street signs are red with little hearts. We walked past the bars, the library, the radio station, the post office, the offices of the town accountants and lawyers. And we stopped into the biggest storefront in town, the discount western wear store. We pawed through all the gear we saw, saddles, tack, boots, cowboy hats.
For dinner, we went to the Cedar Canyon Restaurant (formerly the Peppermill Steakhouse) on Main Street. It’s a large complex, with a dining room, a beer garden, and a lounge in separate buildings. A hostess led us past the salad bar and the rotating dessert case into the dining room. The dining room was busy but not packed, a few families, some older couples out on double dates, three teenage girls with blonde hair and raccoon eyes in the corner. The menu had a full compliment of pasta and other entrees, but after driving through cattle country for two days, we knew that ordering the chicken or the fish was a waste of a good meal. At the bottom of the menu, where diners are usually given a boilerplate warning about the dangers of consuming raw or undercooked food, we found a recommendation that steaks be ordered rare, medium rare, or medium. The warning went on to say that if the customer ordered the steak more done than medium the restaurant “respectfully passes all responsibility to the customer.” This place takes steak very seriously. I tried to get a quick photo of the warning, but was caught by our waiter, a thin young man with dark hair and a moustache. He was obviously confused, but knew better than to say anything. I was a little embarrassed that I had blown my cover. I had the Signature Sirloin, rare, and Aaron had the ribeye, medium rare. The soup, salad, and home fries were all fine, but the steaks were really very impressive. First, you get your steak exactly as you ordered it. As a longtime fan of rare steaks, I’ve been to too many overpriced steakhouses that either don’t fully understand the meaning of rare or just don’t execute it. Seared on the outside with a cool, red center. The inside of this baby was like tender beef sashimi. Beautiful. It also had a powerful, beefy flavor, probably attributable to its freshness. Aaron was also very impressed with his ribeye, which was well-marbled and buttery. We split a piece of peach pie a la mode for dessert. Despite the fact that is was cold from being in the rotating display case, the filling was delicious. With all this for $44, we felt like we were getting away with murder. I love the heartland.