Digging for Our Roots, Part 2: North Platte, Nebraska

11 July 2013

We left Salt Lake City Monday morning and headed out on I-80 east. Traffic was smooth and the few construction areas we encountered didn’t really slow us down much. The weather was beautiful with fluffy white clouds creating the kind of cowboy sky you see in Charles Russell’s paintings.

We crossed over the Wasatch Mountains and when we neared the summit, I saw my first “Oreo” cows. There was a whole herd of them – black on the front and back ends with a creamy center. I have seen black and white cows before, but never Oreo cows. There wasn’t a convenient place to pull over and take pictures though. I wonder if they give chocolate milk?

The clouds started building as the day went on and by the time we reached Rawlins, we were in the middle of a storm cell. It wasn’t too bad, not as windy or drenching as the ones we encountered south of Salt Lake City. By the time we got to our campsite, the rain had stopped and the clouds were clearing.

The next day we crossed the Continental Divide at around 8700 feet. The visitor’s center had a very nice statue of Abraham built in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the Lincoln Highway, the first transcontinental highway. This year is the centennial of the highway, so there are lots of festivals and events along the way.

We reached Cheyenne in the early afternoon and after dropping the trailer off at the campground, headed over to the National Center for Atmospheric Research. This recently opened building, in the middle of an empty industrial park, houses the supercomputer that is used to generate all sorts of climate models, such as the ones that predict El Nino. The visitor displays were well done – the one showing the difference between weather and climate using a man walking his dog was excellent. The computer executes at 1.5 pflops (1.5 quadrillion operations per second) using 4500 massively parallel processors. Mind boggling! And it isn’t even the fastest supercomputer in the world – I think they said it was ranked 12^th or 13^th. The building was almost as interesting as the supercomputer. It is Leed certified and reuses 96% of the heat generated by the computer.

The downtown area follows a common layout we have seen in railroad towns – there is a Front Street right next to the railroad and several blocks of businesses. Since Cheyenne is the state capital, the businesses appeared to be fairly prosperous.

Wednesday morning we continued east on I-80 into Nebraska. Started seeing corn and grain fields – weren’t none of those in Wyoming. Criss-crossed the Platte River (both the North and South branches) several times before we ended up in North Platte. North Platte is the home of the world’s largest rail yard and Buffalo Bill Cody’s ranch.

The Union Pacific Bailey rail yard is two miles wide and eight miles long! We went up an 8 story tower overlooking the yard and visited with a retired railroad engineer who had quite a few interesting stories about traveling the rails. I found out that it is not uncommon to have a train with up to 138 cars and that the typical train engine will run for 100 million miles before being replaced. They change the oil once a year!

Tomorrow, we continue east. Hope to get to Iowa in the next couple days. Then the meandering begins as I attempt to visit as many counties where our ancestors lived as I can.