Happy Birthday to Me! Can’t believe its been 46 trips around the sun already.
I woke early, around 5am, and used the decent reception from Verizon to complete my daily practica de Español before getting out of the car. Leaving Shar to snooze a little longer, I hunkered as much out of the still blowing wind as I could, wrapped in a blanket in one of our camping chairs and read. At 7:08am I got Shar up and she converted Alfie back into Driving Mode while I cooked turkey sausage and creamed rice. Its a filling meal, but not something I would want to eat everyday. 
We had changed the ice in the red cooler everyday since leaving Coquille, but it had started to stink. Nothing seemed to be rotten, but the odor was awful. We decided that soon we would need to spend some time cleaning it, and reorganizing/cleaning the car. The first casualty of the reorganizing was our longtime friend the small foam cooler, “Foamy”. He had traveled with us since we had bought him at a mountain gas station on Highway 22, somewhere between the junction with Highway 20 and Detroit Lake. He had become too much of a liability, and the death-stroke was when he spilled his melted ice contents all over the front seat area. We then bid him a fond farewell, leaving him crumpled in the RV park’s garbage can.
By 9:00 am we were heading east with wide open Nebraska in front of us. We used our old guide book to see about upcoming sights, but to be honest, this part of Nebraska doesn’t have much. The landscape is beautiful, but sightseeing is scarce. Johnstown was one of the rare exception featuring a selection of old style storefronts used in the filming of O’ Pioneers!. The road is 65 MPH until you hit a town big enough to slow down for, so we flew across Nebraska. The day before we had tried to help a mom and daughter with a flat tire whose lugs seemed to be welded to the rims. She ended up having to continue to limp down the shoulder. Today, just outside of Cody, NE, we helped out a young family and their overheating bronco type truck. We gave them one of our gallons of water and they used it to make the five miles to Cody for repairs. At least we assume they did. Reception along Highway 20 has been surprisingly consistent, minus some of the obvious places high up in Yellowstone. They had already contacted a cousin, so we didn’t feel the need to follow them to the next town.
By 4:30 we had made it to O’Neill, which we were going to use as a dinner stop. Nowhere we wanted to eat was open, so we used the thirty minutes to clean out the cooler and buy laundry stuff that will be needed soon. We figured it was better than buying singles at the laundry mat, though Shar has an endless supply of quarters in the driver side door. That accomplished, we parked outside the Chesterfield West and found seats at the bar. We had wanted some prime rib, but they only serve that on Thursdays. I settled for a whole rack of bbq ribs and Shar had a Swiss burger. We had picked up some tuna packets at the Dollar General along with cleaning supplies, so with our leftovers we were stocked for dinners for at least two more nights.
We hadn’t even started looking for a camping spot, it was only just past 7pm, but Shar saw a sign for “Free camping” in Plainview, NE and we took a left to check it out. The free camping consisted of five concrete pads, four of which were marked as “camper only”. All of them had full water/electical hookups and a picnic table. We parked in the unmarked fifth spot, cattycorner to the restroom, and when Officer Wells drove by we flagged him down to confirm it was ok. He assured us it was, but further conversion was interrupted by a lady almost running the stop sign and complaining to Tyler, I.e. Officer Wells, about when they had put the stop sign there in the first place. You have to love seeing small town illustrated right before you eyes. We had walked a crossed the city park and Highway 20 to the gas station after arriving, and spent a quiet evening reorganizing the miscellaneous box, working on postcards, typing up blog entries, and sipping on 22 oz beverages. wink wink
At dusk Shar gasped as I was reading the blog entry for Day 5 to her for revision purposes. I turned to see that she had spotted fireflies! This is easily in the top ten of awe inspiring things I had never witnessed in all my travels. Its hard to capture just how dreamy and magical seeing something that you’ve heard about your whole life surprising you with a night show. They were bigger than I thought they would be and hovered above the ground to glow briefly. We didn’t try to catch any, not having a mason jar and lid handy, but sat quietly just enjoying them dance. Recording them on our phones and photographs does not do the spectacle justice.
Mosquitoes had already reappeared so I set up the screens on Alfie’s windows, We had bought them earlier in the town of Gordon. Its coffee place, the Coffee Nook, had been recommended by the carwashing baseball team leader. There was as hardware store right next door, so while Shar got coffee, I bought mosquito screen. Eighteen foot of it cost over $32, but its proved it is worth its weight in gold on keeping the bugs out.
We were in bed by 10:30pm, but having entered the Central Time Zone earlier that day, it felt like 9:30pm. A nice breeze swept through the car, and I was wrapped in the afghan, soundly asleep within a short time.
Shar woke me up at 3:15am and I could hear raindrops hitting Alfie’s roof, flashes of lighting and heard booming thunder. I quickly dressed, rolled up the windows, and got the tent cover into place. I was done before the worst of the rain began to fall, and we lay there listening to the storm sweep by, wondering about whether the cover would work. The storm lasted for an hour as it moved over us, and while some things got damp nothing was soaking wet when we woke up again at 8:45 am. As with anything on our trip, we’ll continue to improve it. I envision a lot of traveling using Alfie in the future. Some of the drawbacks are space for food, we’re still battling an unpleasant smell in the cooler, and that Alfie isn’t an offload vehicle.
Milage Travelled: 338
Towns Passed: Harrison, Crawford, Whitney, Chadron, Hay Springs, Rushville, Clinton, Gordon, Merriman, Cody, Nenzel, Kilgore, Crookston, Valentine, Wood Lake, Johnstown, Ainsworth, Long Pine, Bassett, Newport, Stuart, Atkinson, Emmet, O’Neill, Inman, Orchard, Royal, Brunswick, Plainsville
Temperature at 10:00am: 68
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