250 Miles — We're in Nebraska!
📍 Beatrice · York, NE
A long day of driving — the longest we will have. 250 miles. We aren’t in Kansas anymore… we are in Nebraska!
Keith at the wheel while I inputted every caravan member’s name and phone number in case I needed to send a private message. The caravan leader also set up a WhatsApp group for general conversation — where’s that quilt store we heard about???
Today we were first to leave, part of the arrival committee at the next campground. Three Airstreams on the road by 0830. Keith would have preferred 0630 — and honestly, in this case, I agree. It would have given us more time at our one historical stop.
Campsite of the Week
The site we got today made me think I have been a very good person this week. 🤗 Keith and I have the only concrete pad, we’re at the end of a row, there’s shade, we face a golf course, and we are level — which meant no angled plastic wedges under the tires. You may be able to see the top of my head as I settled outside: NCAA Softball semi-finals on the iPad, needlepoint in my lap, G&T on the table. 82°, shady, light wind. Lovely end of a day.
We have a drone pilot in our midst and he posted this fantastic photo of the second campground. Look hard and you can see our white truck with the two canoes on top. Hoping the next stop allows time to put them in a lake.
Leaving the Last Campground
I wanted to capture the toy tractor pulling a wagon with flowers in it — we passed it every time we entered or left. And I cannot resist more wind turbines. 🤷♀️
Roadside Nebraska
So much farmland, old houses, and quirky things along the way: painted quilts on barns, the largest covered wagon in the US, and an unusual announcement of the locale for Beatrice Airport. We also passed a police-escorted truck carrying one of the arms of a wind turbine — didn’t get the photo in time.
Pony Express logo on a water tower, and the black squirrels of Seneca — there were more, but these two were all I caught.
Homestead National Historical Park
Our one historical stop: the Homestead National Historical Park in Beatrice. At the entry, outlines of all the states that had homesteaders.
We watched a film about the Homestead Act, westward migration, the Dawes Act, and the sweeping changes that displaced so many Indigenous people from territories in the west.
The display below links to digitized Land Entry Case Files — records of everyone who applied for land under the Homestead Act. The catch: you had to build a home, plant a crop, and stay on the land for a full year before ownership was granted. Weather and supplies didn’t always cooperate.
When you cleared your land and went to plow it for the first crop, you had rudimentary tools — one blade, one horse, and hard ground. Think about how long it took to plow a single acre.
The last recorded homesteader was Kenneth Deardorff — a 29-year-old Californian and Vietnam veteran who homesteaded in Alaska. The Homestead Act expired in 1976 for the lower 48 states and 1986 for Alaska. Deardorff and his family sold the land in 1993.
There was a beautiful piece of art on the walls from an artist in residence.
In the bathrooms, the education continued… 😬
“Go west, young man, and grow up with the country.”
— Horace Greeley