Nebraska has really bugged us!

We are traveling faster than usual, so we had another long day of driving when compared to our usual standards. We drove 157 miles and three hours, which included passing the Nebraska state sign. It's hard to read because of all the bug splatters on our big motor home windshield. But that's just the first of our bug problems in Nebraska.

Our long drive included a stop for fuel, where we paid $3.35 per gallon using our diesel discount card. That's the least we have paid for diesel since January 2022. We noticed that the flat lands of Kansas have changed to the rolling hills of Nebraska. We also saw that the Kansas corn and wheat fields turned to Nebraska cattle pastures. The grass must have looked greener in the bar ditch as this bull was on the road on Nebraska's Highway 83. Denisa snapped a blurry bull picture through the bug-splattered windshield as traffic slowed for a while.

During the drive, Denisa had some time to read about all the interesting things to do in North Platte, Nebraska. We had planned to just drive by this town, but we made the spontaneous decision to stop and spend the night. We found a first-come-first-served campground at the city park. Named after Buffalo Bill Cody, we settled the motor home in at Cody Park. We had another night of no hook-up camping right beside the north fork of the North Platte River. This should not be confused with the south fork of the North Platte River that runs through the center of town.

While some people kayak down the North Platte River, the locals prefer to tank it. Cattle tanks outfitted with seats inside are provided by rental companies for plying the waters of the North Platte in style.

We had a lake beside us at Cody Park, but it had a double fence to keep visitors out. The park lake can only be used by the residents of the local wildlife park. 

The resident bull elk was enjoying a soak in the lake.

That double fence made it hard to take pictures, but that didn't keep us from trying.

It must be mating season, because this peacock was fanning his tail feathers and strutting around the animal enclosure.

These are beautiful birds, but their loud screams can really bug their neighbors next door in the campground.

Cody Park also hosts permanent carnival rides that are open every evening of the summer. Denisa was quick to purchase her 75-cent ticket for her own private ride on the antique carousel with its hand-carved horses.

She was riding her pony when her phone rang. It was a face-time call from the grandchildren. They didn't seem surprised at all that Gram was riding on a carousel.

Cody Park also has a concession stand that had a long line for ice cream cones this week-day evening. Mark got a large twist cone for only $2.00, so he's a happy camper here in Nebraska.

The North Platte tourist brochure did a good job of convincing us to spend some time in their city. It pointed out that it was home to the Bailey Rail Yard. The Guinness Book of World Records confirmed that this is the largest rail yard in the world. "So what do they do in a rail yard?" you might ask. We wondered the same thing, so we went to find out.  The city built this tower beside the yard, for visitors to pay to see the 14,000 rail cars that pass through here every day. So we paid our money and visited the Golden Spike Tower on this beautiful blue-sky day.

On the seventh floor, we could look out over the sea of railroad tracks. We learned that trains come from the west, and stop at this central location. Here each rail car is separated and sorted, and then placed into a new train of cars going to its eastbound final destination. We watched and listened as railroad cars were pushed together and clanked into place on 64 different tracks to form 64 new trains. Then the new line of railroad cars must be paired with new appropriately sized locomotives that had just been serviced and refueled here. That's what they do in a rail yard!

On the eighth floor we met a volunteer docent that worked as a train engineer for 42 years before he retired from Union Pacific Railroad. He explained that the westbound version of this sorting process was happening further across the yard and harder for us to see. We enjoyed the stories from his job, and he was patient to answer all our silly questions. Most of our knowledge of trains has come from sitting at a railroad crossing waiting for the railroad cars to pass, so this was a very enlightening day. We had never pondered how those railroad cars got from their origin to their destination.

A picture inside the tower gave a true birds-eye view of the complex system of railroad tracks in Bailey Yard. North Platte is in a central position of the Union Pacific Railroad, so this is where all their rail cars pass through. On the eighth floor of the tower, we also watched a PBS film about the orphan trains that brought street children from New York City on trains to be adopted by farm families in the Midwest. We spent several hours immersed in all things railroad in North Platte.

Many of this town's citizens are employees of the rail yard or the Union Pacific Railroad. This company supplied the train engines on display at Cody Park, so we walked there from our campground. We're still learning about trains, but we can tell you that this is #3977, the Union Pacific Challenger that was built in 1943 and retired here in 1961. It is the only one of this class on display in the world, and it's our next door neighbor tonight!

Mark climbed into the engineer's seat and imagined all the responsibility of driving something so big and long--even longer than our motor-home with a pickup towed behind.

The Cody Park Railroad Museum also has a Centennial #6922 on display, the largest and most powerful diesel-electric locomotive ever built. It is called the Centennial because it was built in 1969, 100 years after the golden spike connected the east and west railroad tracks in 1869.

The volunteer working at the Cody Park Railroad Museum unlocked the caboose so we could look inside. No longer used in modern trains, this was where the brakeman once lived. With a wood stove for cooking and a bathroom on board, it was a bit like a motor home on the end of a train.

The other attraction that lured us to North Platte was the Buffalo Bill Ranch State Historic Site. But we have to say that the state park system here in Nebraska bugs us. We would have loved to stay in one of their state park campgrounds, but they charge out-of-staters twice as much for a parking fee. They would charge that on both our pickup and motor home, so that extra $24 fee on top of the campground cost puts them out of our budget. Likewise, they charge out-of-staters $12 just to park at this historic site.

So we rode our bikes and we didn't have a vehicle in the parking lot after all!

We've said before that every state tries to claim Buffalo Bill, and this famous cowboy really did choose Nebraska as the place he wanted to retire. He bought Scout's Rest Ranch and built this home in 1886 for a place to rest between the traveling tours of his Wild West Show. He lived here until 1913. 

The horse barn was built in 1887, and it was used to house the horses needed on the ranch. Today it houses pictures of the Cody family and many of the cast members of the Wild West Shows that toured the United States and Europe.

One of the most famous cast members was Annie Oakley. Buffalo Bill used her trade mark, the ace of hearts with a bullet hole in the middle, at the peak of the barn roof. The rafter ends under the eaves were shaped as gun stocks.

We enjoyed our tour of Buffalo Bill's Ranch in the cool of the morning, and then it was time to head out of the campground here at Cody Park. That's when we found that we were really bugged here in Nebraska. We noticed that the birds were swooping and diving around our motor home. A cloud of millers was swarming around us, and when Mark tapped on the outside walls of the motor home, thousands flew out. We took a chilling video of the swarm of millers flying out of the rear of our home. A still photo just can't memorialize the number of millers we had in this camping spot that have now invaded our home!

Thankfully, most of them were outside. After pounding on all the outside storage compartments, we hoped we got rid of a few of them. But we noticed that every time we stopped at a stop sign or light, a flurry of millers flew around us. Nebraska has really bugged us! Some of the millers moved inside, and we hate these messy insects that leave dust and sticky spots behind. We found the best line of defense was our vacuum cleaner. As they fly to the light of the window or lamp, we sucked them up into the vacuum. We got lots of practice as we sucked up hundreds of millers over the next few days. Imagine Denisa vacuuming up millers as Mark was driving down the highway. We like to collect memories as we travel to new places, but it appears we are collecting bugs as we travel through Nebraska.