Trading and Toadstools --- odd combination

June 19 – It was nice to sleep til we were ready to get up!  I made our Sunday breakfast today without the eggs.  I hadn’t made pancakes in a while so we had macadamia nut ones, ham and fresh fruits.  Now we have pancakes for tomorrow with bacon.  We managed to get things together and head out on today’s adventure about 9:30.

We trekked up the road about 25 miles to Chadron, NE where there is a Wal-mart, although that’s not why we went.  We did stop there first though so Bill could drop off a script to be filled and he wanted to see if they had RV drinking water hoses.  Luckily they did and we also got a jug of DEF and an extra expanding nozzle to be able to refill the jug and pour it in the DEF tank.  We then stopped at “ACE is the place of the helpful hardware man” in hopes of finding a bottle of Dissolve-it.  I use it for grease spots on cloths before washing among a lot of others uses and was down to drops.  Now I’m re-stocked!

The original post

Museum of the Fur Trade is the reason we went to Chadron.  It’s just the other side of town and was established there because that was the location of the American Fur Company Trading Post and warehouse from 1837.  It was in business until 1876 when the soldiers closed it down for sell ammunitions to the Indians.  It is one of the best collections of Native American crafts, costumes, knives, etc. we have been to.  They also boast the largest collection of Northwest Guns made for Indian trade.  There were a LOT of guns.  The short movie was a good briefing on the history of trade in North America.  There were canoes, numerous animal pelts and skins, flea combs, tanning equipment, really a super display.

We drove around Chadron as Bill wanted to see the campus of Chadron College.  It dates back to 1911 and is a very nice facility.  The football field is named Beebe Field so we checked and pro player Don Beebe went to college there and played 9 years in the NFL. He holds an annual golf fundraiser for the football program.  It’s nice little town but didn’t have many street signs.  Odd!  We had lunch at Helen’s Pancake and Steakhouse since there were a decent number of cars out front.  Lunch was yummy!  I had the Philly cheese steak special and Bill went with a 7 Sisters.  I think was related to it having 7 items on it. Both were delicious!  And my fries were hot and crispy!

Our first toadstool

After a quick stop for Bill to get his script and a lime for me, we drove back from whence we came and turned off to visit Toadstool Geologic Park.  All was well until we realized it was not paved all the 15 miles out.  Bill was not in the best of moods on the slow paced drive to the site.  There is no visitor center, but rather a circle of covered picnic sites, vault toilets and a covered display about the site.  A group of tents was set up in the middle that we gathered were hikers staying for the night.  Bill was not excited to learn

Baby toadstools

we’d need to walk a mile loop to see the bulk of the Toadstools.  Uh oh!  A Toadstool is a sandstone slab resting on a clay pedestal, resembling a mushroom.  Bill picked up a brochure about the trail and the first stop was OK but not overly impressive.  I offered to leave at that point and head back but he said no, we didn’t drive this far on that road to not see what we came to see, so we did the entire mile.  We should have carried a bottle of water-----.  The trail was marked at intervals by 4 foot posts with painted tops.  That was helpful as you could see numerous trails that people had taken and some were not the best ways in my opinion.  I love to climb and that would have

What a sky!

been a great place to do it but I wasn’t wearing my grippiest (no that’s not a word) pair of sneakers today so I refrained from being too daring and falling on my tush.  It was a lot of up and done on very narrow paths.  Had it been wet out we would have slipped and slid all over the place.  It turned out to be a really great trail and the scenery was awesome.  The skies were so blue with fluffy cotton candy clouds for the perfect backdrop of the unusual geologic formations.   We made it back without incident and agreed it was a great hike, as well as a much needed workout!

As we were headed back to Crawford we spotted the train going right through town and on it were 4 or 5 bluish green airplanes, with no wings of course.  We were so taken back that I couldn’t get my camera on quick enough to take a photo.  What a failed photo op that was!

Once we checked out the town we stopped at the post office for stamps and then at a car wash as Bill had just washed the car yesterday and was not happy that is was a dirty dusty mess.

I had received a phone message that we had a package from UPS at the park office so we stopped there and were so happy to see our new SD car for the GPS.  Now we can give it a try on the way to Idaho and if it still doesn’t work, well, we’ll see how we need to proceed.

Just on the other side of the hub of Fort Robinson is a pasture with buffalo.  There is no

Mom and calf through the window

guarantee of seeing them but we wanted to give it a try.  We did get to see a mother and her calf approach the road and then cross over.  They were headed down near the rest of the herd. Better to see one than none!

Back to the RV for iced coffee!