Pity the people whose job it is to promote tourism in Nebraska. Set ideas are notoriously resistant to change, at least over periods less than a generation, so I expect the idea “nothing to see there” is a constant battle for those who know otherwise.

I didn’t need to be persuaded. A drive across the state – a reward in itself, more about which later – takes you Carhenge (see yesterday) but also to terrain not generally associated with Nebraska.

At the western edge of the state, rocks. Big, impressive rocks that poke out of the still-flat ground, stubborn geological leftovers that refuse to erode as fast as the surrounding terrain. Natives, mountain men, trappers, and wagon trains across the prairie all knew about these rocks, knew that they marked a certain point in their journeys. I’m sure they were hard to miss.

Since 1919, the rocks a few miles from Gering, Nebraska have been known as Scotts Bluff National Monument. I arrived on the morning of September 8.

On this particular trip, the monument was an appetizer, ahead of the main course in Colorado. The Sandhills of Nebraska, which I’d just driven through, aren’t pancake flat, but waves of grassy hills with scattered outcropings of rock. After a drive like that, the Scotts Bluff seemed to appear suddenly, rising in your field of vision to take over half the sky.

I exaggerate, but only because that’s how I seem to remember it. An outcropping like that in the Rockies would be lost in the crowd, but here in western Nebraska it’s the star of the show.

The road leading to the monument, the highway Nebraska 92, follows the Oregon Trail at his point.

Scotts Bluff isn’t just a single bluff. A set of them, you might say. A road (yes, CCC built) provides access to the top. From there, any number of fine vistas ring the area. A fair number of people took the drive the same day as I did, but in no way did they amount to a crowd.

Scotts Bluff is no solitary outpost. Turning to the 1911 Enclopdaedia Britannica’s entry on Nebraska: “In the fork of the North and South Platte are the Wild Cat Mountains, with contours rising to 5300 ft., in which Wild Cat Mountain, long reported as the highest point in the state, attains 5038 ft., Hogback Mountain 5082 ft., and various other hills — Gabe Rock (5006), Big Horn Mountain (4718), Coliseum Rock (5050), Scotts Bluff (4662) &c. — rise to heights of 4500 to 5000 ft.

“In the extreme N.W. the White river and Hat Creek have carved canyons in deep lacustrine deposits, creating fantastic cliffs and buttes, bare of vegetation, gashed with drainage channels, and baked by the sun.”

East of Scotts Bluff not far from highway US 26 is a set of rocks known as Courthouse and Jail. There’s something to that name.

If Scotts Bluff was lightly visited, these two were almost completely empty. I stopped by on the afternoon of the 7th, and the only other people in the parking lot were sitting next to their RV, under a tarp, probably shooting the breeze over beer. So I had the trail to myself, though I didn’t go that far under the hot and copper sky.

Offering some views of its own.

Not far away in this part of Nebraska (at least by horseless carriage) is the better known Chimney Rock National Historic Site.

It was later on same day as Courthouse and Jail, and the heat was still on. Again, I didn’t want a personal heat event to interrupt my trip, so I didn’t go as close as the trails would have allowed.

I sent an image of Chimney Rock and a text message to old friend Tom J.:

The aliens decided that Devil’s Tower was a better site.

Then I sent this image from the Chimney Rock gift shop.

Tom answered:

lol. We never even played Oregon Trail and that’s still funny.