No Brasher Doubloon, Dammit. (The Money Museum)

Posted on December 1, 2025 by admin

This might be unfair to the Money Museum in Colorado Springs, Colorado, but its collection disappointed me in one key way: No Brasher Doubloon.

It is unfair. The place is great: wall-to-wall coins rare and common, beautiful and crude, familiar and strange, a vast domestic collection (USA!) and a sizable array of coinages from other nations past and present. Much familiar to me, but not all, and much new and strange to Yuriko.

I’d known about the museum, which is owned and operated by the American Numismatic Association, since years ago, when I collected the sort of cheap coins I could afford on my allowance. I followed, in a lackadaisical adolescent way, numismatic news. Big coin deals in those days involved tens and maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars. Coins like the 1909S VDB cent and the 1916D Mercury dime commanded sizable premiums, but the major money was in even rarer strikes or errors.

The Money Museum and the ANA offices are in a boxy structure, brutalist lite, dating from 1967. It isn’t a large museum, with a few living room-sized galleries on its first floor, another in the basement, with each floor attended by bored-looking security guards. U.S. coins beckoned from their own gallery, with vertical coin displays behind glass on all the walls, along with paper money displays and a generous amount of exposition.

The displays had themes: early U.S. gold coins, coins struck in California and Colorado during their gold rushes – including $50 California Territorial Gold piece (!) — uncut paper money, Federal and Confederate tokens and paper, Gilded Age paper money (a riot of design), the various representations of George Washington on medals struck down the years, and many more. There was a 1933 eagle (gold $10) and a flawless set of 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition commemoratives, which are a wow in just about every way imaginable.

Next to Americana Gallery, another gallery housed an incredibly detailed exhibit featuring coins used on the Silk Road across the centuries, something I can’t say I’d given much thought to, despite the enormity of the subject. Such as coins from the time of Alexander, whose empire was home, briefly, to around 25 mints. They say the treasury at Persepolis alone guarded 3,000 tons of gold and silver, but not from the conqueror, since it was just the thing to feed those mints once Alexander had made the Persian empire his own.

Or Parthian drachms, which feature a ruler observe and a seated archer reverse. Or the hemidrachms, obols and hemiobols of the Sassanids. Or Chinese coinage: “Made by the bureaucracy, for the bureaucracy, coins were tools to facilitate minor trade and local business. Because precious metals and high-value denominations posed the threat of wealth accumulation, low-value bronze pieces sufficed.”

Those are only a few examples. The exhibit also had early Chinese non-coin money, Islamic coinage and the coinage of the Kushans, whose central Asian empire faded from memory until its coins were unearthed.

It was all too much. Coin overload had kicked in. We spent a little while in the basement – given over to the broad sweep of the history of money – and then to the crown jewels of the place, to cap off the visit.

An 1804 U.S. dollar.

Actually made in the 1830s, in as convoluted a coin story as you’re likely to find.

The 1913 Liberty Head nickel.

A coin that goes to show that the entire game isn’t just gold and silver, but base metal coins can have their shot at being priceless collectibles. Famed in story, and maybe an eccentric will write a song about the 1913 Liberty Head, predecessor to the Buffalo nickel. The last year for minting the Liberty Head was to have been 1912, and there are scads of those, except for those made at the San Francisco mint. Only five 1913 specimens are known to exist, all with a mysterious origin at the U.S. Mint and history of trading at ever-increasing prices, with one most recently fetching $5 million. They are such a part of numismatic lore that each specimen has its own name.

We were getting ready to go, when I noticed a museum employee talking to the volunteers behind the front desk. I asked him whether the museum had a Brasher Doubloon. I’d looked, but I could easily have missed it, among the many coins on display.

He knew what that was. Of course he did. Unfortunately, no, he told me. Someday someone might donate one, but otherwise it would be beyond the museum’s budget. Someday, maybe, he said, a little wistfully. Good man, a true coin nerd.

Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum

Posted on November 30, 2025 by admin

Not far outside Omaha, along I-80, it’s possible to stop and see, under two very large roofs, such marvels of aeronautical engineering as a B-17, B-29, B-36 and B-52, a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, a Douglas C-47 Skytrain and a Douglas C-54 Skymaster, a Convair F-102, and a Fairchild C-119 Flying Boxcar, among many others. Along side the airplanes are exhibits about the Tuskegee Airmen, Doolittle’s Raid, the Berlin Airlift and Francis Gary Powers.

There are also space artifacts at the Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum, as the name says, but not that many. Still, my favorite artifact at that museum, the coolest bit of space hardware I’d seen since the Kansas Cosmosphere, was a Vela satellite.

Looks like something you’d see on the set of Space: 1999, but the Vela is more than just a curious glassy polyhedron. In September 1979, a Vela satellite noticed the characteristic flash – actually a double flash – of a nuclear explosion in the atmosphere, near the remote Price Edward Islands in the ocean south of Africa, roughly half way to Antarctica. It wasn’t long before the press got wind of the event, and I remember a widely held suspicion that Israel had tested a nuclear warhead, with the cooperation of South Africa, whose island it was. It seems likely that this was the case.

Besides that, “in 1967, the satellites were the first to detect extra-terrestrial gamma-ray bursts, thought to be the brightest and most energetic electromagnetic events in the universe,” the Space Force notes.

I arrived at the museum on September 5 heading westward, bypassing Omaha in favor of it.

Most of the artifacts are aircraft used in one way or another by SAC, on display under sprawling ceilings. Leo A. Daly, a longstanding Omaha architect, did the museum’s design, completed in 1998.

A fine collection, only outdone by Smithsonian Air & Space and the US Air Force Museum, since after all, SAC was only part of the Air Force.

A named aircraft, the Lucky Lady, a B-29 Superfortress.

“The bomber was manufactured by Bell Aircraft, in Marietta, Georgia and delivered to the U.S. Army Air Force on August 4, 1945,” Airplanes Online says. “Its initial assignment was to Walker AAF (Second Air Force), Victoria, Kansas.” Lucky all right, as in manufactured too late in the war to get shot at, unless there’s something about 1940s Kansas I don’t know.

Smaller items, though not actually that small.

Besides the Vela satellite, other space items include spaceman gear and leftovers from the early days of manned space flight, such as a boilerplate Apollo, which wasn’t actually a capsule, but had the size, shape and mass of a command module, for testing.

Picked up cheap after the dissolution of the Soviet Union?

Probably something non-astronauts wonder about a great deal.

A little space whimsy.

Even the Air Force needs a little.

Silverton, Colorado

Posted on November 26, 2025 by admin

Cold winds rolled through northern Illinois today. Seven inches of snow are forecast for Saturday. What? Right, it’s winter. The winter solstice is just the shortest day of the year.

Back to posting on Sunday. Regards for Thanksgiving.

Something to upset PETA sympathizers.

Stroll down Greene St. in the mountain town of Silverton, Colorado, at least in mid-September this year, and you’d have had the opportunity to buy a hide for $300. We did, but declined. Still, it wasn’t just a Colorado detail, but a Western one. The West, where men are men and cow hides hang in the sun. As far as I could tell, you couldn’t buy a hide with Bitcoin, but I suppose you’d have to ask the seller to be sure.

Not five minutes after we’d parked off the main thoroughfare of Greene Street in Silverton, on a large side street, a steam locomotive hauling a valuable cargo — tourists — pulled into town, a block from where we parked. The Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge RR train from Durango had arrived. Instantly the streets around the train were thick with those same tourists who had paid roughly $100 a head for the scenic ride, though I suppose many, the majority maybe, had gotten a slight discount as seniors.

I assume the economy of 21st-century Silverton depends pretty heavily on these arrivals, at least in the warm months, as day after day the line disgorges its many passengers for their layover. No doubt the likes of High Noon Hamburgers or the Shady Lady or a lot of the other businesses in town wouldn’t be viable otherwise.

Blair St., paralleling Greene St. a block away. No need for pavement.

Greene St.

Lots to see on Greene.

Including the fine Colorado flag, flying at Railroad Art by Scotty, a seriously cool gallery.

“Railroad Art by Scotty presents the custom matted and framed collector Railroad Art Prints by renowned railroad artist H.L. Scott, III,” its web site says. “These are not photographs and they are not created on the computer. These are pen & ink drawings created by Scott using the technique known as STIPPELING or pointillism.”

One of the few buildings I’ve seen that clearly states its elevation.

The Grand Imperial Hotel. A lofty name to live up to, but probably posh enough to do so.

Restored to its 1880s appearance in the 2010s, no doubt at considerable expense.

As it looked in 1940, a photo from the Library of Congress, Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information Photograph Collection.

More Greene St.

Greene is short, because Silverton isn’t very large, and so the street, now a road, soon heads for the hills.

The Hillside Cemetery of Silverton.

An apt name.

With a good view of the town.

Some sizable memorials.

More modest ones.

Echoes of lost men from another time. Beyond the outstanding beauty of a hillside cemetery in the flush of autumn, reason enough to visit the cemetery.

Durango, Colorado

Posted on November 25, 2025 by admin

“Good morning.”

“Good morning,” Walter said in response to me, but in a hushed tone that somehow made his Austrian accent more distinct. “Do you want to see some bears?”

Yes. I followed him out to the large deck off the large common room of the Country Sunshine B&B. Outside we met with cool air, bright morning sun, and the strong smell of pine. The deck was a floor above the grassy ground, which sloped downward away from the bed and breakfast, shaded by a small copse of enormous pines.

We’d just spent the night at Country Sunshine B&B, the first of three for our visit to Durango, Colorado, a place I’d wanted to visit since the moment, years ago, when I heard Garrison Keillor describe the place in the engaging way that he had. I’d come out of our room – one of the three or four bedrooms off the common room – ahead of Yuriko, to examine the breakfast spread at the main table when Walter asked me about bears.

Under one of the tall pines, and among the many pine cones dotting the ground, was something dark and much larger: a bear.

“He isn’t the only one,” Walter said, pointed upward. Another sizable bear was perched part way up the largest pine. I didn’t say anything, or maybe I did. Something along the lines of, How about that. When I spend time on my deck, squirrels are about as large as the animals get, except occasional rabbits and raccoons.

“Look way up,” Walter said.

Two more bears – smaller bears, though I wouldn’t want to be face-to-face even with them – clung to the branches toward the top of the tree. They were hard to see, and my photos barely show them, but they were there, not moving a bit.

Soon Yuriko, and some other guests, had come to the deck to see the bears and take pictures. Every few minutes while we watched, the largest of the bears, the one on the ground, would start shimmying up the tree. The bear in the tree snarled at his approach, and, after pausing for a few moments, the first bear returned to the ground.

We were about 10 miles north of Durango, where the human settlement is fairly thin, and bears known to prowl the mountains on either side of the single road, US 550.

In the two decades of so that Walter and his wife Jodi have owned the B&B, he said bears had been sighted. Of course they had. Get careless with closing an outdoor garbage receptacle and bears will make an appearance in the neighborhood. During dry spells, they come for the creek waters near the property, and Walter pointed out that this summer had been fairly dry in the region.

But this was a first, Walter said: probably a male bear out to do harm to some cubs, a female bear standing in his way — a bear drama playing out in the tree near the B&B.

Late that afternoon, we returned to the B&B. Papa Bear, as everyone was calling him now, still lingered under the tree. Mama Bear still watched him from the lower branches, and the cubs still clung to the upper branches. Papa Bear had mostly quit trying to climb the tree, Walter said, but he was still waiting around.

The bears stayed in place through that evening, but when I went to the breakfast table the next morning to examine the bagels and spreads and fruit and hot drinks, the bears – I checked from the deck – they were not to be seen. After their one-day show (from a human point of view), they’d taken their drama somewhere else,

We spent that first day (September 16) wandering around town and nearby. In downtown Durango, small buildings that have endured for more than a century line Main Street.

We spent that first day (September 16) wandering around town.

Or not so small. Such as the magnificent Strater Hotel, built in 1887.

The sort of place where presidents stay, or used to. Did any? The hotel web site doesn’t say. I’d ask ChatGPT, but it would probably tell me that FDR stayed there during his Grand Western States Whistle Stop Tour in 1939, a wholly fictional event. Wiki says Gerald Ford stayed there. Louis L’Amour did too, and now has a room named after him.

A competitor. Named for this fellow, Union (brevet) brigadier general and railroad man, who co-founded the Denver and Rio Grande RR.

Downtown Durango is well supplied with retail.

Lunch options, besides burgers and empanadas or a liquid lunch, included the likes of the Diamond Belle Saloon, Seasons of Durango, Chimayo Stone Fired Kitchen, Steamworks Brewing Company, and Eolus Bar & Dining. All very nice, I’m sure, but we chanced on something more to our tastes at that moment: the Durango Diner. In business for 60 years.

Durango started not so much as a mining town, but a railroad node that served the mines further up the line. Silverton, for instance. One reason Durango is where it is: the Animas River. These days, the river is accessible to pedestrians in a number of places in town. One was near the Durango Library, also the location of a shady sculpture garden.

At this place, the tracks of the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge RR run along the river.

That was also true at the 29th Street Park, though the tracks were on the other side of the river.

We waved. A few waved back.

Seward, Nebraska

Posted on November 19, 2025 by admin

There I was, in Seward, Nebraska, parked on a side street lined with single-family houses. Interrupting the pattern of houses was a large open space, with buildings behind it — a large house, and maybe a workshop. In the open space, which was a green lawn, stood a sigma-shaped structure, and behind that, a white pyramid.

Both taller than a grown man. A plaque was fixed to the sigma. From the point of view of the time capsule, the sigma shape could be a 3. So – third millennium?

World’s Largest Time Capsule.

I wasn’t quite sure what to make of that claim. The world’s largest time capsule would surely be the one entombed in 1939 at the New York World’s Fair for an opening in the year 6939, an exercise in official optimism if I’ve ever heard of one. Wouldn’t it? No. It grew in my memory, but was actually quite small. The Crypt of Civilization instead might be a candidate for largest.

Anyway, there’s no doubt Seward’s is a whopper among time capsules.

The capsule, buried by Seward resident Harold Davisson, had more modest ambitions, time-wise, than the NY time capsule: only 50 years. Looking at the plaque, I wondered if the opening, promised for this year, was going to happen.

Later I learned that it had already happened, earlier in the summer. NBC reported that the opening revealed “letters, pet rocks, artwork, a groovy teal suit and even a yellow Chevy Vega.” A video of the opening of the time capsule, and the removal of its contents, has been posted to Facebook. The opening including removal of the car, by means of an enormous wench. News reports suggested that Vega was going to be reconditioned and run during the town’s bang-up Fourth of July festivities. Hope so.

The pyramid lid had been put back on. If you look closely, you can see the line marking the bottom of the lid. Put it back on expertly, since you have to look closely to see there was a separation. So I missed the grand opening by a few weeks. As they say in those parts of Nebraska, c’est la vie. Hard to attend an event you’ve never heard of, though not impossible, as I found out years ago when I happened across Northalstead Market Days one summer day. That one was an eye-opener.

Seward honors the Seward of Alaska purchase fame, though if pressed I’d bet most Americans have sort of maybe heard of him, but don’t remember anything about him, even though he (likely) still gets passing mentions in school.

Seward, seat of Seward County, there in the populous (for Nebraska) southeast corner of the state, is close to Lincoln – fitting, isn’t it? – and I-70.

Seward County built itself a handsome courthouse, once upon a time. Classical Revival when the getting was good for that style, in the first decade of the 20th century. It was a popular style around this part of Nebraska at the time, with the National Register of Historic Places Registration Form telling us there are 18 buildings like it still extant in Nebraska. Architect George Berlinghof (d. 1944) designed a lot of them, including this one.

On the grounds, Seward in bronze. I know there are other statues of Sec. Seward, but not that many.

Sporting a cape. How many bronze figures honored with public statues are in capes? More than I know, probably. The Maid of Orleans in New Orleans comes to mind; she’s wearing a cape, over that armor.

A plaque identifies the artists, brother and sister David and Judith Rubin, and the vintage, recent. Alaska commissioned them to do one of Seward for the 150th anniversary (2017) of the sale of Alaska to the United States. Interested parties in Seward, Nebraska, wanted one for the their town, and so commissioned another one.

The square is right handsome, too.

Cattle National Bank. Reminds me of Gary Larson, somehow. I’m glad to report that it’s one of four locations for Cattle National Bank & Trust, a community bank owned by the Cattle family. Has been since 1881. If I lived in Seward, I’d bank there just for the name.

One more thing about Seward. This isn’t the one further north.

Seward was a flyby on September 5 on the way to Grand Island, Nebraska, that evening, which would be the jumping off point for my drive through the Sandhills. The highlight of my short stay in Grand Island wasn’t the false alarm that got us all out of our rooms at the motel around 10, thrilling as that was, but the next morning, on my way out of town.

John Cattle and his sons, Robert, John and Walter, were farmers in England and came to Nebraska in the 1870’s, lured by the chance to invest in inexpensive land. The British Steamship Company and the Burlington Railroad promoted land on the Great Plains, and the oldest Cattle son, Robert, took advantage of the company’s offer of a free trip to come to Nebraska and see the prospects for himself. Robert thought the land and opportunities looked good and the rest of the family followed him to Seward County where they bought railroad land north and west of Seward.

I’ll give credit where it’s due: I found Fred’s Flying Circus on Google Maps. Attaboy, algorithm.

The work of body shop proprietor Fred Schritt (d. 2016), on his place of business, with the shop now run by his daughter and son-in-law. An informal sort of memorial to the old man, I hope they believe. One of the more cheerful memorials you’ll see.

Colorado Flatland Drives

Posted on November 18, 2025 by admin

Go east, old man.

That was the goal about two months ago now, after I left Colorado Springs for a solo drive back to Illinois. The fastest way would be to link with I-70 while still in Colorado. I wasn’t inclined to do that, though I did take that Interstate route through much of Kansas. Instead, I wanted to start remote and stay that way for the length of eastern Colorado.

So east on Colorado 94 it was, which passes through such hamlets as Yoder, Rush and Punkin Center. Mostly, though, there are few signs of people.

I noticed the Front Range growing smaller in my rearview mirror. I wondered at what point they would vanish from sight, and decided to keep track of their shrink, and note the last time I could see them. Naturally, I forgot about that resolve, and next thing I knew, the road backward and forward stretched to both horizons.

This is looking back west, a mountain barely visible, and is also an image illustrating that the eastern Colorado terrain isn’t completely flat.

Eastbound Colorado 94 ends near Aroya, where it meets US 40/287. I took that road southeast to Kit Carson (pop. 255).

The railroad still comes through Kit Carson. It’s safe to say that without the railroad, the town might be no larger than Punkin Center. The Kit Carson Railroad Depot is now a museum.

Closed. Till Decoration Day. Really?

In any case, it was closed on September 22.

Across the street, metal works. The pump jack is one thing, but the other is a — tower?

The Kit Carson town web site has a few things to say about itself:

The town of Kit Carson had two locations. The original site was located near the site where Kit Carson traded with the Arapahoe and Cheyenne Indians. The present site was determined by the arrival of the railroad. Destroyed by fire three times, twice by the torches of Indians and once by carousing cowboys, the determined citizens of the town showed their desire to survive by rebuilding.

I can’t help but think those carousing cowboys were actually a gang of rustlers, cutthroats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers and Methodists.

Also of note, according to the town: The railroad brought in foreign dignitaries, such as the Grand Duke Alexis [Alexei Alexandrovich] of Russia. The Grand Duke hunted in Kit Carson and was accompanied by his military escort, General George Armstrong Custer on January 20, 1872. [Custer was a lieutenant colonel at the time, but never mind.]

Grand Duke Alexis was on his 1871-72 tour of America. Sounds like he had a fine old time. Could have been the subject of an episode of Death Valley Days, but I don’t think it was. Dom Pedro, emperor of Brazil, made an appearance, as did the Emperor Norton, but I digress.

From Kit Carson, I headed south to Eads, still in Colorado, and then east on Colorado 96. I had the idea that I wanted to see the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site, which isn’t too far from that road. Just before the turnoff to the historic site, I noticed something odd near the highway.

A wrecked train. A long wrecked train. The cars toward to back.

Toward the front.

Nary a clue as to how it happened, or when, except that the cars don’t seem rusted or overgrown. I stayed on the road to take my pictures. The cars are lined up as if they were dumped off the track on purpose. No. Why? Or could it have been some odd accident in which the train essentially fell off in place? Or is that how derailments work? Why are front cars especially mangled?

It didn’t take too much research (later) to find some answers. The Kiowa County Independent reported in August: The heavily laden train was navigating a significant curve and elevation change west of Chivington when 16 covered hopper cars derailed. Each was filled with thousands of bushels of wheat, spilling tons of grain onto the ground along Highway 96, which runs parallel to the rail line.

Oops. Guess everyone would have heard about it if the cargo had been more volatile or toxic.

At the turnoff to the historic site, I got a view of the tracks (again, from the road). Far enough away that the mangled train cars aren’t visible.

On to the historic site, via an unpaved road.

Turns out the historic site closes at 4 pm. I got there just as the rangers were leaving, and one of them, who had a remarkable collection of snaggled and bent teeth, told me so politely. I didn’t argue with him, but I also wondered why a site so remote closes at all, except maybe for the visitors center or small museum. Rules is rules, I guess.

That was pretty much it for Colorado. I got to the border with Kansas not long after, and looked back.

Colorful Colorado. I’ll go along with that.

Nebraska 2

Posted on November 16, 2025 by admin

Which of these two destinations aren’t like the others?

That’s a beginner’s-level question. Better question: where can you find this pole, with mileages and – what units measure the distance to Heaven or Hell? – other signs?

Answer: Cairo, Nebraska.

Maybe a palm tree was in the works, but the city decided not to spend any more money. Cairo (pop. 822) is one of the small chain of small towns on the eastern section of the highway Nebraska 2, which runs westward and north of Grand Island. Cairo is the first place I stopped on my way west on that highway in early September.

Eventually the highway reaches the Nebraska National Forest and Grassland, a patch of (partly) wooded land that inspires the question, there’s a national forest in Nebraska?

West from the forest, Nebraska 2 crosses the Sandhills, an unusual place here in North America, with the land morphing from cropland to ranch land on sandy steppes. The towns on the way are mere hamlets, and sometimes not even that. On the western edge of the Sandhills, one comes to the sizable town of Alliance, Nebraska, home of Carhenge and railroad staging area for coal trains headed east.

Before I did the drive, I was looking forward to it as much as any of the roads in Colorado. It lived up to expectations. Nice when that happens.

The Fence Post cites Charles Kuralt’s fondness for Nebraska 2: “Highway 2 is not just another highway that goes somewhere. Highway 2 is somewhere,” he’s known to have said. I’d say whatever else his failings, Kuralt had good taste in roads.

Just outside Broken Bow (pop. 3,491), seat of Custer County and pretty much the only town of any size in that county, the Sandhills Journey Scenic Byway Visitor Center offers a building with bathrooms and pamphlets and displays and, for my visit at least, a grandmotherly and talkative volunteer. Old enough, she said, to remember when the highway was just a road through the countryside that attracted no attention from the outside world. Not a scenic byway, and sand hill cranes were just flocking birds. Now a trickle of tourists and bikers and RVers come this way. She had some solid recommendations, especially a good diner for lunch.

The visitor center grounds include a relocated (or was that reconstructed?) Sandhills cabin. The residences of the farmers trying to scratch out a living in the Sandhills, and finding out that no amount of scratching would make decent crops grow consistently from the land.

The Custer County Courthouse. Saturday, closed.

A block from the courthouse, some buildings around City Square Park.

City Square Park is a generic sort of name. Wonder whether there’s anyone from the town who can be honored by renaming the park? Looking at list of notables from Broken Bow, one instantly stands out.

This guy: Solomon Butcher.

Wiki: “Solomon D. Butcher (January 24, 1856 – March 18, 1927) was an itinerant photographer who spent most of his life in central Nebraska, in the Great Plains region of the United States… he began in 1886 to produce a photographic record of the history of European settlement in the region. Over 3,000 of his negatives survive; more than 1,000 of these depict sod houses.”

*Frederic Schreyer and family, Custer County, 1880s, by Solomon Butcher.*

Definitely name the park after Butcher, Broken Bow.

One more in that town. I couldn’t be bothered to get out of the car.

West of Broken Bow is Anselmo (pop. 145), home of this church, St. Anselms Catholic Church, nicknamed Cathedral of the Sandhills. Saturday, closed.

A more common sort of building, not far from the church.

Not the most imposing that I saw, but representative of the many structures like it. The grist of a photo collection. Of course it has been done. I’m pretty sure I saw a room of Bernd Becher’s photos of water towers at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.

Nebraska National Forest and Grassland is in an unexpected place, slap in the middle of Nebraska, not due to a freak of nature, but the efforts of human beings. Specifically, mass plantings of trees by the federal government for more than 100 years, beginning (not a surprise) during the administration of Teddy Roosevelt.

Near the national forest entrance is the Middle Loup River, broad but shallow, and crossable on a foot bridge.

I camped in the national forest. The campgrounds weren’t completely full, but there were more people than I expected for a remote spot in Nebraska. Then again, it was a Saturday night, and soon enough I figured out what brought most of them: the ATV trails. Not long after dawn on Sunday, the campers across from me – a man and a small knot of teenage boys – roared away in a small caravan of ATVs crusted with dust from the day before.

I packed up and sought out a quieter place. A national forest hill with a fire tower and some views. The tower was closed.

But the views were still pretty good.

West from the national forest, Nebraska 2 heads into the rolling grassland of the Sandhills proper. In the village of Thedford (pop. 208), varied public interpretations of the Sandhills are available for reading.

The terrain along the highway Nebraska 2 might seem monotonous to some. Too bad for them. You’re driving across a kind of ocean, terrain all wavy, except that it’s solid ground, marked by occasional trees or manmade structures, and side roads — trails — wandering deeper into the hills.

The handful of towns are really just wide places in the road. Sometimes, not even that.

Nebraska 2 parallels the BNSF line, which came first.

Note: I was standing on a public side road to take that picture, as I do with all my RR shots.

Eventually, I took the road to Alliance. But that was merely incidental. Out this far, the road, as Kuralt said, is the destination.

Five-State National Road Dash

Posted on November 13, 2025 by admin

Our first winterish weather blew through early this week, but we’re back to cool days. For now. Some leaves seem to be clinging a little longer than usual, but most are accumulating on the ground, as expected for November. A scattering of Christmas decorations are already up, and I don’t mean in stores, where they’ve been for weeks. Let November be November, I say.

Much of my return from the East Coast generally followed the westward course set by the National Road, though I didn’t use much of US 40, which has that nickname. If you want to make decent time, you take I-68 through Maryland and then I-70 across Ohio and into Indiana, which pretty much parallels the National Road.

The Interstate is designed for just that kind of efficient travel. On the whole, it delivers. The four-lane highways also deliver boring drives, to hear some tell it. That’s an erroneous assumption, to hear me tell it. The Interstate has its fine stretches, such as I-68 in October, a gloriously colorful drive. Winding and hilly, too, through Maryland’s peculiar panhandle.

A rest stop near Hancock, Maryland, offers views to the north, so most of what you see is Pennsylvania.

The rest stop is at Sideling Hill, an enormous rise gouged by an enormous cut for I-68 to go through. An impressive feat of engineering, completed only in the 1980s. Then again, blowing up mountains is a thing that happens in this part of the country.

The narrowest part of the Maryland isn’t far away. At its narrowest, there is less than two miles are between the Potomac and the Mason-Dixon Line. So if you picked up Maryland by the panhandle, it would surely break at that narrowest point.

I filled my gas tank off the highway in the last town in Maryland, Friendsville (pop. 438), at a station whose enclosed retail space (between a few pumps) seemed little bigger than a walk-in closet, and yet there was a clerk manning the place on Saturday just before dark. Rotund and massively bearded, he was playing a video game when I opened the door to pre-pay. He might have been a little surprised to encounter a customer, at least one who didn’t pay at the pump.

From there, I continued into West Virginia, then took I-79 north into Pennsylvania, then headed west on I-70, which crosses West Virginia’s odd panhandle – more like a periscope – before reaching Ohio. After overnighting in Cambridge, Ohio, I bypassed Columbus but stopped in Springfield, near Dayton but with a distinct geographic identity. Alcor to Dayton’s Mizar, you might say.

Downtown Springfield was practically devoid of pedestrians that Sunday, and not that many cars drove through either. A few buildings rise high enough to suggest a more prosperous past, but look too closely and some of them seem to be as empty as the streets, or at least underutilized.

The National Road went, and still goes through Springfield, in the form of US 40. A milestone in Springfield marks the point at which the federal government quit paying for further westward expansion of the road. Anything else would be on the states, namely Ohio, Indiana and Illinois.

National Road Milestone, Springfield Ohio

Later, after the National Road had become History, the Daughters of the American Revolution erected a series of statues along the route, and others to the west: “Madonna of the Trail.”

National Road Madonna of the Trail, Springfield Ohio

There are 12, with the easternmost of them along the National Road. Erected in the late 1920s, the Springfield one was renovated about 20 years ago.

Nearby, passersby are urged to Dream Big.

About an hour west of Springfield, at the border of Ohio and Indiana on I-70 – just barely inside Indiana – is the Uranus Fudge Factory. I had to stop for that.

Sure, there’s fudge in there somewhere, but also a lot of gags involving the word Uranus (Your-anus). Examples can be found in the newspaper — an honest-to-God paper newspaper — that the store produces, The Uranus Examiner, and gives away. I have a copy. My kind of souvenir.

Sample front-page headlines from the Summer 2025 edition:

Breaking News: You Can Explore Uranus In Three Locations

Eating Their Way Through Uranus

Get A Lick Of Uranus

Sink Your Balls In Our Putt Holes

The second of those stories was about the 2nd Annual Eating Uranus Fudge Galactic Championship held at the Anderson, Indiana location in March. Apparently it was a Major League Eating-sanctioned event, and apparently MLE is a real thing. One Patrick Bertoletti won the 2nd championship at Uranus, putting away a bit more than nine pounds of fudge in about as many minutes.

Fudge is one thing, but mostly Uranus sells stuff. A lot of stuff.

The Richmond, Indiana location is the third of three for Uranus, and I think the only one with dinosaurs —

— and a 100-foot cross of corrugated steel over a metal frame.

Until about 10 years ago, the property belonged to New Creations Chapel, which also included a church building, boarding school for troubled teens and a Bible college. The ministry, for reasons its web site explains in some detail, sold the property to Uranus, including the cross.

Heading through Richmond, Indiana, I stopped at an entrance to a large park to check my map. Glen Miller Park. A colorful spot in October.

Not named after the bandleader, which would be Glenn Miller Park. “Glen Miller Park was established in 1885 and was named for Colonel John Ford Miller, who was a railroad executive during the late 1860s,” the city of Richmond says. “Colonel Miller bought the land from Nathaniel Hawkins in 1880, with the intention of transforming the land into a park.”

So Glen Miller as in glen, a term that evokes pleasant Scottish valleys. I was just about to be on my way when I noticed a statue.

It was another of the 12 Madonna of the Trail statues, located at the edge of the park, where it meets US 40. Unlike the earlier one in Springfield, I hadn’t sought it out. It was just there. One’s travels, like life, can be strange sometimes.

Armistice Day 2025

Posted on November 11, 2025 by admin

Earlier this year, I had the privilege of visiting the National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri.

The dedication.

That includes Grandpa, 309th Engineer Regiment, U.S. Army.

First State, Last State

Posted on November 9, 2025 by admin

The Avalon Project, run by Yale Law School, has a remarkable trove of “documents in law, history and diplomacy,” as the site says. If you’re looking for a translation of the Code of Hammurabi or the Athenian Constitution, there are links. You can also find the annotated text of Magna Carta, the Mayflower Compact, and the many founding documents of the United States, just to mention some of the more famous ones.

If you’re after something less well known, try The Combinations of the Inhabitants Upon the Piscataqua River for Government, October 22, 1641 or Money and Trade Considered With a Proposal for Supplying the Nation with Money by John Law 1705 or Agreement Concerning Trade-Marks Between Brazil and the United States (1878).

Also within the Avalon Project is the text of the Ratification of the U.S. Constitution by the State of Delaware, December 7, 1787. To wit:

We the Deputies of the People of the Delaware State, in Convention met, having taken into our serious consideration the Federal Constitution proposed and agreed upon by the Deputies of the United States in a General Convention held at the City of Philadelphia on the seventeenth day of September in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven, Have approved, assented to, ratified, and confirmed, and by these Presents, Do, in virtue of the Power and Authority to us given for that purpose, for and in behalf of ourselves and our Constituents, fully, freely, and entirely approve of, assent to, ratify, and confirm the said Constitution.

Delaware ratified before any other state, and so claims “First State” as its nickname. I have my own private nickname for Delaware. At least I do now, since waking up on the morning of October 25 in my rented room in Dover: “Last State.” As in, the 50th state I’ve spent the night in. That isn’t an achievement of any kind, just a reflection of the fact that I’ve been fortunate enough to have the time and resources necessary to go that many places. Also, that I’m eccentric enough to keep track.

After dallying in Concord on the 23rd, and spending some time in Attleboro, Massachusetts, I arrived in East Providence, Rhode Island for the night. The point of that stop was entirely to spend the night in Rhode Island, since I’d never done that either. So RI was number 49. My hotel was just barely in that state.

I noticed the Honey Dew Donuts even closer to the border. I’d seen other locations driving in. The breakfast at my “3-star” hotel was meager, so I went to Honey Dew for a second breakfast. I wish I could say I’d discovered a great regional doughnut shop along the lines of Tim Horton’s, but it was only OK. Maybe I’ll give the brand another chance sometime.

Since I’d wanted to go from eastern Massachusetts to central Delaware, I should have broken that day’s journey somewhere in New Jersey. But that wouldn’t have involved stopping for the night in Rhode Island, which had been a short stop back in the summer of ’91 – a few hours to look around Providence, and especially the capitol – and the destination of a day trip in ’95, to Newport.

As for Delaware, my entire previous experience with the state was the Wilmington interstate bus station, a break in a bus ride from Washington DC to Boston, which was a leg of the Great Bus Loop of 1982. I’m not even sure I got off the bus, though I usually did when it stopped for long enough.

Getting to Delaware last month involved an aggravating day’s drive, mostly on I-95, spending a lot of time in traffic jams. Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike, bah: more than grains of sand on a beach or stars in the sky.

Even so, there were a few worthwhile moments. I finally got to see (from the turnpike) the enormous American Dream mall, adjacent to the Meadowlands Sports Complex. Reportedly now second largest in the nation, after only the Mall of America. I’d been reading about American Dream for years, since “chronic delays” always figured in real estate reporting on the project, but now it’s more or less complete. (If the developers had asked me, they’d have kept the much cooler earlier name: Meadowlands Xanadu.)

At the Vince Lombardi Service Area on the NJ Turnpike, I parked in the very large parking lot and headed for the very large building and its very large men’s room. As I walked along, a small group of Hasidim went around me, not running but at a brisk pace, headed the same direction. By the time I got to the bathroom, they were almost done with their business, and off they went. Nothing unusual about seeing Hasidim, certainly not in New Jersey, but I have to note that October 24 was a Friday, and it was mid-afternoon. So they were racing the clock. Or, more accurately, the sun.

A digression: service areas on the New Jersey Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway are named for famed New Jerseyans. A list is here. I suppose it’s fine that musicians such as Frank Sinatra, Whitney Houston, Jon Bon Jovi and Celia Cruz are honored, but where’s Bruce Springsteen? It isn’t a matter of posthumous naming, since Bon Jovi is still alive – as is Bruce Willis, who also gets an area, and Connie Chung, who does as well, though she isn’t actually from New Jersey. The ways of the NJ Turnpike Authority are mysterious.

I arrived in Dover late on the October 24. The next morning, a Saturday, I left fairly early. First stop: the Delaware State House. It was closed for the weekend. My reaction: what kind of Mickey Mouse operation is this? I got a good look at the exterior, at least.

A fairly new sculpture, in front of the capitol: The Delaware Continentals.

The plaque is long on functionaries’ names, short on information about the Delaware Continentals. An historic plaque up in Wilmington says of them:

Commanded by Colonel John Haslet, the Delaware Regiment consisted of more than 500 battle-ready troops when they marched northward to join the Continental Army in August 1776. After expiration of enlistments and Haslet’s death, the Regiment was reorganized in the winter of 1776-77 under the leadership of Colonel David Hall. Participants in many of the major battles of the Revolution, their conduct earned the praise of their superiors and the respect of their enemies. Forced to endure great hardship, the Regiment was widely acclaimed for its discipline and bravery. Greatly depleted in number, they returned to Delaware victorious in January 1783.

That was hardly the end for the regiment. The 198th Signal Battalion in the Delaware Army National Guard traces itself directly to the Delaware Regiment.

Not far from the current capitol is the former state house, now a museum. It was open.

In fact, I got a tour.

I was happy to learn that here, in this very room, the delegates to the Constitutional ratifying convention met, and made their quick and unanimous decision.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: US History