Sunday, August 28, 2022

Road Trip to Field of Dreams - Day 6 - Denver, Colorado to Lincoln, Nebraska

Our sixth day on the road would be a long one -- 490 miles and near 7 hours of driving to get from Denver to Lincoln.  Most of those miles and hours would be in Nebraska.

 Above is the state welcome sign just over the Colorado/Nebraska border along Interstate 76.

I like the Nebraska sign.  It just makes you feel good to be entering the land of "the good life."  I have always wondered how to get to the good life.  Now I know.  

And, who doesn't like Arbor Day?  Big fan of trees here.   

It is kind of funny that the Nebraska good life sign is out in the middle of nowhere -- with brown/green fields as far as the eye can see.  Maybe that's part of the good life.  

Before getting out of Colorado, we stopped at Home Plate for breakfast.  On our way to FoD, how could we not stop here?  Home Plate is a just off the freeway in Fort Morgan and was busy with a lot of local folks.  It was a fun stop for us and gave us a small window into Fort Morgan life.   

One of our goals on this trip was to find good independent coffee places.  The Bristlecone in Cedar City had been a home run and, though I am sure Colorado is loaded with such places, we had struck out in the state.  

Our top Nebraska find was Black Sheep Coffee House.  Getting to Black Sheep was an adventure. We exited the Interstate and almost immediately were detoured onto a dirt road.  We travelled the dirt road passing farmhouses, trucks and row upon row of corn.  There was nothing to do but go forward on the dirt road until finally we came to Platteview Road, which thankfully was paved.   Platteview Road took us into the town of Springfield and a corner lot that supplied all your needs -- a Pit Stop gas station, Valentino's Pizza and Black Sheep Coffee.  Great coffee, friendly people.  Kind of the poster business for the Nebraska good life. 

 Our second great Nebraska find was Slow Lane Coffee in Ogallala.   Again, great coffee, friendly people and more.  Slow Lane is down the street from the Prairie Theater which is in the middle of a nicely preserved downtown.  Photos of lakes and trees on the walls.  On Spruce Street in the home of Arbor Day. Slow Lane. Nebraska good life.   

As we drove through Nebraska, there was just something calming about the state.  The state demanded nothing of us.  The place was green.  Farms. Corn.  Yet, there was human life out there, which we brushed up against at Black Sheep and Slow Lane and the experiences had been well .... kind of like a little taste of the good life.  

As we drove through Nebraska, we talked about the trip so far, what was coming up and a fairly big item that we had completely forgotten to plan -- how exactly were we going to get back to Pasadena from the Field of Dreams?  We had planned every day and every stop of our trip to Dubuque, Iowa. But, where to from there?  How do we get home?  Nada.  

So, we talked about how we might get back to Pasadena.  We could return the same way we came.  Then there was the northern route.  There was also a southern route.  We talked about each.  After a day's discussion rolling through Nebraska, we came to a definitive conclusion about our return -- we would take one of the three routes back home.  I was content with the indecision, my wife, the planner, not so much.


There were a few Nebraska places we had wanted to visit.  Fourth of July in the town of Seward was one we thought about and the timing was just not right.  Another stop we wanted to make was the University of Nebraska Dairy Store at the Lincoln campus where they sold ice cream, cheeses and meats all made by university students.  We just missed the 9 pm close.  Next time.

We stopped for the night in Lincoln.  The next morning I noticed we had parked next to a truck with an "OB" sticker.  I was excited that we might see someone from almost home, Ocean Beach ("OB"), San Diego, where I lived for a season.  Alas, the OB was Orange Beach in Alabama.  Orange Beach?

Tomorrow....... Iowa!!  




 

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