Thursday 23rd March – Into Nebraska (state 34!!)

A fresh financial week and a week since leaving San Francisco.  The task today was to reach the Easterly border of Wyoming and Nebraska.  This is the furthest limit of our mad dash East to reach some more states before April.  I had spotted another National Monument in Nebraska, the Agate fossil beds, that we agreed may be interesting if we can squeeze a visit into the itinerary.  But it was over four hours away, so we agreed to try and hit the road before 1030am in order to achieve this.

We made good progress even though we were driving on roads other than the interstate, for a bit of a change this week.  There was the odd rain shower and threatening clouds loomed above us frequently, but these provided some dramatic landscape views:  

 

Nebraska State line... looking a little shot-up!

We swapped over driving responsibility after a quick lunch stop but it was still heading towards 3pm when we reached the Nebraska State border.  We discovered that the Agate monument was only open until 4pm and was still more than 20 miles away.  Making the sensible decision that 40 miles extra driving for a maximum of 30 minutes at an attraction was not worth it, we focussed instead on our stopping point for the night.

We continued about 40 miles into Nebraska to the Fort Robinson State Park where we found a completely deserted camp-ground.  However, there was life in the tourist office where we secured a site for the night for $23 which included a car pass for us to explore the park.  Yet again, we had stumbled upon a historical gem!  The fort has been in existence since 1874, seeing some dark days in relation to battles with Native Indian tribes.  It was the location where famous warrior Crazy Horse surrendered along with 889 members of his tribe in 1877 and was subsequently killed in September that year whilst trying to escape imprisonment:
 

Since the end of these conflicts, there have been interesting facilities created at the fort relating to military animals.  In 1919 it was the World’s largest training, care and breeding centre for Army horses and mules.  In 1942 the War Dog Reception and training corps was established here.  There are still posts showing where some of the buildings once stood.


This included a kennel area for approximately 1800 dogs that were trained as guard, scout, messenger and sled dogs.  Nearly 5000 dogs, about half of the entire number used by the Army in WWII, were trained here.  The centre was deactivated in 1946.

During this time, in 1943, a German Prisoner of War camp was established nearby.  We took a short drive to find the remnants of these buildings which housed up to 3000 men (right).  We discussed the thought process behind imprisoning German POWs here in Nebraska and came to the conclusion that it must have been a more reliable way to prevent escape than if they were being held in Europe somewhere.  Where’s the motivation to escape from the middle of nowhere in the USA? No chance of making their way back home from here!
 

Sadly, the museums and exhibits were all closed as it was out of season but we saw as much as we could by staring through windows! (photo of barracks below) This was as much exploration as we could fit in before the skies opened and we locked down the RV for the night in our secluded camp-ground.