July 3

Started out at a little after 9:00 AM and headed north.  Found a number of creeks mentioned in the diary and looked hard to confirm the diary’s note of seeing many stone buildings around Russell, Kansas.  We were disappointed until we drove north of Russell and saw lots of things made from quarried stone (note stone fence posts in picture).

The diary noted seeing lots of sheep – we didn’t see one, but we did see cattle in both Kansas and Nebraska.  As we changed directions and started to head west in Nebraska, the diary said that the farms grew corn – we didn’t see any corn, but we did see lots of sorghum.  There must be corn in the area we drove through since Gothenburg processes corn.

We did our best to find a sod house.  Gothenburg, as our internet research indicated, has none other than the Sod House Museum.  Even though we arrived after they closed for the day, we did capture a picture.  Unfortunately, this museum did not host a recent meeting of sod house enthusiasts that met in Holdrege’s Nebraska Pioneer Museum.  (True – they told us!)

The diary mentioned passing the old remains of a fort near North Platte (our place of lodging for two nights).  The internet helped us identify this as Fort McPherson and let us know that the site is now a cemetery.  We stopped here and found a national cemetery.  We arrived in North Platte around 9 PM.