Carhenge

May 28, 2024 – Day 73

Curt Gowdy State Park, Cheyenne Wyoming — Victoria Springs State Park, Anselmo Nebraska

We pulled out of Curt Gowdy this morning and were quickly struck by how many windmills there were! Lots of windmills.

Now the odd thing is, the heading above says Victoria Spring State Park. When we headed out we had no idea where we would be sleeping. Victoria Springs is the type of park we don’t like — half the park’s sites are reservable and rest are walk-in plus they won’t let you make last minute reservations for the sites that you can reserve. Paul called and left a message asking how many “walk in” sites were still available. We get it, it takes no effort to put up an Iron Ranger (which is just a lock box). It’s day 74 of our trip and we weren’t in the mood for surprises. We just wanted some assurance there was a spot for us. We didn’t have a plan B. (And as of June 2, nobody has returned our phone call.)

But first we need to grab some groceries! Like every other grocery store they have bacon. Hang on, what’s that package there: Beef bacon. Beef bacon? Yup, beef bacon.

Bacon is pork! Turkey bacon is just wrong. Beef bacon is an abomination. Understandable though as everything out here seems to be connected with cattle in one way or another.

Passing through Gering, Nebraska we realized that this doesn’t look like what we thought Nebraska would look like. We’re not sure what it should look it but we’re sure it shouldn’t look like this. We both thought this looks like more like Utah than Nebraska.

We never tire of seeing the windmill blades, they are so big! Every once in a while we get to see part of the tower. Those are really, really big.

We had a squeaker of a bridge in Alliance, Nebraska. We’re 12′ 6″ (or is it 9″?) but this bridge slowed us down, way down.

Why are we off the highway in Alliance Nebraska? You see, back in the 60s, or maybe the 70s, Paul had read about Carhenge, which is really amazing since it was built in 1987.

Your first question upon encountering Carhenge might be Why? But creator Jim Reinders’ answer would simply be Why not? After spending seven years of his career as a petroleum engineer in England, Reinders returned home inspired by a grand idea. He would create a Stonehenge replica, a “Stonehenge West,” for his hometown of Alliance, Nebraska, With no giant slabs of stone present in the area, Reinders decided on a new medium for his sculpture – cars. Cars would be readily available, would be similar in shape and size to the stones of Stonehengé, and the wheels would simplify logistics immensely.

The original 25 cars were erected during a Reinders family reunion in 6. days and dedicated on the Summer Solstice, June 21, 1987. “We were able to reduce the time of the original Stonehenge construction by 9,999 years and 51 weeks.”

Hmmm, that plaque omits the fact that 5 years earlier Jim’s father had passed and the family decided that this would be a good memorial. Frankly, a really epic memorial.

Here we can see the sun coming over one of the plinths. The Druids are coming! Oh, maybe Paul just stood in the shadow and aimed at the sun.

Notice all the bird poo? Carhenge is bird mecca. There are birds’ nests sticking out of every conceivable spot in the sculptures. Why not? They are high off the ground and protected from the elements.

In addition to the memorial, there was other art made from car parts to view.

It’s a surprising thing to have a tourist destination in the middle of nowhere in Nebraska. But, the town embraces it. The gift shop was staffed with a town employee. Billboards advertise the attraction. An estimated 80,000 people a year visit here! They have the giant map where people stick a pin in the location they’re from. Each year they install a new one. We were the first people from NH this year.

Let’s talk about trains. When we were passing through Alliance we passed a very large train yard. We’re talking larger than Boston’s North Station. (Go ahead, have a look on Google Maps. We’ll wait.) The rest of the day was spent on Route 2 traversing Nebraska passing or overtaking trains. Here’s one.

One that approached us took about a minute and a half. We were going about 60-65mph in the opposite direction. There’s an algebra problem! How long was it? We passed another which means trains seem to travel at speeds less than 60-65mph. Now you can solve the first math problem? How long was the train? Don’t worry, we’ll wait.

Yeah, we don’t know the answer either and we can both live with that.

Paul tried counting one, but a small town and some trees got in the way. It was at least 200 cars. We saw one train with 8 locomotives! There were locomotives in the front, middle and rear.

Enough about trains. We had no idea what Nebraska would be like. We’re led to believe that it’s flat and boring, and full of corn fields right?

Nope! There are a lot of hills and curvy roads. Lots of them.

We pulled into Victoria Spring, first going into the cabin entrance. It was not the campground entrance, that was the next right.. We got to travel on this beautiful camp road.

BTW, we are writing on June 2 and they still haven’t returned the call! Here’s a hint, most sites were available. We counted 3 other campers there that night, and one was the camp host, what a cushy job!

We drove through the park looking for water spigots and saw site #17 had one! (susan here: they’re oddly placed in between sites and all the way to the back. If the park were full you’d have people walking in your campsite if they actually had a water hose long enough to reach.) We pulled in, started to get the leveling blocks out, and as Susan was leaving to pay the iron ranger and she realized this wasn’t a walk-in site! It was a reservable site and the system wouldn’t let us last minute reserve it nor would it tell us if it was reserved. It was late. We were tired and hungry. We decided that we didn’t care and there was enough plausible deniability that we decided to stay put. If someone had reserved it they can knock on the door and obviously we’ll move. But looking around there weren’t a ton of folks trying to camp so we figured we were fairly safe in doing what we did.

To finish the day off as we were getting settled in the leveling/stabilization system wouldn’t deploy! We couldn’t move two of the four slides out either. We got sort of level with the plastic blocks but this isn’t ideal. Something is wrong with the hydraulic pump and we really need to figure out what’s wrong.

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Daily: 356

Total: 5,982

Driving Miles/Day: 230

Overall Miles/Day: 81

mpg: 7.31

Life Birds: 1 (Red-headed Woodpecker)