How we got to Colorado

When I lived in Nebraska, one day I was thinking, "There must be something else that happened during this stay here!", so my husband and I decided to visit Colorado.

We started our trip in (A) Lincoln, Nebraska and headed towards (E) Denver, Colorado on I-80. It is about 8 hours in a car, but takes much longer because you have to make several stops, so here they are.

I must tell you travelling that part of the Interstate 80 was probably the most boring time I have ever spent in a car. This is what you see for hours and hours...you just feel it will never end.

(B) Great Platte River Road Archway Monument - Kearney

Being on the Mormon, Oregon, California Trails, the Pony Express and the Lincoln Highway Kearney is home to several museums. One of them is Great Platte River Road Archway Monument, which spans Interstate 80. It contains exhibits that trace the history of the Great Platte River Road from the Oregon Trail days to the present.

(C) North Platte - Bailey Yard

North Platte is a railroad town and home to Union Pacific Railroad's world's largest rail yard Bailey Yard.
North Platte is served only by freight trains today, but during World War II the city was famous for the North Platte Canteen. Tens of thousands of volunteers from North Platte and surrounding towns met the troop trains passing through North Platte, offering coffee, sandwiches and hospitality.

The Golden Spike Tower and Visitor Center is an eight-story building which overlooks the railroad staging area. The tower and visitor center are open to the public year-round.

(D) Ogallala

The town's name comes from the Oglala Sioux tribe. It is also known as Nebraska's Cowboy Capital and it first gained fame as a terminus for cattle drives from Texas during 1875 to 1888. These trails are known as the Western or Great Western trails. Cattlemen met in Ogallala's hotel and saloons with Texas cattle drovers and haggled over prices to be paid for cattle which were used to stock Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, the Dakotas and Montana, and were also shipped east on Union Pacific. The business boomed during summer months. Today you can visit Ogallala's Front Street Museum depicting the era. It is open year-round at Front Street and is one of Ogallala's western and historical attractions.

http://www.ogallalafrontstreet.com/index.htm

Lake Mcconaughy is located 9 miles north of Ogallala. It is a reservoir named after Charles W. McConaughy - a grain merchant and mayor of Holdrege, Nebraska. It is a popular location for fishing, boating, water sports, camping and hunting.

I also got myself a souvenir at Ogallala. At that time we were about to relocate, and I wasn't sure whether it would be to Chicago or China. Yes, that is how crazy my life was at that time. So, I wanted to have something from Nebraska, just in case I was moving to Illinois - another US state or from the USA, in case I was moving to China. I wanted something that would represent both, and this was perfect - a photo album, but it is not your typical photo album. This one is made from a recycled car license plate made by Littlearth http://www.littlearth.com/home.html

And when it seemed that we would never leave the flatlands, here it was in front of us, out of the blue - the peaks of the Rocky Mountains. That is the moment when an entirely different adventure started...in Colorado. I will write about it later.

The life of Cardinal

The fist time I have ever seen a Cardinal was when we moved to Nebraska. I couldn't believe what I was seeing in my garden. What a beautiful bird, and he can sing. If you haven't heard this bird before, watch the video below.

You can see and hear these birds here in Chicago area as well. They are everywhere.

Usually you spot a couple. What a picture, I have never seen this before!



 

"The Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) is a North American bird in the genus Cardinalis; it is also known colloquially as the redbird or common cardinal. It can be found in southern Canada, through the eastern United States from Maine to Texas and south through Mexico. It is found in woodlands, gardens, shrub lands, and swamps.
The Northern Cardinal is a mid-sized songbird with a body length of 21 cm (8.3 in). It has a distinctive crest on the head and a mask on the face which is black in the male and gray in the female. The male is a vibrant red, while the female is a dull red-brown shade.
The Northern Cardinal is mainly granivorous, but also feeds on insects and fruit. The male behaves territorially, marking out his territory with song. During courtship, the male feeds seed to the female beak-to-beak. A clutch of three to four eggs is laid, and two to four clutches are produced each year. It was once prized as a pet, but its sale as a cage bird is now banned in the United States by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918." - Wikipedia




 Northern Cardinal in the USA

 

My husband and I are bird watching enthusiasts, so a bird feeder was the first thing added to our garden. It didn't take long for our Cardinal couple to find it, so we were really enjoying the view, and not only that. We were so lucky, and witnessed much more. There was a medium size needle tree right in front of our den window. One day I found a nest there, and this is the story:



Week one - 3 eggs

I wonder how long I have to sit here...



 Finally hatched...

We are really hungry!!!



I swear...I have no idea what happened, but it is just me now. Is anybody coming to feed me?

Father: I am really glad I have found this feeder. Mother: Stop talking and eat!

Father: That is enough, let's go. Mother: I am not flying back and forth the whole day.

What on earth...Where is he?

 

Father: I have found him!



Mother is really angry, she wants you to start flying and finally feed yourself.



Absolutely, positively NOT ready

You can't be serious. You want me to fly up there?!

Not happening.

I need to hide somewhere else...

Maybe here, one just needs to blend in


 

Baby: No! I am not going...!Father: Enough is enough, you can't hide forever


 

Who says -forever-, one more day in another bush, maybe...

And how did it end? We did see him flying. YES, we did. Actually, we saw his very first flight - around our house being followed by the mother and father. And from that day on, we were watching 3 Cardinals on our feeder.


THE HOME OF THE HUSKERS

The Huskers or The Cornhuskers is the name associated with a football team  (for the Europeans: 'football' here means American football. 'Football' is called soccer in the USA... and the UK) and the home of The Huskers is the US state of Nebraska. You will see this logo and the coulours everywhere.







Nebraska and its capitol city of Lincoln became also my home for one year.

This state was crossed by many historic trails and the most important was the California Gold Rush trail, but before that many Native American tribes lived in Nebraska : Omaha, Missouria, Ponca, Otoe, Pawnee, Lacota (Sioux). Nebraska became a state in 1867.

Ethnically, the largest group of people in Nebraska are German-Americans and Czech-Americans which I have to mention because I am Czech.
Well, I would hear so many times "I am Czech too!" when I mentioned I was from the Czech Republic, but don't expect the person to speak Czech or know much about the Czech Republic, many of them still call it -Czechoslovakia-. To be fair, I did meet some people which knew a lot about their ancestors' origins, even visited the country, but there were not many.
On another Czech note, there is a town in Nebraska called Wilber, it is the official 'Czech Capital of the USA' and it hosts an annual Czech festival.

Lincoln was my first home here in the USA as my husband worked there on a project.
I had visited other parts of the USA before I moved to Nebraska, but it was on the east and the west coast. So, what was waiting for me here was a big shock.
It wasn't so much of a cultural shock ( I love to explore other cultures) as it was an 'environmental' shock for me. I will not be lying, it was a very traumatic experience.
Nebraska is part of the region called the Plains and it is part of the Great plains region that can be described as a land covered in prairie, steppe and grassland.

 

I come from the region of the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands and lived in the wooded mountain range region of the Black Forest in Germany, Midi-Pyrenees region with its range of mountains The Pyrenees in France etc. In other words, totally different environment.
What I am trying to say is that I am an outdoor person (...with many other interests) who loves hiking, cycling etc. and I wasn't settling well in this part of the world. Some locals called it a "cows and corn" place and that pretty much describes it. The only outdoor activity that you could possibly participate on was hunting and fishing and I am not big on these.
The summer and winter temperatures are not pleasant and get ready for possible tornadoes and violent storms too.
Also, I am sorry, but Lincoln isn't particularly an international hub either and after living in London for example, it wasn't an easy transition in any sense. Not to mention that everything/anything was so far away....I felt like a prisoner, from many angles.

It was definitely the most difficult relocation for me (for other reasons as well) and I don't want to remember much about that time, but I tried to make the most of it and do have some amazing memories even from Nebraska.
One of them is the Annual Spring Migration where estimated 500 thousand, about 80% of the world's population of  Sandhill Cranes pass through the Platte River valley when they are heading north every year and make a stopover near Grand Island and Kearney. I was lucky to witness this spectacle.

I will add more pictures from Nebraska in my next posts.