Today we were faced with more than 450 miles of interstate travel. The challenge is to overcome the boredom of mile after mile of sameness. Our route took us north through Kansas City, on to Lincoln, Neb., across I-80 and northwest to Scottsbluff, Neb.

Beth had been to every state surrounding Nebraska, but never had been to it. Well, today she got to travel almost the entire width of the state.

The most interesting part of the route was on US 26 from Ogallala to Scottsbluff. The road crosses the high plains of western Nebraska. At times we could see down from the plateau to the rolling hills and Lake McConaughy. A sign pointed to a public boat ramp. We took the turnoff hoping to get a view of the lake and take a picture for today’s entry. At the end of the road was a boat ramp,

but there were too many trees to see the lake. We did, however, get a picture of a lake view.

We continued up the road enjoying the scenery and counting coal trains headed east on the Union Pacific. We saw at least 5 trains. They were amazingly close together.

We also watch the sky ahead. It was very dark, very large, and very foreboding. I turned on the weather radio and managed to hear a storm watch for our area with high winds (50-60 mph), heavy rain, and hail. We decided to stop at a pull off for a historical marker and put on our rain gear. the view to the east was beautiful.

The view ahead of us was quite different.

We didn’t take time to read the markers.

The rain looked pretty bad, so we turned off to Bridgeport, Neb. After wading through some flooding that covered the road, we got gas at the corner gas station. The guy next to me said Scottsbluff hadn’t been hit by the storm and we should be OK. We headed up the road. About 1/2 mile down the road we were hit by heavy rain and those high winds. We found a circular drive to turn around in. I almost lost the bike as we turned across the wind, but I managed to keep it up and get us back to town.

We parked the bikes behind a restaurant on the lee side of the building. We went in and decided to wait out the storm by having dinner. As we ate, the heavy rain and high winds hit pretty hard. We also had marble-sized hail. The bikes were fine. By the time we finished eating the skies were starting to clear. We couldn’t go the way we intended because the flooded street was worse and there were downed trees along the way. We took an alternate route. About half way to Scottsbluff the roads were dry and the skies clear.

Our travel time was about 12 hours plus an hour of rain delay. We covered 664 miles.