The Cowboy Trail

We finally made it back on the trail today after a couple of days taken to help heal a blister about the size of a silver dollar on the bottom of my left foot. That foot’s still not one hundred percent, but it felt alright, and we managed to cover the twenty mile gap between O’Neill and Atkinson, Nebraska.

It was a great day for a stroll. The sky was mostly overcast although a little blue peeked out from around the clouds from time to time. Temperatures started in the low 60’s and rocketed all the way up to the mid-70’s by early afternoon. For my Texas readers, I’m sorry, but Nebraska is only a couple days drive away. I might be time for your own pilgrimage off the anvil of the sun to someplace a little more temperate.

Cowboy Trail - Holt County, Nebraska

We covered the entire distance today on a small section of the one hundred and ninety-five mile “Cowboy Trail” in the outback section of central Nebraska. On the section we’re on, the trail loosely parallels US Highway 20, known as the “Outlaw Trail,” but it gets far enough from the highway for wildlife sightings and a great scenic walk.

I passed signs today prohibiting this use of the trail by both motor vehicles as well as cows, and I’m in full agreement with both of those sound policies.

No Cows Allowed - Cowboy Trail

Along the path, we saw more than a handful of rabbits, a couple of fairly large hawks, and two groups of six or seven wild turkeys. 

Now I know it’s a pretty common occurrence to see the annual Thanksgiving Turkey Trot 5K run advertised in most of our hometowns. Usually there’s a picture of a plump turkey with really short legs trotting at a reasonable pace. Based on these images, I always imagined that turkeys were ungainly beasts capable only of a light jog.

I can tell you from my experience today, that is NOT the case at all.  I spotted the first bunch of turkeys off to the left side of the trail in a pasture. I was too far away to get any pictures, but I thought I’d walk up a little closer and maybe snap a few shots. These wiley beasts somehow caught wind of my presence. I don’t know. I showered and had on clean clothes, but somehow they sensed me anyway. They took off at what looked like a walk and disappeared behind a row of round hay bales.

“No problem,” I thought to myself. I’ll just walk to the end of the hay, and they’ll be there. I walked past the hay and glanced toward the turkeys. They were more than halfway to a treeline a couple of hundred yards in the distance. I’d only covered about twenty yards. I started to jog. They picked up their pace, and the distance widened even further.

As I slowed to a stop, the last turkey in line glanced back at me over her right shoulder as if to say, “Silly human. Turkey Trot means we can actually run. You have no chance of outpacing us on the ground.” It’s a pretty good dialog for a glance from a turkey, but I’m pretty sure that’s what she was communicating.

This evening, I did a little research, and it turns out that a wild turkey can run at speeds exceeding twenty five miles per hour. The fastest human recorded to date is sprinter Usain Bolt who clocked in at just under twenty eight miles per hour in his record setting one hundred meter dash.

This will come as no surprise to most of you, but in the interest of full disclosure, I’m no Usain Bolt when it comes to burning up the track. More of slow smolder, if I’m lucky. 

That made me feel a little better about being outrun by a pack of wild birds. Today was a good saunter, and we’ll see what tomorrow will bring. 

Hope you all had a great Thursday!

Another Blister Rest Day

Another day of rest in the self-proclaimed Irish Capital of Nebraska - O’Neil.

Sidewalk Art - O’Neill, Nebraska

Got out on the town a little to test the foot. Apparently the town takes their claim seriously since these shamrocks were painted on the sidewalks at every intersection.  

Foot feels better so....

Ready or not, back to the trail tomorrow.

Pulled up in O'Neill

No pictures today. It's hard to get snapshots of the inside of your eyelids. 

Took a much needed day off to try to get ahead of a blister on the bottom of my left foot. I ended up sleeping till 1130, and that felt pretty good.

Another Long Day with Another Surprise Visit

Today was another long day, but a good one. With Dad’s help we managed to put in a little over twenty two miles. Dad walked along for about thirteen of them, so it looks like his foot is well on its way to a full recovery.

The Road to the West - Between Orchard and O’Neill, Nebraska

The first half of the walk happened along the shoulder of US Highway 20 between Orchard, Nebraska and O’Neill, Nebraska. The road was mostly flat, straight, and relatively empty.

For reasons not completely clear to me, we ran across a fairly large number of fairly small toads along the fringe of the road. Once again, a couple of them seemed bent on making the treacherous journey across the highway to a spot where the grass was just about the same level of greenness as the side they were bent on departing.

Dad was with me, and we did our best to chase them back into the grass on our side of the road. We were pretty successful, but one hard headed amphibian simply would not be herded.

I chased him to about the middle of the highway, and, finally fed up with his apparent intransigence, I picked him up and carried him back from whence he came.

The road was flat and straight and disappeared into the western horizon. On both sides of the road, the corn and soybeans finally yielded the space to vast fields dedicated to the production of hay. Row after row of freshly cut prairie hay weighing approximately twelve hundred pounds apiece littered the fields.

This subtle change in crop production is a little thing, but it’s the sort of change that keeps the walk interesting. It raises all sorts of questions, and the more I learn, the more I realize how much I really don’t know. How do farmers decide whether to plant corn, soybeans, or produce hay? How do these individual and apparently uncoordinated decisions drive market conditions later in the season at sale time? What do you do with a twelve hundred pound bale of hay that doesn’t sell, and how long will it last? All sorts of questions.

Closing out a productive day of walking, another Navy colleague called just as we were wrapping up our pedestrian efforts for the day. He was going to be passing through town on his way to visit family in South Dakota, and, once again, we were afforded the opportunity to catch up, tell a few tall tales, and participate in some good conversation. It’s the sort of thing that makes long stretches of solitude out on the road worth every step.