Day Zero: September 12-14; Fort Collins to Nebraska City

It is one-day drive to the starting point of our cycling. We broke it up into 2.5 days to give us time in Red Cloud, Beatrice, and Nebraska City. 

We drove to McCook, Nebraska on the 12th, staying at the Horse Creek Inn. We did our usual drive-by of the Frank Lloyd Wright designed Sutton house. We discovered it there decades ago only because the architect is so obvious to the eye.

First stop on the 13th was the town of Red Cloud where Willa Cather lived for a decade of her early life. After a day and a half of driving we finished listening to the Librivox audio recording of her O Pioneers, as we arrived. Her home is closed to inside tours while they create a handicap-access ramp that preserves the historic look of the house. However, the visitor center on the main street downtown--a few blocks away--afforded us ample opportunity to learn more about her. We know a little about McClure's magazine where she worked in New York City but want to learn more about its associate editor, Willa Cather.

We drove on to Beatrice, Nebraska where we stayed in the Victoria Inn after an informative two hours at the National Park Service's Homestead National Historic Park.

 

The short drive to Nebraska City on the 14th gave us time to prepare our bicycles and get ourselves organized at Whispering Pines bed-n-breakfast, as well as to visit the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center at the edge of town and the Kregel Windmill Factory Museum downtown. The latter was especially interesting. Bob found a well point there made at Johnson Well Screen Company in St. Paul, Minnesota. There is a one-in-several-million chance that this is the second time he touched it. He worked at this well-screen factory during the summers of 1962-3-4.

 

 

 

We arrived later in the afternoon at Whispering Pines Bed & Breakfast, a lovely renovated 1878 home with modern comforts, a sweeping lawn in back with gardens, pond and a small  waterfall. Jeanna Stavis, the marvelous innkeeper, just back from a bike ride herself, graciously allowed us to leave our car there for a week, provided wonderful information about the area, and we felt immediately at home here.

 

 

 

Nebraska City has reasons to consider itself the point of origin of Arbor Day (Look it up!). They hold an annual two-weekend celebration. By chance, we will bicycle out of town on the day the annual celebration begins and then expect to drive away before its second weekend.