Cycling adventures thus far

As I was driving from NH to NE, I kept having visions of wide open spaces, miles of flat county roads, and being able to ride everywhere without needing to shift or to think about climbing any hills. The first long ride I took was the YMCA's community bike ride which took place my second weekend in Scottsbluff. There were four different distances to choose from, and I went with the 28 mile loop, figuring I hadn't been on my bike enough this season to comfortably finish the 70 mile loop. And I most definitely didn't want to have to catch a ride with the sag vehicle!

The 28 mile loop was lovely, I had good company of a few other riders, and the one 'hill climb' we had was about 200 feet of elevation gain. 'This is going to be great for distance riding' I thought. And of course there is always riding the road up the Monument if I want a real hill challenge...that's steep enough to rival the steepest climbs around Keene! The main challenge on the ride was a strong, easterly wind that we rode straight into for the first 10 miles of the route. Wind is going to be the constant factor in cycling out here. Or life out here for that matter.

So the following Saturday I decided to try a different route, this time to ride to the Wyoming state line, which I knew to be less than 30 miles away. This route was again along a county highway, and even though there was a decent amount of traffic, drivers would either pull around me with plenty of room to spare or slow way down as they went by. But flat, this route was not. There weren't the big hills one finds riding around the Monadnock region, but they were enough to warrant shifting gears and switching into climbing mode. The terrain was beautiful though. This has been an exceptionally wet spring, and everything is still green and lush. The Monument and the Wildcat Hills slowly receded behind me as I headed west, and I could feel the road continually climbing as I headed towards the invisible Rockies in the distance.

As I neared the state line, I came across a prairie dog town and had to stop and take some photos. Apparently bicycles are just as terrifying to prairie dogs as cars are, because my presence was greeted with squeaks and barks of warning and mostly I saw little, chubby prairie dog hindends running towards burrows. So I have some photos of the town as a whole, but not so much photos of the cute little prairie dogs.

Prairie dog town!!

After riding through the small town of Lyman, NE, I crossed the Wyoming state line and took a needed snack and drink break in the shade of a lone tree. On warm, sunny days out here, breaks tend to be planned when shade presents itself, rather than when you feel like stopping. Because of the elevation, the sun's heat is more intense out here, and shade is a welcome break.

Trek and I explore new states and new horizons.

The other constant, at least during the late spring and early summer, are the storms. And, unlike back in Keene, you can see the storms moving towards you across the horizon. Visibility is usually 30 miles at least, and often greater, so you can watch a storm move in from quite a long way off. On this ride, as I was packing my wrappers back into my saddle bag, I noticed the sky and clouds were darkening to the west. You can sort of see it in the above photo.

The storm was still in Wyoming here

I knew I was 23 miles from home, and I knew just how ferocious these storms can be, so I decided to hightail it for Scottsbluff, and keep an eye out for front porches and barns in which to take refuge should the storm overtake me. Fortunately, 92 is mostly downhill heading east, so I was able to keep a solid pace and hit my stride. It was a bit unnerving to hear the thunder growing ever louder, feel the shift in the air temperature as the leading clouds caught up to me, and see flashes of lightening when I would check over my shoulder to see where the storm was. Finally I passed the outermost traffic light in Scottsbluff and knew I was back in safe territory. As I was heading into town however, I heard sirens winding down. Yup, those sirens. My first thought was, 'they must be going off for flooding warnings...there's no way that storm is tornadic.' Then, at a traffic light, a driver called out to me that a tornado warning was in effect and asking if I was near shelter. I assured her that I was about five blocks from home.

Clouds get darker as the storm gains on me

Once Trek and I were safely indoors, I checked the radar map and sure enough, we were under a tornado warning. About five minutes after I got home the storm hit town with wind and rain. No tornadoes touched down in Scottsbluff, although a small one touched down west of Mitchell. The storm was actually more bluster than anything, which was fine with me after the storm we'd had three days prior. Below are a few photos from that storm. The resolution isn't so good as they were taken from inside my apartment looking out at the rain. This storm came in first with immense dust clouds and wind speeds of 50+mph. And then came the rain. And then the hail, thunder and lightening. Pav rushed madly about the apartment while I sat the table and watched and listened.

Rain pouring down on the carport

This is out my east window-the rain came down so fast that the water had nowhere to drain off to. We got 0.77 inches of rain in under an hour with this storm!

Hailstones...about raisin size, so nothing too bad.

Oglala National Grasslands

Last Tuesday was the NGPC's District Birding Day for the northwest region. Although I'm not an employee of the state, my other hat (aside from Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory) is as an educator within the wildlife department of Game and Parks. So I tagged along with Andrew and Brad (my two office mates and co-workers) two hours north to the Oglala National Grasslands for a morning of birding. Given what I had seen of the topography of Nebraska thus far, I was expecting the drive to be almost completely flat. It was not. We drove through rolling prairie hills covered in scattered herds of Black Angus cattle, through areas of small wetlands, and through Ponderosa Pine-flecked rocky hillsides before turning onto the rough, gravel road that led out to the grasslands and the Hudson-Meng trailhead and Bison Bone Bed.

Grass roots taking hold in the thin, sandy soils.

The Oglala National Grassland is actually run and maintained by the USDA, which was a surprise to me. I hadn't realized that the USDA owned and maintained pasture land. The US Forest Service also has a hand in the maintenance and cattle rotation of the lands open to grazing. The Bison Bone Bed is an archeological dig site of, you guessed it, lots and lots of bison bones. When the site was first discovered, folks thought this was a human-caused bison kill, namely killed by Sioux, who were the native peoples who lived here in the west. However, closer inspections have revealed no signs of weapon use, and now the main hypothesis is that they died there of natural causes. What exactly, they aren't sure, nor are they sure why all of these bison would choose to die in the same little hollow.

We spent the early part of the morning walking around the little wetland area near the dig site and walking through the nearby ash grove looking and listening for birds. We were helped immensely by the presence of two gentlemen from Omaha, both members of the Nebraska Ornithologists Union, who could identify nearly every bird around simply by call. The list rounded off at 50 birds, including a few new ones for me: rock wren, lark sparrow, and western meadowlark. The western meadowlark is also the state bird of Nebraska, not to be confused with the eastern meadowlark which is the state bird of Kansas. They look nearly identical, and the best way to tell them apart is by their call. Fortunately, the western meadowlarks never seem to stop singing, so I've learned their call by heart in only a few weeks.


The grasslands at the beginning of the hike

The beginnings of the badlands. Remember, this was all ocean once.

Further into the badlands.

After an hour and a bit of birding, the later arrivals showed up, and most of us decided to walk the Hudson-Meng trail over to Toadstool Geologic site. The trail starts off through prairie, but soon descends into what are known locally as 'the badlands'. As you can see from the photos, these are gullies and hills of sandstone that have been carved out by water, and are still formed and shaped by water. Fortunately for us it was a partially clear day with no real threat of rain: there were parts of the trail where we couldn't have climbed up to escape from any flash flood waters if rain had come! You can see the layers within the rocks of periods of slow moving water versus periods of quickly moving water based on the size of sediments laid down; clay in slower waters, larger pieces in quicker waters. It was fascinating and often I felt as though I were walking through an alien landscape. Once reaching Toadstool Geologic site, we checked out the footprints left by long dead early mammals that lived on these plains and then headed back to the trailhead for lunch and a brief wildlife meeting.

More photos from the badlands.


Having been on the job for 7 days at the time of the field trip, I didn't have much to say about what I'm currently working on or what I might need help with in the near future, and spent a lot of the meeting surreptitiously watching a pair of mountain bluebirds bringing food to their nestlings, hidden away under the roof of the bone dig (they've now constructed a building over the dig so work can continue despite wind and weather and to include some room for interpretation and educational programs. Sadly my camera was back in the truck, so I have no pictures of the bluebirds, even though both posed perfectly more than once.

There are primitive campsites out at Toadstool, and I've noted this place as one to explore over the course of a weekend either later this summer or into the fall. It's slightly under two hours from Scottsbluff, so easily within reach for a weekend of camping, hiking and birding. There's even a little restaurant, open now for over ten years, that's part of a little old west town with a hotel for overnight guests. Well, I say hotel, but it's really designed like an old-time saloon, with four rooms, each off of the wooden boardwalk that serves as a sidewalk. They have delicious pie there though, including a blueberry rhubarb pie, which was amazing.

Note the bands of colors in the hills from different sediments laid down at different times.

Although rain threatened a bit just as we were finishing our hike, we managed to all stay dry, the sun coming in and out for most of the afternoon. The wind made hearing bird calls difficult, even for our two experts, but wind is something you get used to out here. All in all it was a successful day, and I enjoyed learning about and seeing a new part of the panhandle.

The ubiquitous Nebraska old-fashioned windmill.

Scottsbluff: A Beginning

View of Scottsbluff from the east side of the Monument

A week and a half after moving to Scottsbluff, NE from Keene, NH, I'm beginning to feel settled. I'm learning my way around town, finding the grocery store, the library, the coffee shops, and my office, and have started to meet others who live here (aside from co-workers). After two days of mostly fruitless phone calls and searches through local reality listings, my mom and I found a nice little one-bedroom apartment located in central Scottsbluff about a block and a half from the library. For those of you who knew my apartment in Keene, this one is about the same location-wise to downtown. I've mostly unpacked my belongings, although the books are all still in their brown boxes awaiting unpacking and cataloging, so you'll all just have to wait a while longer to see pictures of my new home.

Yesterday I went on my first long bike ride since moving to town, although I've biked to and from work a few times this last week (wind and thunder/lightening permitting). The YMCA hosted a community/family bike ride with four different distance options. I saw the advertisement and thought, 'why not?' The ride was a lot of fun and incredibly beautiful. I chose the 28 mile loop and rode with another woman who is a nurse at the regional hospital in town. Right now the North Platte River is holding at just over 9 feet above flood stage, so everything is very, very green, and there is a lot of open water around, which made the ride even more lovely.

There may not be the mountains of NH or the Rockies out here in the panhandle, but the sandstone bluffs on the southern side of the North Platte have their own grandness. These bluffs are crusted in a harder sandstone that protects them from much weathering, and so these bluffs rise nearly 1,000 feet above the high plains around them (Scottsbluff is already at nearly 4,000 feet above sea level). The bluffs seem to have been stuck on the plains almost at random, as though some giant was building the landscape with blocks.
Scotts Bluff National Monument

This afternoon I hiked up the 1.6 mile trail to the summit of the Monument (Scotts Bluff Monument is actually in the town of Gering, just south of the city of Scottsbluff, so everyone here simply calls it 'The Monument'). It was a beautiful sunny day, with a gusty south wind that caught me by surprise coming around switchbacks along the trail. From the top I had a 360 view of the surrounding plains, the Wildcat Hills to the south, Chimney Rock (of Oregon Trail fame) to the east, and, if it had been clearer, of Laramie Peak, 90 miles away in Wyoming.

Dogs must be kept on leashes. However, pet rattlesnakes can apparently be walked off-leash. :)

It's difficult to see with the haze, but just to the left of the bluffs you can make out Chimney Rock about 20 miles to the east.

View from along the trail

Wildflowers along the trail

And finally, for those of you who have been wondering how Scotts Bluff National Monument found its name, wonder no more.

Tuesday I'm headed north to the Oglala Grasslands with my co-workers for a Game and Parks District Birding Day. Up there it's grasslands and pine forest together, and I'm excited to go birding and to visit another area of the panhandle.