The Sandcastle

One and a half miles south of exit #86 of Interstate 80 near Menlo, Iowa, there is a twelve foot high rock. Every year local teenagers would paint on that rock the types of things teenagers usually paint on rocks. In 1999 all that changed.

That’s the year one teenager, Ray “Bubba” Sorenson II, painted the rock white. Then he painted on it scenes of what freedom means to him as his way of celebrating Memorial Day.

Every May since then Bubba paints the rock white again, at least part of the rock–see details in the photo below. Then he paints new scenes.

I intended to show you what the entire rock looks like today, May 10, 2011, but the images painted on it are copyrighted. Fair use allows a reviewer to include small clips so here’s one of the photos we took of this year’s painting in progress.

You can see what the rock has looked like over the years by going to http://www.thefreedomrock.com/.

People from all over the world now stop along their drives through Iowa to see this wonderful piece of art. I hope you get to see it in person some day. It is worth the stop. And there is big rig parking at the museum across the street.

TTYL,

Linda

We are not in the desert southwest anymore. Here’s some proofs:

Bugs on the windshield. Lots of bugs. Lots and lots of bugs. We have to wash the windshield daily to be able to see clearly. If we don’t do that and it starts to rain we will have a smeary mess. Which will simply get worse as soon as we turn on the windshield wipers.

Windsocks on bridges. The winds follow the rivers so the government put wind socks on the bridges to warn those of us driving high profile vehicles to be ready to handle the cross winds as we cross the bridges. Maybe they got tired of pulling vehicles out of their rivers?

Real trees. Not just stumpy little things but real trees. The ones that loose their leaves in the winter and grow them back in the spring. The ones that scratch your RV if you get too close.

Green grass. Not rocks. Not yellow grass. Green. Emerald green. Imagine that.

Storm shelters. In the RV parks! Check this out. http://masoncity.net/pView.aspx?id=1242&catid=58. That’s where we are headed today. So are the storms.

The exception that could make you wonder:

89 degrees in Lincoln, Nebraska, during our lunch stop yesterday, May 9th. It’s only May and we are running our house air conditioning as we go down the road! Oh well, at least the generator is getting some much needed exercise. That helps keep it healthy, you know.

TTYL,

Linda

According to the brochure from the visitor’s center, Bailey Yard is “the world’s largest train yard.” I don’t find that hard to believe. Here’s a diagram of the tracks in the yard.

This is the locomotive repair shop. It’s about the size of three football fields and crews there can repair 750 engines a month.

Here’s a model of the interior of the repair shop.

To the right of the repair shop is the sand tower and the east bowl tracks. You can barely see the hump in the background.

Sand is dumped from the engine onto the track if an engine begins to lose traction. Cars are pushed over the hump and allowed to roll down into any one of the 64 tracks in the bowl according to where those cars are headed. The upturn at the far end of the bowl helps keep the cars from rolling too far.

Here we see the east end of the bowl with engines in front sitting on the ready track. These are the engines that will eventually pull out the east bound cars making trains for various destinations.

And this is the East Route Tower where a yardmaster controlls the makeup and departure of those trains.

This is Bailey Yard Headquarters where the superintendent, dispatchers, managers, and train crews gather to do or prepare for their work.

If you’d like to see all that for yourself but you don’t have a camera as good as Dave’s, don’t fret. You can watch it all on the live video feed from the yard.

Last, but not of the least importance to us, here is our home in the visitor center’s parking lot as seen from the tower.

Dave has just finished packing us up for another day of travel in our home so I must go now. I hope you enjoyed your tour of the Union Pacific’s Bailey Yard in North Platte, Nebraska.

TTYL,

Linda

Does anybody really care? Today we do.

Today’s travel plan includes a stop in North Platte, Nebraska, to spend some time at the Union Pacific’s Golden Spike Tower and Visitor Center. This tower overlooks Bailey Yard which is huge. The UP has encouraged rail fans to stop and see their yard for years and we have done so before but this particular tower is new to us.

Wanting to allow plenty of time there, I went to bed early last night so I could get up early this morning thus having extra time in our day while still allowing us to get into our next overnight spot before traffic got bad.

Unfortunately, I had only been up a few minutes when Dave announced it was wasted effort since today is Sunday and the tower does not open until 1:00 pm on Sundays.

Oh, well. That just means I get to do my regular morning computer stuff this morning, right?

Wrong. Dave came in from hitching up the car and went right to the maps. We’ll be crossing into the Central Time Zone between here and North Platte. We are now an hour behind schedule.

It’s not unusual for me to have no idea what time it is. At least I do know what day it is. The Sunday funnies told me that.

TTYL,

Linda

Back in the early 90’s there was a time when we didn’t own a recreational vehicle. But the urge to travel was upon us.

So we visited a local RV dealer and asked if they ever rented their motorhomes. They said they would but it would not have bedding or dishes. We could supply those so we rented what turned out to be a brand new Class C for three weeks and headed west.

We took U.S. Highway 2 which takes the same route as the then Burlington Northern Railway stopping at places of interest to us along the way. One of those places was Havre, Montana, then headquarters of the BN.

There we met a PR guy and talked trains. We told him about our then current model railroad, the Midland Industrial, and my fictional history of it.

“History of the Midland Industrial Railroad

The Midland Industrial Railroad came into being in the early 1970s when the Burlington Northern merger made the BN owners of trackage though several neighborhoods in the city of Midland. Since the BN prefers through traffic to local switching, they sold fifteen miles of former CBQ tracks, from Dowling Yard to Isle Yard, to the Midland Industrial Railroad, retaining the right to run their coal trains through to serve the power plant in the Essex neighborhood. The BN also sold several Great Northern locomotives to the Midland Industrial.”

He was surprised at how real my history sounded. He said it sounded just like what the BN would have done.

If you are interested, you can read more about our Midland Industrial at Midland Industrial.

Once we reached the west coast we dropped down to U.S. Highway 30 for the trip back east thus following the Union Pacific Railroad.

What brought all this to mind? Today we stopped for lunch in Green River, Wyoming, which brought back memories of our stop there all those years ago.

That time we stopped at the huge freight yard in Green River. They have a bridge that crosses their yard where Dave decided he’d go to take pictures. While waiting for him, I sat down on a bench outside the yard office. A fellow came outside several times while I was sitting there. He turned out to be a UP conductor waiting for the yard to assemble his local train. We talked a little and he asked me which direction we were traveling. I said east and he went away. Shortly he returned with a multi-page printout of the manifest for a train that would be heading our direction that he thought we might enjoy chasing. The next time he came out he was astonished to see me actually reading the manifest. When he realized how much I was into this stuff he went back in the office and came out again with more stuff for me including a current timetable, a book of track spots, and a plastic holder into which crews put their switch lists while working to protect them from the elements. I wish I’d asked the guys name. He sure made my day!

And I enjoyed it all over again today just remembering it.

TTYL,

Linda