Around 5 am, a mosquito that had snuck in through my cracked windows woke me up with its incessant buzzing. Swatting blindly, I managed to knock down one of my curtains to reveal the nascent sunrise over the prairie horizon. A freight train rumbling through the crossing half a mile away decided dawn was a perfect time to try out the horn. When I awoke again to full daylight, I peeked out the rear windshield and saw a curious cottontail rabbit eyeing the car suspiciously.
Charting a course for Agate Fossil Beds, a National Monument operated by the National Park Service, I charted a course vaguely north along a series of numbered state highways. Giant rolls of straw were out sunbathing in the fields. A beat up pickup truck from the 80s, sagging under the weight of the straw it was hauling in its bed, slogged slowly across a roadless field. Six cows were plodding along behind the truck, like children begrudgingly following their parents. Further along, another cow had found a metal fence post that jutted up just to neck height. I could practically see its bovine smile as it contentedly rubbed its neck on the post to scratch some long-neglected itch.
At Agate Fossil Beds, I took my pick of the best parking spots in the empty visitor lot. The visitor center was closed due to the pandemic but the hiking trails were still accessible. With sunscreen and insect repellent applied liberally, I grab a water bottle and headed down the Daemonelix Trail. It connected several in situ fossil sites containing the trail’s namesake fossil, a 5- to 6-foot corkscrew-shaped structure formed by ancient burrowing beavers. On a rise overlooking the trail, a mule deer watched me attentively before scampering off. The corkscrew dens were visible in cliff faces, although historical photos on signboards along the trail showed that they had been worn down over the years, possibly by weather and more probably by the hands of visitors neglecting to stay on the trail. When the dens had been dug, their tops had been at ground level. Now, millions of years later, the tops lay tens of feet below current ground level, a striking testament to the constructive powers of time that had deposited additional earth layer by layer.
The fossilized remains of a prehistoric beaver den
Leaving Agate, I cut across an expanse of ranch land on the aptly named Cut Across Road. A few more state highways, all two-lane affairs bisected by a dotted yellow line, brought me into the small city of Alliance. Outside of town was Carhenge, a massive monument modeled on England’s Stonehenge but constructed in the 1980s out of scrap cars. The cars had all been painted matte gray to lend them the same solemnity of the stone blocks at the real Stonehenge. Other car-based works of art dotted the grounds around Carhenge. One, called the Fourd Seasons, used old Ford automobiles to pay homage to Nebraska’s wheat-growing tradition: a single wheat-colored car planted facedown to represent growing springtime wheat, two green cars connected nose-to-tail and planted to represent taller wheat ready for harvest, a single white car to show the aftermath of the harvest, and finally another white car planted at a slight tilt to represent the windy winters of the Great Plains.
The Fourd Seasons, a public art installation in Alliance, NE
From Carhenge, I looped back south to Scotts Bluff National Monument, a significant waypoint for Oregon Trail journeyers near Chimney Rock. For them, the massive rock formation of Scotts Bluff had represented the end of the featureless Great Plains and had served as relief for the visual boredom they had been enduring while trekking across the plains. A spring near the base of the rock wall had provided much-needed fresh water, and nearby Miller Pass had allowed them access to the next leg of their arduous journey. From the visitor center parking lot, I set out on a 1.6-mile hike to a viewpoint on top of the bluff. With no trees to provide shade, I found myself sweltering in the sun as I marched up a long switchback on the formation’s fanned base. When I made it to the narrow, hand dug pedestrian tunnel that cut through the sandstone near the midpoint of the trail, I rested in the tunnel’s cool interior to reflect on how much greater the struggle of a pioneer would have been. I felt immensely grateful for the air-conditioned car I had arrived in and the sunblock that was helpfully preventing a painful color transformation.
Scotts Bluff National Monument
A thick, alabaster-white layer among the otherwise sand-colored strata in Scotts Bluff was composed of volcanic ash. I tried to imagine the incredible power and destruction of the volcanic eruptions in prehistoric Nevada and Wyoming that would have deposited enough ash to give rise to the layer. This was a welcome distraction from thinking about my aching calves as I plodded further uphill. Limestone structures jutted out from the sandstone formation, looking almost like surfboards that had been jammed into the cliff face and then snapped in half. The limestone was significantly harder than the crumbly sandstone. Even gently touching the sandstone face caused a small cascade of loose, tumbling sand grains.
Near the top of Scotts Bluff, the trail passed through a conifer grove. The breeze had picked up and now an enchanting scent wafted off the Rocky Mountain junipers. I picked a juniper berry and crushed it between two fingers. It smelled wonderfully of gin. Where a ponderosa pine had lost a branch, so much sap had cauterized the wound that it dripped off in icicle-like formations. At the summit, I was greeted by an expansive view of Scottsbluff and neighboring towns crowded in towards the base of bluff. The view extended for miles past the towns to encompass lush green fields that melted into distant hills on the horizon. A freight train that looked to be two miles long was chugging towards town hauling several hundred boxcars. A metal rod that had been inserted into the rock of the summit in 1933 showed how quickly erosion had progressed in the intervening 87 years. Where once the top of the rod had been level with the surface of the rock, now a solid foot of metal was exposed.
A hiking trail winds up the base of Scotts Bluff
From Scotts Bluff, I headed west through the grid of straight-line state highways, each indistinguishable from the next. Nebraska turned into Wyoming. As I passed a sign welcoming me to La Grange, I put on my favorite ZZ Top song as a fitting tribute. La Grange was a sleepy town, and the main road was passed by a series of houses whose exceptionally green, manicured lawns contrasted sharply with the collections of junk piled up on their front porches. Broken furniture, farm equipment, car parts.
I sailed by Meriden under clear skies as a lonely storm cloud drenched a few square miles off to the east. I rejoined the interstate system at Cheyenne and headed south on I-25. The solitude of lonely state highways and back roads evaporated and was replaced by traffic, billboards, and 50-foot high gas station signs. After crossing the border into Colorado, rain came and brought traffic with it. Just outside Longmont, the rain eased up and dull rainbow arched over a nondescript office park next to the highway.
I stopped in Denver’s northern suburbs to stock up on more fox urine and continued on I-25. The road skirted Denver to the west, offering views of its skyline and of the Broncos’ stadium. My car engine alternately strained and relaxed as it struggled up and coasted down the Front Range topography. Colorado Springs came and went. Then Pueblo. Finally, Colorado City brought the sanctuary of a modern rest area well off the highway and sheltered from most of its noise.
Take advantage of the fact that no one was around this late, I filled up my gallon water jugs from the rest stop water fountain. I had to use a smaller bottle that fit under the weak arc of the water fountain stream to then fill the larger, bulkier jugs.
The two sets of double doors on either side of the rest stop lobby were propped wide open. Leaves and even a few stray feathers littered the unswept floor. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a small rat (or maybe a large mouse) dart across the open doorway. Disgusted, I nonetheless felt relieved that the rodents were congregating away from my car, making it less likely that they would try to burrow in to see me. A few minutes later, my water jugs almost full, I again caught glimpse of movement in the same doorway. This time, however, it was a massive toad nearly the size of a softball who was staring at me confusedly. He hopped off lazily in the same direction as the rat. It dawned on me that there weren’t any mosquitos or other obnoxious insects buzzing around. I felt a small wave of gratitude for my well-fed and warty companion, who undoubtedly had helped with the pest control.
I fell asleep under a flickering streetlamp to the sounds of idling motors and a lone cricket chirping somewhere in the grassy median.
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