Day 44, Tuesday, June 3


Crawford, Nebraska to Lusk, Wyoming

We left Crazy Carl's motel around 6:30, backtracking a half mile to the only open convenience store for coffee and pastries. We headed out of town, riding through Fort Robinson. It remained an army base until 1947, then served as a research station for the USDA. It was later transferred to Nebraska and is now part of Fort Robinson State Park.

From there we had the first real ascent we have had in weeks. US 20 climbs about 900 feet in 5 miles up Smiley Canyon. At the top was the best view in Nebraska, according to someone we met along the way. I suppose. Maybe I was not looking in the right direction. 

We had not had a proper breakfast, and we knew we could find one in Harrison, about 15 miles down the road, so away we went. It was slow going through rolling hills, but nothing like the hell of northwest Missouri.

We rolled into Harrison around 10:30 and found my favorite joint of the trip, the Longhorn Saloon and Grill. They were still serving breakfast, so I had the $8 Eggs Benedict with a side of hash browns. It is the gathering spot for all the retired men in the town, apparently, so we enjoyed talking to them about their town and our bicycle adventure.


From Harrison it was just eight miles or so to another milestone: the end of Nebraska, our ninth state and the first one we crossed end-to-end.

When we left Nebraska I suppose we were finally in the west, though eastern Wyoming is no different than western Nebraska. It's all cattle country, with long, straight roads over very gentle rolling hills. We did start seeing rocky buttes in Nebraska that continued into Wyoming. But we had to ride another 10 or 15 miles into Wyoming before we started seeing sagebrush, a genuine indicator you are in the west. 

Twenty miles or so from the border we arrived at our destination for the night, Lusk, Wyoming. We had to spend money at a commercial RV park and campground, but that was fine. They had better showers than you find at the municipal parks where we have been staying, and they had a laundry room. We did not have to traipse off to some grimy laundromat. Best of all they sold ice cream at the front office.



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