Nebraska Sandhills landscapes | WEGGIEBOY'S BLOG by Doug Thomas

In the last Nebraska landscape post, I suggested that Nebraska isn’t “flat as Kansas”, then posted only one photo that barely established the truth of that statement! Here’s a scene south of Alliance 17 miles, “Rattlesnake Park” as the BNSF track crews call it, but just a rest stop provided for the road weary travelers by the Nebraska Department of Roads:

rattlesnake park 3

That was on the north side of the access road, going in. Walking through that tall grass, which I don’t advise, you can encounter the prairie rattlesnake. I had that happen once on the south end of the rest stop on a little road passing through a grove of Russian olive trees. The rattlesnake struck the heel of the cowboy boots I was wearing at the time. I surprised it and it surprised me! The fang marks in the boot suggested a rattlesnake 28 feet (8,5m) long! (See link for actual potential length. I exaggerate by slightly more than a factor of 5! It scared the bejeebers out of me, I guarantee!)

A short time later, driving out of the rest stop, this is what I saw headed south:

rattlesnake park 1

The sun had come out from behind the clouds, showing how dramatically the landscape takes on the light – or lack of light – in this setting. You can see some of the Russian olive trees on the left (light greenish-grey leaves). This is in a tongue of the Nebraska Sandhills in Morrill County, the county south of Box Butte County, of which Alliance is the county seat.

Across the road, you barely can see a blowout that’s been stabilized using discarded tires. The Sandhills are held in place by grasses, but damaged areas quickly become blowouts. Without efforts to stabilize the blowout, they get huge. I remember playing in them as a child. Sliding down the steep side of a big blowout, one got covered in delicious damp, cool sand, a perfect way to spend a hot summer day!

rattlesnake park blowout

The Sandhills historically were range for the northern bison herd, and paleontologists actually have found preserved bison hoof prints buried in the sand! Stepping in the sand, a bison left a depression, wind filled the depression with material of slightly different composition, and the paleontologists – clever fellows! – made the discovery of the hoof prints and….! My mind reels thinking about it!

Now, for the cat, specifically Dougy today, starting with this GIF of him grooming. It’s my first ever, so be kind….!

Dougy cleans up

That slight delay between clicking the photo and the flash going off is all it takes for Dougy to avert his eyes.

Dougy knows! He knows! That dang flash is coming!

If not one thing, then another: Now my Microsoft Movie Maker app doesn’t work! And I had a brain fart when I came home from my little trip (about which later…) that resulted in movies, not photos of the boys greeting me at the door.

When I tried to [Screen Print] them, I ran into the next tragedy: The Windows 10 (may the creators all go “blank” themselves!) version of Screen Print is an abomination that, as far as I can tell, is unworkable — or, at least, doesn’t work in any recognizable way. I tried to screen print from the videos, like I did for the heading of this blog.

DO NOT DOWNLOAD WINDOWS 10!

So, that covered, and we can go onto today’s blog: Black Beauty and I took a trip up to Smith Lake in the Nebraska Sandhills and back. (Black Beauty is my new VW Golf Sportwagen. Yes, “Sportwagen” is spelled correctly as that’s the German for, well “Sport Wagon”.) We had fun!

East of Alliance ~ Wyoming coal in 100 car trains on the BNSF Railroad line.
Alliance is a major hub for these trains.

Nebraska Highway 2 east of Alliance is straight as an arrow till you hit the Sandhills.

Lakeside, Nebraska is a splotch in the road, though it has a few people and businesses. There’s a US Post Office there, for example.

Lakeside, Nebraska is beside a lake! Duh!

Classic Sandhills landscape… The sun was blotted out by the clouds in most of this photo – there’s going to be a huge storm tonight!

Lots of cattle raised on the grassy Sanhills. That's the best and most typical use of the region.

Lots of cattle raised on the grassy Sandhills. That’s the best and most typical use of the region.

Wet meadows in the Nebraska Sandhills are inches above the Ogallala aquifer. It's like walking on a green marshmallow to walk on a wet meadow!

Wet meadows in the Sandhills are inches above the Ogallala aquifer. It’s like walking on a green marshmallow to walk on a wet meadow! Lots of fun!

The first irritation of the trip: A long delay because of road work. Historically, the area was virtually treeless. Now, well, more trees, but not that many.

Everything I photographed from this point on turned out to be video instead. Note above: Microsoft Movie Maker doesn’t work on my computer any longer! So, you don’t get to see Smith Lake or the turtle that was walking on the road that I filmed. Of course, I was equally bummed out that the cute way Andy and Dougy greeted me was video, as mentioned above. They do it every time, so I will try to makes photos of it sometime soon.

“Blank” WordPress, too! I’m tired of all these improvements that screw up perfectly workable programs: Editing on WordPress is a tedious process because of little quirks like autosave on drafts that save nothing! The old editing program worked just fine. The new one…!