We spent the night in Sidney, NE, home of Cabela’s. We actually stayed in the Cabela’s RV park, between their largest store at 200K+ Sq.Ft. and the corporate office complex. After setting up the RV, we traveled into town then on down the road about 30 miles in search of a trailhead (which we never found). We managed to see several very long trains going up and down the pass, most with three of four engines pulling, two engines mid-train and two or three engines pushing. Jason likes watching trains, but who doesn’t? The largest train matching yard in the country is very near here and the trains run literally back to back.
I traveled down the road a bit to get fuel in the early morning and watched a coyote cross the road and jog up the hill. This is the Pony Express monument, located in Sidney, very close to the Cabela’s store.
Next stop would be Rawlins. After setting up the MH in the RV park, we took a quick drive into town to see the sights. We found these deer enjoying the flora in the neighborhood, then another then…three together. There were actually a total of six in this grouping. They did not appear to be shy in the least. I gave them a protein bar and they seemed to enjoy it.
In the morning we decided to take a loop drive, Rawlins – Creston Junction (pop NA?) – Baggs (pop. 430) We bought a couple of ice cream bars in the general store and decided to sit in front and enjoy the weather. An elderly lady drove up, picked up a pizza and offered us some on her way out, small towns are great! – Dixon (pop. 95) – Savery (pop. NA?) – Encampment (pop. 442) – Riverside (pop. 55) – Saratoga (pop. 1686) We stopped at the famous Saratoga mineral springs but did not bring our bathing suits. It was adjacent to a blue ribbon trout river, the North Platte – Sinclair (pop. 415) where we stopped at the Su Casa restaurant for a late lunch (great Mexican food, we have enough left over for lunch tomorrow!) before heading back to camp.
This is Jason standing on the Overland Trail, first used by trappers in 1825, this became the “superhighway” for immigrants heading West from the Missouri area in the 1860s. The completion of the transcontinental railroad put this road out of business in the 1870s. You can still see the wagon wheel ruts behind Jason and he is standing in a worn section of the roadway.
We stopped to see this group of pronghorn antelope and also enjoyed the numerous prairie dogs popping up out of their holes.
We stopped for another group that appeared to be running together and saw that they were being chased by a large grey animal. We were pretty far away but could see the animal chasing the antelope. Maybe a wolf?
We stopped to show Jason these snow fences up close and explained what they were for. He is “mister cool” leaning up against it!
Not so cool though to try to chase a prairie dog into his/her home.
We passed briefly into Colorado and stopped to let Jason walk across the state line.
He need a little “boost” to get higher up on the Colorado sign.
Continuing on, we had this fellow running beside our vehicle and managed to get a few photos before heading on.
Between Baggs and Encampment, we went through the Sierra Madre range of mountains and crossed the Continental Divide several times.
Jason was becoming antsy so we stopped to let him run…up a hill of course! You can barely make him out as he is racing me to the top. He won. It was hard to imagine but the altitude at this point was above 8,000 ft.
This “red rock” was our pre-arranged destination and we found this antler horn on the way up.
Cathy was the smarter one as she stayed with the truck way down there.
As we crossed Battle Pass, at above 10,000 ft, we took a NFS “jeep” road/trail to this meadow. There were lots of blue lupines and black-eyed Susans here but Jason was watching for bears!
Continuing on up the road, we stopped at this stream to let Jason throw some wood into the water to watch it float through the culvert under the road and reappear on the other side of the road, heading downstream. It doesn’t take much sometimes to keep a young one busy.
Looking upstream:
Looking downstream:
At the very top, we pulled off and saw this view. The snow was still at least a foot deep along the road near the top.
The amazing (to us) was this road was absolutely stunning and we saw very few vehicles on the Battle Pass section, maybe three total! The scenery came close to what we saw in parts of Glacier, where you are elbow to elbow!
Travelling with the Schinglers 