Part 4: to Glendale Springs, Colorado (Wednesday, Aug. 10)

We took a scenic route today to see Chimney Rock (one of many, this one in Nebraska) after starting our day with the most delicious cappuccinos from the coffee house near the Super 8. The coffee house was run by two older ladies; the one serving us called us "gals", it was too perfect. Anyway, along this scenic route we got to see small town USA instead of the standard no town USA we'd been seeing on the highways. I mean freeways. We turned off the freeway at Ogallala, driving past "lazy J liquor" to get to the country road. The first little town we passed was called Lewellen, it advertised being "a little town with a big heart". The school in Lewellen is located on School St. It had a big water slide-type chute coming out of the back of it, presumably a fire escape. As we were leaving Lewellen, seconds after we entered it, we found traffic slowing - can you imagine what it was held up by? Did you guess farm equipment? That's what I guessed, and then as we approached the farm auger-tractor thing we see that the guy who's driving it is... pause for dramatic effect... TALKING ON A CELL PHONE!!!
Ok, done with that. At this point I am starving (as I usually am around lunch time) and I declare that one of these towns MUST have a cafe, and as soon as I find one, we're stopping at it. In Osh Kosh (I am not making up these town names) there was the S&S cafe. It was located nearby to a motel with a sign that read "bikers welcome". The special was chicken fried steak and the cafe was filled with delicious looking freshly baked pies and cinnamon rolls. We knew it must be a good choice.
From there we continued on the road, driving through another small town called Broadwater. As we drove through I said "oh my god" about 15 times and not 5 minutes down the road I had to pull a U-y and go back for photos. Please see next section for those...
Getting back to the freeway we had to wait for a train wiht 129 compartments (I counted them and was feeling quite dizzy afterward) to pass, going less than 50mph, and when it finally was gone we saw on the other side of the tracks these giant egg things in these giant egg catapult things. I have no idea what they are, but there's a photo if you care to hazard a guess. We finished our day at a lovely little (expensive) motel in the mountains. We snuck Kiki in.