US 6: Trip 5: Day 33 (Lincoln & Hastings)

As you get just west of Lincoln, the landscape along US 6 begins to flatten out, the little towns are more spread out, and the giant, rolling irrigation pivots begin appearing. Irrigation is generally unnecessary east of the Missouri River while, here on the Plains, its essential for conventional farming.
Lincoln is the last of the cities. It's another 498 miles west on US 6 to the next city over 50,000 people, Denver. I'll be there in a couple of days, but I'm trying my best to sit and soak in the landscape that most people try to make disappear in their rear-view mirrors as quickly as possible.

Almost everyone I've encountered who has said anything about Nebraska has remarked on how boring it was. The majority of those people traveled through the state at one point on Interstate 80 and, if that's your route of travel, then I definitely agree. I-80 generally follows the Platte River, which creates a broad, flat valley as it rumbles through the soft landscape of Central Nebraska. US 6 runs along the southern tier of Nebraska, usually about 15-20 miles from I-80, but it suffers from the same issues. Hastings, where I am now, is very flat. And Hastings seem to try and keep me from staying.



Near Milford

When I first came in and parked at the old train station, now partially used by Amtrak and partially by a lighting supply store, there was tejano music blaring. I thought, at first, that this was coming from a car, but the cars then moved on and the music was still just as loud. I decided to move down the street a bit to find the source, and it turned out to be coming from the second floor of a building housing a Mexican restaurant. They had speakers up to the windows. I got a terrible lunch at the Wagon Wheel (which has a sign that incorrectly calls itself a microbrewery) and moved a bit more down the street. I stopped in at a local bookstore, but the people seemed odd about me being in there. What's weirder is that there was another guy, scraggly and balding, that kept watching me walking around while I was inside. I left without buying anything.
I've just found it, thus far, to be an awkward town. And I think the main concerning thing to me is that I had planned on camping just a few miles from here, at Prairie Lake. I'm now reconsidering that, and may instead find another campground and just continue driving to the next town of reasonable size, Holdrege. It's only 2pm.
Photos of Hastings:


Hastings rail station; the lighting store portion	The Dutton-Lainson Building	"Bird Alley"

Leaving Hastings, I came across this complex, on the former "City US 6," now Business US 6, well west of town. The sign said "Hastings Regional Center," but the razor wire and architecture told me that this was once a mental hospital. Many of the buildings, however, including the one with the razor wire around its back, were clearly abandoned. Looking it up, the site is still partially used by the juvenile courts system in nearby Kearney for substance abuse rehabilitation, however there's an active (as of late 2013) effort to consolidate the complex and level the unused buildings.
In its hospital days, it was originally the "Hospital for the Incurably Insane." It operated until after 1987, when a portion of it was converted to a minimum security prison (the razor wire area). Over 100 years, a number of patients died in the hospital and most were buried on the property in a cemetery with unmarked graves. It was until a lawsuit forced the state to reveal the names of those buried in 2011 that this information became known, allowing relatives to at least have some peace of mind.
The site, being mostly abandoned, is creepy. This would be a good "Ghost Hunter" episode.

It's 9am now. I ended up coming to Kearney for a relatively cheap hotel. I didn't like the vibe in Hastings, so I didn't want to camp near there. I'll camp tonight, somewhere, likely near Imperial, just before the Colorado State Line. I have pictures, but I'm in the lobby of the hotel now and don't really want to upload that many. The internet would not work in my room, which was in the corner of the hotel, and had the bathroom door punched in. The most disconcerting thing about that was that the bathroom door was still locked.
Thoughts are moving toward discontinuing the trip after Denver, spending just a day in Moab to see the national parks, then scooting out to Great Basin, Yosemite, then home. I think it's partially money, but also road weariness. I'm tired of hotels. Maybe camping tonight will change everything.
But the video posts have been absent the past couple of days, partially because of pessimism, but also because of the sorry internet service I've had in Central Nebraska. I hope to do one tonight though, since I'll probably have a lot of time on my hands.

Downtown Friend

I passed through a number of very charming small towns along the way yesterday. Friend was pleasant. There was an old opera house that has been turned into a wine bar and even center. There was a coffee shop as well but, before I could go in, the red hat ladies arrived en force. Thinking about it now, it may have just been older women coming for a Kentucky Derby party, which was later that evening, but I can't take any chances. If you've never come across a group of red hat ladies before, then consider yourself warned. If you see a bunch of older women in a restaurant in big, silly flower hats, go somewhere else. They have a tendency to get drunk, loud and obnoxious. They had a particularly terrible reputation in Tucson. It sounds like I'm joking, but I'm really not.


Friend Opera House

Sutton was a bit larger, and was directly connected to US 6 history by being where the Grand Army of the Republic's Nebraska chapter was formed. I don't know that I've talked about it before, but US 6, in its entirety across the country, is named after the Grand Army of the Republic. You see signs for it in every state.

Sutton had some really nice architecture and was a really pleasant town. You could tell that it used to hold much higher prominence regionally, likely as a railroad center, but it was now just another random small town. It seems also that Sutton has a US 6 exhibit at its local museum, and I missed it. So is the issue with traveling: you can only research so much, and each of these towns has its own, random museum.

Even Fairmont, a bit farther west, had both a museum dedicated to the Fairmont Creamery, now Fairmont Foods and headquartered in Houston, and Fillmore County. Both museums are open by appointment. I had none.

After the unfortunate time in Hastings, I continued to the next town, Minden. Minden is home of Pioneer Village, a fledgling theme park dedicated to the "building of America." There are antique cars and a number of other exhibits in an older building along US 6, with an open townsite in the back with more exhibits and a number of buildings historic to Minden. It's a big place, but I'm just not excited about any of it. Maybe no one else is. On the Saturday afternoon, there were about six cars in the parking lot. Pioneer Village has, supposedly, been in the red for the past couple of years, and was, until December, involved in a lawsuit brought by the state against their habit of not paying property taxes on their on-site motel, claiming they're exempt as a non-profit. But the motel is in a really sorry state, and everyone involved acknowledges that work needs to be done, but there's just no money. The future of Pioneer Village is in great doubt.

Minden opera house

Minden though has talked about diversifying its tourist industry, one way being restoring its historic opera house.

Milford means business

And I realized I've skipped Milford. Milford is the first town after US 6 leaves I-80, as it turns toward the south. If you go north from the turn, back toward the interstate, there's a Dinosaur Museum/haunted house. Seems like an odd combination, and it was pricey, so I skipped it. Milford seemed to be having a garage sale festival. In the small town, I counted six separate houses having huge garage sales. I guess, being the first warm weekend of the year, it was a good time to do it. Midwesterners love garage sales, and they're quite popular in the spring. Living in Bloomington, we would occasionally go, but would rarely buy anything. The prices were typically very optimistic and a lot of the stuff was just outright garbage not worth keeping. Instead, I would wait until late June when the students began to leave, and were desperate to sell the expensive and almost-new furniture they had sitting around their houses.
Milford had a cute coffee shop that baked their own pastries. It was the hub of activity on the Saturday morning, with kids coming in via their bikes, and a family sitting around inside.

As you enter Hastings from the east, you'll see a number of short, equally-sized, low hills to the left. This is the former Hastings Naval Ammunition Depot. Though it was decommissioned in the early 1960's and turned over to various sources, most of its original structures still stand, and are used for various purposes.
Much of the land around the bunkers seemed to be used as cattle grazing land. At the first turn-off into the old facility though, I found the entrance to a hunting camp, appropriately named "Bunker Hill."
A bit farther down, the bunkers turn to warehouses. Most had been reused for light industrial purposes. I saw an irrigation company, a truck parts supplier, a metal scrapyard and a seed supplier. The number of buildings here is pretty overwhelming. They're all large brown rectangular buildings, all turned counter-clockwise against the highway about 15 degrees.
The largest consumer of these buildings is Central Community College which, through renovations and new construction over the years, is not as identifiable as the rest of the site.
The USDA additionally received a large section of the former depot for its Meat Animal Research Center. As far as I can tell, there are no public programs for this facility, which is odd in the world of federal bureaucracy, where they're often eager to justify their existence to the voting public.
The Hastings NAD looks very similar to the Kingsbury Ordinance Plant in Indiana, also right along US 6. Again, there, the buildings are mostly intact and have been mostly reused for industrial purposes, with a small area devoted to the national guard.