Beautiful Nebraska

The recent solar eclipse was an excuse for Grannie Annie and me to travel to parts of Nebraska that we seldom experience. As mentioned last week we enjoyed the celestial event with friends at Mullen, Nebraska. Not mentioned though was that after sunshine returned we drove to their ranch home some 23 miles north and west from Mullen—rather deep in the Sandhills.

The Nebraska Sandhills are said to be unique to the rest of the world. Rows upon rows of rolling grass covered hills. Many of the valleys between have ponds and lakes encircled with cattails. The Sandhills are to be experienced rather than analyzed. Soul stirring beauty.

Our friends John and Terri, live near the end of eight miles of good gravel road. The gravel is preceded by miles of one lane, eight foot wide, blacktop or oil as they call it after leaving Nebraska 97 the modern blacktop highway leading north from Mullen. One has to be careful and hang to the right when going up hills in order to avoid head on collision with a road hog possibly going the other way. Twenty three miles to the closest grocery store and Grannie Annie would refuse to live there. Actually that about describes where she grew up in Frontier County.

Probably due to ample summer rains the roadsides are beautiful green grass decorated with a riot of wild flowers. Last week the dominate flower was a medium height “annual sunflower”. I wondered why so few sunflowers of the wild variety crossed the fence line into the pastures and was informed that cattle actually do graze those variety of sunflowers. Hard to believe that any animal would eat the thorny rough leaved bitter tasting wild sunflowers that I grew up with.

To tour and drive through a good part of the Sandhills I would recommend a trip east to west, or vice versa on NE 20. The towns are far apart but each interesting in a western flavor sort of way. One of my favorites is Bassett and its 1920s flavored Range Café and Hotel. There are modern rooms but it is also memorable to choose one of the older style rooms with a common bathroom down the hall. No different from McCook’s upscale Keystone Hotel in its day.

A couple weeks ago a prospective aviation student called from his home on a ranch south of Whitman, Nebraska wanting me to teach him to fly. Interested I flew into the nearest regular airport located at Hyannis, NE. David, the prospective pilot met me at Hyannis and we flew my airplane on south and east some 20 miles to his home ranch landing strip. A cluster of three modern ranch houses occupied by the parents and two adult children each married plus grandkids. A few out buildings. A large Quonset style storage building doubling as a hangar for their Super Cub. A nice grass runway across a hay meadow alongside a several acre lake. All comfortably sited in an east/west green grass valley surrounded by hills several hundred feet high.

David proud of his home turf gave me an aerial tour of the area. Not far to the east are a couple of upscale golf courses, the Sandhills and the Dismal River Courses. Not in my league but I understand that people with $$$$money fly into North Platte Airport in their private jets and are then shuttled to a private grass strip nearby for 3 days or a week of golf, fine dining and staying in opulent clubhouses. They looked enticing from the air with bright green manicured greens and fairways. All in David’s neighborhood if, western style, you count anyone living within 50 miles your neighbor.

When I was going through Air Force navigator training in the late 1950s several of our missions left Denver and flew northeast out over the Sandhills. We learned to fix our position by map reading the terrain below or later to add radar fixes. You should have heard my fellow cadets complain! “There are no towns, very few roads that show on our charts! There are no rivers or streams.” Oh, they thought the Sandhills were desolate country about like flying over the featureless ocean. I tickled as I knew better and even then had a fondness for that wonderful grass covered country.

The Sandhills that we see today are actually a large desert field of dunes and drifting sand. At an ancient time, those dunes actually moved with the wind which explains how the “waves” lie perpendicular to prevailing winds. A climatic time of more precipitation came and with the moisture forbs and grasses established to stabilize the surface. Like the rim of a bowl, underground ridges held the rainwater that soaked through the sand and created a high enough water table to create year around lakes. We live in a fortunate time of adequate rainfall but if a several year long or decades or centuries of drought would come again those Sandhill dunes we know today would once against drift along with the wind as does any other desert.

The Sandhills were perfect habitat for the American Bison. Year around grass with enough prairie fires to prevent any growth of trees. Then cowboys came with open range and their cattle herds displaced the buffalo. Then permanent settlers fenced the range, built homes on large ranches, made roads and harvested to put up the native grass for winter feed. It is to me an enchanting place to visit and best of all a great number of the modern ranchers use aviation to their best advantage. In their light airplanes flying off the ranch runway it is a quick trip to town for parts or groceries. A few minutes of flight will check waterworks and fences. My kind of cowboy.

That is how I saw it.

Dick Trail