Buffalo Bill is dead, trains are sweet, and "Oh Sh*t, oh sh*t! The Echo hates mountains!" aka the "Damn this is a long post" post.

Last night I slept at a rest area in the back seat of my car. Anyone who has seen or been in my car might say that this would be a bit difficult. They would be correct. Nonetheless, after a good six or seven hours I finally woke up, ready to tackle the day. With a crick in my neck. Ah well.

The drive from my last stop was almost 400 miles, and I had about 50 or so to go. I headed out, excited to see some nifty trains. However, as anyone will tell you, I am a tad ADD. On this particular excursion, that worked to my advantage.

My destination was North Platte, NE. I planned on going to Railroad Museum I had heard about because they have one of the biggest locomotives EVER there. But when I pulled off the highway, it caught my eye and I had to stop.

This big ole sign is in front of the Fort Cody Trading Post, which is basically a glorified gift shop. However, as you can determine by the sign, they have a special affinity for Buffalo Bill. And actually, this glorified gift shop had some really sweet historical memorabilia inside.

I didn't take pics of all of it, but one of the things I really liked was the hand carved model of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. The model consists of 20,000 hand carved pieces and took 12 years (!) to complete. As someone who likes to carve when I'm trying to relax a bit, this was amazing to me.

They also had a fun mirror, which I liked.

Anyway, back to the trip. I spoke to the gal at the checkout counter about some of the local attractions, specifically, the train museum I was looking for. Glad I did.

If you ever go to North Platte, you'll note that two of its borders are comprised of rivers, the well named North and South Platte Rivers. Normally, both of these rivers are inches deep. They're more like streams. However, while I was there, both were frickin' huge!

Turns out they'd had some MAJOR flooding. Not only was the museum I'd been looking for closed, but so was Buffalo Bill's ranch (nuts!) and the Historical Museum. It was so bad, that they actually packed up all the displays at the museum and got them the heck outta Dodge..er, North Platte.

All was not lost however, and the nice gal told me about the Golden Spike Tower which overlooks the Union Pacific Bailey Yard. The UPB is the world's largest railroad yard. I won't bore you with the details on this one. Just look at the picks.

Hmm. Just realized I forgot to get an actual pic of the tower. Dang. Well, it's 8 stories tall. The 7th floor is an open air deck and the 8th is the observation deck. It's cool. If you like trains even a little, this would be a cool place to go. (On a side note, if you like trains or just like off the cuff romantic comedy-ish movies, check out The Station Agent. It's very good.)

Once I left the UPB, I started on the quick jaunt to Ogallala, NE. Home of the famous Boot Hill Cemetary, Ogallala is a place you can really lose track of time at! I meant to just snap some pics at Boot Hill and be on my way, but...

Boot Hill was actually a bit of a let down. Not because it was no good, but it wasn't as big as I'd expected. Where were all the graves of the various ne'er do wells and nameless innocents who were gunned down?

Turns out, most of them weren't nameless (go figure) and many were claimed by family or moved to the newer cemetery. By the way, in case you can't read it in the picture above, the hill was so named because most folks were buried with their boots on. Go figure.

While there weren't as many graves as I'd expected, there was an awesome statue that paid homage to the trail bosses. I took quite a few pictures of this one from various angles and whatnot, but I'll just post two.

With the pictures taken, I prepared to head off once again. I made it about a mile or two when I spotted this place.

As the sign says, this is the Mansion on the Hill. It was built in 1885 (I believe) from brick and had 16 inch thick walls. It's trimmed with stone, and all of the woodwork inside the house, including the staircase, was made from carved cherry wood. By today's standards, the house isn't huge, but it's wonderful. My pictures do it no justice at all.

I could prattle on about this one for a long time. Just go see the damn thing. Beautiful is the only word that describes it properly. As an aside, there's also a one room school house next to the mansion, and a visiting family was nice enough to pose as students for me.

There were a few other stops while I was in Ogallala. They have a petrified wood museum and a neat "Western" place that has restaurants and puts on a shoot out show once a day. The restaurant serves mountain oysters. :) It was time to leave.

My next stop was a mere 235 miles away in Golden, CO. Driving through the Rockies was crazy, and I can tell you right now - my little Echo does NOT like mountains. But, we pressed ahead and after about 3 or 4 hours, finally arrived at Lookout Mountain to view the grave of Buffalo Bill (you can tell I think he was pretty cool, right).

Lookout Mountain is well named, and rather than yammer on and on, I'll just post the pics for this one.

I hung around a bit, just kind of breathing in the air and enjoying the view. Something about standing on such a great height has a way of centering you (unless you're scared of heights, in which case it would probably make you crap your pants). After some quiet reflection, I decided to get back on the road.

My next destination was one that I've been SUPER excited about. It was just over 2 hours away. However, it was pretty much all mountain driving from here and I was a bit concerned about my little car. Plus, I was tired as all get out.

Originally, I'd planned on finding the next rest area or truck stop and taking a nap. But it's funny how awake you can be when you're worried about your car, driving up big ass mountains, then zooming down 7% grades (I actually drove through here when I was a truck driver and a 7% grade with a full load is nerve wracking).

Needless to say, I did NOT pull over to take a nap. In fact, after about 20 minutes of driving through the mountains, I didn't feel tired at all. The following pics aren't great. I took them WHILE driving (I'm trying to get into the retard hall of fame. I took video too. Am I there yet?). You can't really SEE  the elevation changes, but oh well.

After an exciting drive, I finally came to the AMAZING Glenwood Canyon (I think the last three pics above are actually of the canyon, but I'm not 100% sure - I had driving to focus on, duh). And, just after the canyon, I arrived at my destination - Glenwood Springs.

I checked on the resort I wanted to stay at. They were full up for the night, but no biggie, I just reserved a room for Sunday. I found a little motel to crash at for the evening and that's when my headache started - the good old "Check Engine" light came on.

Fortunately, I had a good idea of what the problem was. I made some quick calls to the local Auto Zone (God bless you fellas) and they had everything I needed. It could wait til morning. And you can hear all about my days in Glenwood Springs in the next post. Ta-ta for now. ;) Hopefully, in a MUCH shorter post.