No one can believe this summer's rain. Last night it rained hard, thunder and lightning for 5 hours! Huge puddles all over the campground now. We thought it would rain several times today, but it let us be dry while we were doing all of this sightseeing! Tom looked online for the weather here today and there was a mosquito index shown! Duh, it's high right now. Chiropractor this afternoon after our fun and Tom washed camper while I washed clothes.
Plaque: remember when men wore tattoos and women wore earrings?
North Platte-a neat town of 23,000 and the North and South Platte Rivers. We were told the largest employers are the rail yard of 2600, a Walmart distribution center and the hospital and newspaper. Full of restaurants and hotels. Each morning a lot of campers in here leave and it is almost full again that night-right on I-80.
Union Pacific Challenger on display in a City park. Railroad donated it and it is the only one on exhibit anywhere in the world. Inside they had a mail car and others set up with exhibits.
Veteran's 20th Century Memorial-this one surpasses the one we saw in Pender Monday. Of course this town is 7 times as large and some major contributions helped. It is very nicely done.
Lincoln County Museum-has old buildings that have been moved to the site and a museum building. That building held exhibits on: quilting/sewing, old women's hats exhibit, military memorabilia, pianos and organs, firearms, and model trains.
My favorite one was about the North Platte canteen. I knew about this, but enjoyed seeing the short movie that said between 1941 and 1946, trains with 6 million troops stopped at this train station for snacks. They gave away desserts, sandwiches, boiled eggs, deviled eggs, candy, magazines and cigarettes. They didn't expect any donations from the troops, but $130,000 was given by others. Pres. Roosevelt dug deep and sent $5! They estimate that today it would cost $1,300,000 to provide all that stuff. They had huge coffeepots and ordered 800 small bottles of milk at a time from a local dairy because the guys loved it. There were female troops too.
By the time the eastbound train left the food was wiped out so they'd start on sandwiches etc for the westbound train. Every day they gave away 20 birthday cakes randomly, saying "Is it your birthday? No, well let's pretend it is." You wonder how they could make all those cakes when sugar was rationed for sure and I don't know about flour and eggs. I suppose farmers had eggs locally. Various groups of women volunteered every day. Some women put their name and address in popcorn balls and said they'd be a penpal. It is known that one couple married. They interviewed a couple of men in the movie and they said they will never forget the 10-20 minutes of kindness all those women who reminded them of mom, grandma, sister, sweetheart showed.
Lots of neat pictures today that we enjoy and know some friends and relatives will enjoy seeing on here. See separate pages. Colorado bound tomorrow.
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