Where was I? Where was I before? And where have I been since then?

As I alluded to yesterday, being laid up on my ass for two months was a little bit depressing. In truth, though, it’s not like I was immobile, I just couldn’t work out or do anything too physically taxing. I could still go about most of my business as usual, but I definitely leaned-in to the couch potato aspect of the situation.

In the last two months, I’ve actually  done some neat things and made a lot of progress on a few bigger projects. 

For example, in September, I went on vacation for a week, which was really just five days, but it still felt like a week. We did a road trip across Nebraska to the western part of the state. I’ve been to that part of the state a handful of times before, but never really spent time there exploring the terrain, all the Buttes, And the Pine Ridge escarpment. 

When most people think of western Nebraska, they probably think of the sandhills. But we drove right through the sandhills and only did a few scenic routes on our way to the cabin we stayed at near Crawford Nebraska. 

The trip was great in the fact that it was mostly driving, which did not cause any more pain than I was already in. And actually the hikes that we went on were the days where my back hurt the least. OK, I said “Days”, but we only went on one hike on one day and that was at toadstool Park. it is very off the beaten path, but the geologic formations are quite interesting and I dare say quite rare. Some of the best pictures I took were at toadstool park. The rest of the days we were exploring the area in our 4 wheel drive. 

We drove on a lot of roads that are unmaintained and not suitable for cars without a four-wheel-drive. This is how we got up to some of the scenic viewpoints that would otherwise have taken a whole day to hike up. 

One of the days we even drove up through the Ogallala grassland, crossing into both Wyoming and South Dakota. I was driving when we passed a rattlesnake on a gravel road, and it would be the only scenario you would catch me getting that close to a rattlesnake in the wild. We drove around it and took pictures with the window down. Yikes! 

The cabin we stayed at was closer to being a house than a cabin in my opinion, with a full kitchen bathroom and two bedrooms. It had a wraparound porch, where we sat out on the back deck at breakfast, had coffee, and watched (listened) for birds. 

On most days and evenings, we got up before the sun rise to get outside and watch it and made sure we were in a good spot for sunset. It’s kind of my thing and Jim is very accommodating. Some that we witnessed were breathtaking.

The stargazing out there is also pretty badass. There’s very little light pollution and on a clear night you can see the whole Milky Way in all of its glory. We took a few pictures, just with our phones because that’s all we have, with an extended exposure… 15 or 30 seconds I think… With the tripod to keep the phone stable. It’s amazing what you can capture the right equipment. Even my brother, who is the ultimate aficionado auto when it comes to amateur stargazing, was impressed.

So, yeah, that was a pretty good trip. The one downside, that I would caution, any wannabe traveler, is that the food available was pretty subpar. You would think that bars in small towns would have great cheeseburgers, but they were actually pretty bad. The best meal we had, aside from the food I brought and cooked, was the pizza that we got from a place in Hemingford, Nebraska. Hemingford is probably most known for being the fictitious location of the Hemingford home in the Stephen King book The Stand.

Well… I was going to provide all the updates from the past few months in this post, but I’m out of time now and kind of feeling like I’ve lost my motivation (ie. my body hurts) so I’m gonna call it done for today. Instead, please enjoy some more snaps from western Nebraska. Thanks for reading!

And in case I don’t make the trifecta tomorrow, happy Halloween to all the ghosts, ghouls, witches, vampires, and zombies out there. Be safe and watch that candy intake or you might get a tummy ache. 🎃

Peace always, 
~Miss SugarCookie