Days 49 and 50 Breadbasket

For the past two days I have been driving through the breadbasket of the USA, across state highways and country roads with farms and ranches lining both sides. I have been through Iowa and Nebraska and just a bit of Kansas. The lands have been mostly flat, with some low rolling hills, and I have been passing through little towns with strange names and posted populations of at most a few hundred. One such town was Correctionville, Iowa, which I passed through just before I entered Nebraska. With such an odd name, I had to google it. It is the longest single-word place name in the state. When it was platted in 1855, it was named from its location on a surveyors’ correction line, an east-west line between baselines required because of the Earth’s curvature. And here I was guessing it was a location for a state prison.

In Nebraska, I camped in the Bessey Recreation Complex in the Nebraska National Forest. Its claim to fame is the Bessey OHV Trail System, which is one of the few motorized trail riding areas in Nebraska, open to vehicles 64 inches or less in width, and many campers brought their All-Terrain Vehicles. The complex is also home to the world’s largest hand-planted forest, which has been altered by a number of wildfires since the 1960s.

I drove the next day east towards Lincoln, stopping along the way in the quaint small town of Broken Bow, and in Seward, the latter because I saw a brochure claiming it was home to the world’s largest time capsule. I passed by Concordia University to get to the time capsule in the middle of a residential neighborhood. In 1975, a local furniture store owner, Harold Davisson, decided to build a 45-ton pyramid shaped vault in the ground on his property, sealed with a brand-new Chevy Vega, motorcycle, and other treasures inside. Davisson, who died in 1999, left instructions saying it should be opened on the 50th anniversary, July 4, 2025. Very odd, but it still adds to my “est” list. Too bad I can’t be here to see it opened in three weeks.

I travelled through Lincoln, driving between the University of Nebraska football stadium and basketball arena. I took photos of the State Capitol Building (with Lincoln’s statue in front of course) and Saint Mary’s Catholic Church across the street, originally constructed in 1888 and formerly the cathedral for the diocese.

I then drove straight south into Kansas, travelling on the Pony Express Highway for a ten-mile stretch, until I arrived at my campsite at the Tuttle Creek Cove Campground. This is a very nice campground, right next to the huge Tuttle Creek Reservoir, created when the Corps of Engineers constructed the Tuttle Creek Dam, off the Big Blue River. Many campers brought their boats to enjoy the recreation area.

Photos include the Broken Bow town park, the time capsule, the State Capitol, church and governor’s mansion, and two pictures of the Tuttle Reservoir, the second one taken from my campsite.

I will see more of Kansas tomorrow. I am now 31 states in and more than seven weeks on the journey.