Live for the Path

100 miles in 8.16 hours – Max Speed 24.5mph

Upon getting to a new state, the first thing I do is look and see where the motel 6’s are, and what their prices are. Since I was to run parallel to the 80 in Nebraska on old route 30, they were plentiful. Two were under $40, one in Big Springs, and one in Lincoln. I was around 100 miles outside of Big Springs, so I figured that that was a reasonable goal for today.

So I packed up my tent and got moving towards the first real town in Nebraska, Kimball. I went all the way through the town looking for a place to eat breakfast, and then reached the end of town having seen only a Subway. I sighed, turned around, and went to a Subway which appeared to be open back in the middle of town. It was, and I had breakfast there (aside: Subway breakfast is pretty good, I just was in the mood for pancakes).

Picture outside of Kimball

I left Subway and got back on the 30. This is a good time to talk about this stretch of route 30. If you look at it on Google Street View you will notice that there is no shoulder. This is okay though, since I literally probably saw 50 cars all day between towns. And in the towns the lanes usually widen so it is no problem.

Route 30

I went through town after town with populations under 1000, and kept eating up miles. I had a wind from the south, and I was going ESE, so I had a very slight headwind, and it did slow me down a little.

Small town.

Grain Elevator in Potter

Cool picture

Historical Marker

Sign for Sidney, NE

Continuing the look at local gas station chains

Cabela's world headquarters in Sidney, NE

Still on the Lincoln Highway

One side of a historical marker. Notice a sponsor is 'Generic Motel'.

Historical Marker

Colton NE: A hell of a lot nicer than Colton, CA

I just kept chugging and to my surprise, after the town of Chappell, it suddenly got hilly!

Chappell Grain Elevator

Not only that but at the same time rain clouds of doom formed above me. These were dark, and seemingly came out of nowhere. I thought about going back to town, but decided to soldier on because there were nasty clouds behind me for as far as I could see.

Then it started thundering and lightning like crazy around, and the rain began. It wasn’t hard, but it was annoying. It rained for about an hour, but I am happy to report I did not get struck by lightning. This lightning storm irked me though because I thought I had gotten good at spotting nasty weather coming in, but this just seemed to materialize out of nowhere. After the storms ended the sun actually came out again, much to my delight. I went through the rest of the hills and reached the turnoff for Big Springs.

Enjoying the Grain Elevators?

I rode down a big hill into the town, and then reached my Motel 6. Since it was on the interstate it had a large sign outside where it was advertising their great rates of $50 a night. ‘What the hell’ I thought, as I looked at my phone to confirm that I did infact see $40 on their website. I did, so then, standing infront of the entrance to the motel, I used my phone to book myself a room at $39.95 (or whatever). I went inside, said I had a reservation, and got the room for $10 cheaper than I would have otherwise. After that I went to a cheap buffet in the truck stop next door, ate too much, then went back to the room for the night.