Nebraska Badlands

Fort Robinson, in the Sand Hills of Nebraska, is a rather historic site. It was pivotal in the Sioux Wars from 1876 to 1890. It was the home of a unit of the Buffalo Soldiers, an all-black cavalry Regiment which included 2^nd Lieutenant Charles Young who had graduated from West Point and was the highest-ranking African-American in the Army throughout his career. He eventually achieved the rank of colonel. It was also the place where Crazy Horse, defeater of General Custer at Little Big Horn, was fatally wounded while resisting imprisonment in 1877. Note: Crazy Horse was at Fort Robinson to surrender so it seems a little strange to me that he was resisting imprisonment.

And I walked thru these portals

About a half hour away from Fort Robinson, where I was camped is the Toadstool Geologic Park. It contains a badlands landscape and is named after its unusual rock formations. They were hard rock caps that did not erode as quickly as the underlying rock. This made them look like toadstools, hence the name. Evidently, most of the toadstools had fallen down but if you squinted you could make believe that at one time they looked like toadstools. The area was similar to the North Dakota Badlands except the NoDak Badlands have a lot of color and these badlands were just sort of gray. There was a one mile hike and a fourteen mile hike to choose from. We wimped out and went for the one mile hike which was actually a lot of fun. Lots of ups and downs and narrow ledges overlooking ravines and being directionally challenged as I am, it actually took some reconnoitering on my part.

Crumbled Toadstools

The trail goes up into the hills

Miko scouting out the way down

Now I've been to Cadillac Ranch in Texas where they sunk Cadillacs head first into the dirt and I've been to the Hillbilly Garden in Kentucky where they did the same thing with lawn mowers so I figured that I needed to go see Carhenge in Alliance Nebraska. Jim Reinders decided to create a “Stonehenge West” modeled after the original Stonehenge in England. Since he didn't have access to large stones, he decided to use cars instead. Consider me underwhelmed. It might have been better if he had not painted the cars all a depressing gray and they were still their original color but who am I to question another person's artistic intent. 

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Now isn't this much more interesting?

This is a much more lovely piece of art