100930 – Casper to Nebraska

I have been having a mental drama worrying about my brand new iPad.  It will not charge!  Those suckers go a very long time on a charge – it even had an 85% charge then they took it out of the box at the store! – but that charge is finally wearing off, and it won’t re-charge.  I spent a lot of the night on the motel wifi researching this, and finally found the problem … the little power cubes you use to charge an iPhone or iPod are 5v, but the power cube for the iPad is 10v(!).  I’ve misplaced the cube that came with the iPad (did I bring it? or is it back at the condo???), and the couple of iPod 5v cubes I have  just aren’t doing the trick.  An all-night charge gets it up to 30% if I’m lucky.

Monday (Sep 27)

So Job #1 on this Thursday morning in Casper is to go to the Best Buy and get an iPad power cord ($30 down the tubes, but you gotta do what you gotta do).  To cut to the chase, that Best Buy was seriously dysfunctional and out of power cords, which was a FAIL, but a very good fail, because this night I found my original cube while rearranging my storage.  So I am doubly happy, I can charge my iPod, and I did not waste $30 :)).

Bye bye Best Buy and Casper, on the road again for yet even more driving through Wyoming.

I finally get to Nebraska.

Fort Robinson – never heard of it, but what an interesting place.   It was a big-time frontier fort for holding off the Sioux. I look on the map and see that we’re about 100 miles due south of the Black Hills and Wounded Knee and all those sad places, so it all fits together.  This place saw some serous Indian battles. It has the jail where they held Crazy Horse and where he was killed in custody.  The place held German POWs in WW2, a lot of other history I can’t remember.  As I’m driving around I see an elderly Indian (native American) couple walking around the Crazy Horse jail building … wonder what they’re thinking.   It is big and flat, and has an inviting campground, and I poke around on my bike for hours, but noooooo, I must make more distance today.  Someday I will come back here, because this place is cool.

The next little down is Crawford NE, where I stopped at a little drive-in and got fish sando and a sundae, and had a great time yakking with the locals and watching the late afternoon social scene in Crawford.

Yet more driving, I ran out of daylight at Merriman NE. On the far side of Merriman was a little community park with a little lake called Cottonwood Lake. It’s three miles off the highway, and feels like the middle of nowhere. There is a NPR booster station  here, so I had crystal clear reception on excellent classical music all night. A very pleasant night.