Some places just seem to fit me.  The Arrow Hotel and Broken Bow, NE is one of those locations.  We met our friends for breakfast at the City Café around the corner from the hotel.  It is a typical small town café with the appropriate number of local guys at the liar’s club table.  They have a really cute, accurate sign at the café – “coffee and a refill $1.00; stay 1/2 the morning and coffee is $2.00; stay all morning and it costs $3.50; if you go home for lunch, return and expect us to hold your place that’s $5.00”.  Very fitting.  A picture of the Arrow is included in today’s post.  We got about 20 miles out of town and I figured we needed to gas up before we really got moving.  We had trouble finding anything that resembled premium gas.  On the 3rd try, we found something acceptable and started rolling.  The next time I shut the bike down we had gone 175 miles.  Jana and I usually stop 75 to 90 miles.  There just wasn’t any place to stop.  Nebraska Highway 2 is called the Sandhills Byway.  I guess that is corn belt language for “no services until you are in panic mode”.  The next stop provided a needed break from the seat and they had premium gas.  I was relieved in more ways than one.  Along the way we had a few raindrops but nothing that slowed us down.  We cruised along at 65 MPH and still got great gas mileage.  As if the long drive between stops wasn’t enough, we hit a bad 35 to 40 MPH cross wind for the last 100 mile stretch.  That really makes things uncomfortable on 2 wheels.  We cruised into Casper, WY and cooled our heels at the Holiday Inn.  We did manage to get pictures of a couple of trains that will help demonstrate some of my comments from yesterday’s entry.  Tomorrow we are headed to Idaho Falls.  The weather looks promising but I’m concerned that I’ve set us up for too many miles.  We did 400+ today and tomorrow is planned for almost the same distance. (Overall, we’re about 1450 miles from home.)  The problem is that the ride will involve some mountain roads so the going will be slower.  I need to stop worrying about that stuff – after all this is vacation.

The Arrow Hotel

Coal cars

Nebraska Sand Hills

Casper, WY