North Platte, Nebraska

Hello

Well tonight was interesting… I left Wichita today after a wonderful visit with my college mate from Pepperdine, after seven (7) long grueling hours, I made it here. Sofie was a champ, seriously – it is like she knows driving days…

We arrived to this lovely RV Park right off the I-80. It is surprisingly quiet right off the lake. Since it took me a while to get here I was not paying too much attention to what was around me – like the bugs feasting on me until I smacked one and saw that there were 3 others on my legs – HOLY CRAP – this will not be as fun. After almost tripping while setting up, I knew I needed a break, so I looked at my email and read from the interview hiring manager that they are passing on me and wished me luck on my career endeavors… As much as that really sucked to read, there were many emotions that I was going through, I just had to keep setting up camp!

As the bugs were still attacking me, I built a fire and looked at the trees, knowing that just that beautiful gesture of the leaves moving and the sun setting sparkling, I know it will be ok.

The next day I had hoped to fish and relax at the RV Park, however the mosquitoes had another plan for me. It didn’t matter that I was putting on three different kinds of spray, they just kept coming. Even Sofie was annoyed with them.

So in the morning we decided to check out what North Platte had to offer. It was actually kinda cool, we went to Buffalo Bill Cody’s Historic State Park and took a walk through the grounds, saw the stables where carriages are now stored.

It was great to see the tall grass moving in the wind so peaceful and calming it was to see.

I have this weird fascination with buffalo and there were two on the grounds, one was just eating away minding his own business and I was trying to get a close up of him, he was beautiful, about huge tall and really heavy and brown (I know, amazing description) – he was awesome. After checking on Sofie she was just minding her own business not caring, eating grass.. So I inched a little closer to the fence and a little closer to where I was about 10 ft from the buffalo. He was watching me the whole time, knowing I was protected by a fence I thought I was good…

Until I looked down at part of the fence and it looked like it was “repaired”… At that point, the buffalo started walking towards me, slowly still eating the grass… That is when Sofie decided to look up and see that this huge buffalo was walking towards us. I am of course, still trying to get a good photo when Sofie hunches down and starts barking, and barking… I am walking away at this point pulling Sofie as the buffalo looked annoyed… after finally getting about 50 feet from him, Sofie stops barking and sits and licks my legs like she was saying: “I showed him… he can’t mess with me”… LOL

As she was a bit pumped up, I decided to head out. Then while driving, I saw these beautiful horses just playing and rolling on their backs and living life. I wanted a picture however couldn’t get Sofie to be quiet. The good thing about that barking as that the horses stood completely still and looking at me. 🙂

After the joys of listening to Sofie bark, we went to the Union Pacific Bailey Yard, the largest railroad classification yard in the WORLD!!! It was really impressive looking, they let me bring Sofie up the elevator into the look out, the elevator ride was funny to watch Sofie not know what was going on then she didn’t to get back in when it was time to go down. Pulling her in, she was able to face her fears she never knew she had :)…

I love the industrial parts to trains and was able to hopefully get some good ones as I would like to add it as a collection to my hallway photos.