The weekend crowd is rolling in

We’ve been 4 nights now at a lovely little state recreation area in SE Nebraska.  Up until today we pretty much had the place to ourselves but tonight the weekenders are rolling in fast and furious.

We left Buchanan last Friday, stopped in Regina for a meeting and a visit with father and then parked on the prairie just west of the Regway border crossing.  I had a meeting with one of my Palliser clients on Saturday morning and then we once again braved the perils of US Homeland Insecurity.  Once again they let us in, perhaps even with a trifle less attitude than we have come to expect.  We then wandered our way down into northern Wyoming before stopping in a roadside truck rest area for the night. 

Sunday found us retracing the interstate that we must have travelled down on our way to Fort Collins 45 years ago.  In the fall of 1965 father packed mother and us kids into a 1964 Meteor, hooked a trailer behind it loaded with some basic furniture and household items and set out for Colorado.  He had been accepted to do a Masters in Continuing Education at Fort Collins.  Mother hung in like a trooper but later in life she told us that when father told her he had been accepted she went to the bathroom to wash her hair so she could cry in the sink.

I can actually remember the border crossing at Regway from that trip – I don’t claim to remember much else about the trip but I do remember the crossing shack.  Its still standing at the crossing but no longer in use.  Homeland Security now operates out of a multi-million dollar steel and glass monstrosity.  The Canadian side likely still works out of the same facility they had in 1965.  It certainly looks like it is 50+ years old.  I haven’t noticed that Saskatchewan has been overrun by illegal aliens entering through Regway so I suspect our facility is adequate for the task.  Nor have I heard about any plague of illegals that has been apprehended by the glass and steel edifice on the south side of the line.

On that crossing so many years ago I remember that just inside the door of the crossing station there was a display case with a very elaborate model of an ox cart.  It was probably something like 1/5 scale – big in other words.  I pulled at mother’s hand and asked her if the crossing guards had taken that away from somebody.  That was probably what we had been told might happen at the crossing – something might get taken away – so it seemed like a logical question to me.  On the return trip 10 months later I clearly recall receiving strict instructions that neither of us kids was to utter a single word while we were inside the crossing office.

We spent Sunday night on the parking lot of an abandoned auto plaza east of Fort Collins.  Its not hard to see the effects of the recession down here, even this far from ground zero.  Many of the small towns have main streets that are almost deserted now.  I’m sure Florida and California are much worse but there’s more than enough hurt to go round.

On Tuesday we found Medicine Creek State Recreation area.  There were a few other rigs here when we arrived but by the 2nd night we had this loop entirely to ourselves.  Tonight the weekend crowd is rolling in and I can’t blame them.  If we lived close to this place we’d weekend here too.  I’m about halfway through a Growsafe installation at Arapahoe, Nebraska.  After we get done here it looks like we’ll be heading west to Reno.  Ultimately we still expect to end up in Texas, somewhere close to Houston.  But our plans are – as ever – fluid.