North Platte, Nebraska

So why in North Platte, Nebraska when you cross the river, it's the South Platte that goes through town.  You know the old saying about the Platte River - Too thick to drink and too thin to plow.  Reminds me of the bumper sticker on a van we passed today on 83 south.  "Don't follow the masses, sometimes the M is silent!

We were going to head west on 94 through North Dakota and Montana, but the weather forecast showed some serious smoke out west, so we headed south on 29 to US 14 at Arlington and took it over to Pierre and then south to North Platte where we are spending the night. 

Yesterday, Sunday was a great day for touring the countryside.  We started out in Argusville to show Tom III and Carolyn where Vi went to school.  It's all fenced off now and plans are to start the asbestos removal this summer and final teardown by fall 2023. The community center was locked, but we were able to get Laura, the Interim Auditor for Argusville, to open the doors so we could see all the graduation pictures which were moved from the school to the community center.  Awesome seeing all the graduates.  Vi's Class of 1955 (all five of them) was great.

After leaving the big city of Argusville, we drove out to the old Schlosser farm.  We were lucky that someone was home and we talked with Lyle LaPlante, who is the fourth owner after Ed and Karen sold it and moved into town.  We told him that we would send him some of the history and pictures that we have.  Have to wait until we get home, but Adrian had a couple of pictures on his phone and I forwarded them to Kyle.  After leaving the farm, we drove over to Mapleton to Russ and Melinda's.  They gave T&C the four tour and Tom III flew his drone over the farmstead to get some good panoramic pictures.  Russ was out in the field, so Melinda drove us out about two miles where he was planting soybeans.  Russ gave Tom III a ride on two circuits of the field, so Tom will have to come back and see how his soybeans are when they are harvested.  He was able to fly his drone over the field so he got a good aerial view of Russ's work. 

From Mapleton, Melinda led us out to Clint and Reilee's.  Actually, Vi and Carolyn drove out in the comfort of Melinda's GMC SUV and Tom and I followed along.  Clint gave us an awesome tour of the ranch, cattle barns, equipment, and explained about all they were doing right now.  Cows have the same gestation period as humans, so they were starting the breeding process now for calf delivery in February.  Drove out to the pasture to see his cattle and other parts of his acreage.  It'll make it so much neater now when we view the You Tubes on Howe's We Ranch.  We were going to go out to Ken and Melanie's, but Tom III and Carolyn wanted to get on the road.  After four and a half weeks on the road, they were getting anxious to start their trip back East.

In the evening, the immediate family met back over at Melissa and Jeff's to help them get rid of some of the leftovers from the graduation party.  We didn't put a dent in the leftovers, but we tried!  Then it was back to the Fargo Inn for Vi and I as we wanted to leave Monday morning to start our trip home.