Index

  • First Motorized Crossing of the US in 1903

    2022-05-31 In 1903, ten years before the idea of the Lincoln Highway came to be, and travel was dominated by horse and buggy, George Adams Wyman accepted a challenge to ride a motorized bicycle across the continent in 40 days, the first attempt by a motorized vehicle. The California Motor Bicycle Company provided the bike…

  • Swedes Across America

    2022-05-31 I stopped at the Lincoln Monument a few miles east of Laramie, and highest point on I-80/US-30. The visitor center there has a lot of information about the Lincoln Highway. It gives all the credit for the Lincoln Highway to Henry Joy, the president of Packard Motor Company and the first president of the…

  • Small Town Iowa

    2022-05-22 I spent time in two small towns, Missouri Valley Iowa and Cozad Nebraska. I stayed in their city park campgrounds and both experiences were great. These city parks are clean, safe and well kept… and inexpensive. One of the reasons I like small towns and their parks is you come across truly interesting people…

  • THE Railroad Town

    2022-05-24 North Platte Nebraska is THE railroad town. It was created by Missouri Pacific, and the railroad still dominates the city. When Grenville Dodge was laying out the route for the first transcontinental railroad, he identified this location in central Nebraska as the ideal location for a routing, service and maintenance facility – the midpoint…

  • The Wall

    2021-02-21 This is a long report, but there is a lot to say. The wall is here. I found it in its many forms. If you drive along US-281, Military Highway, and look south, you will see many the barriers, both old and new. I have been joking about “Biden gates” but they won’t be…

  • IPFS, WEB 3 & Decentralization – Part 2

    NFT’s, Blockchain & Copyright Non-Fungible Tokens, or NFT’s are unique digital asset that is verified and stored on a blockchain network. While cryptocurrencies are interchangeable and can be divided into smaller units, NFTs are one-of-a-kind and cannot be divided, thus non-fungible. They can represent ownership of a specific asset, such as digital art, music, or…

  • The Civil War

    This trip has been for planned two years. It was originally set for 2021, but Covid closed all the national parks and many campgrounds, so I headed west that summer. I had visited the Civil War “Western Front” in 2020 — along the Tennessee, Cumberland and Mississippi rivers — Forts Donelson and Henry, Shiloh, Corinth…

  • Camp Sumter

    This is not a good place. This is Andersonville. Between February, 1864 and the end of the Civil War Camp Sumter confined Union prisoners of war. Forty-five thousand came here, but only thirty-two thousand left. Thirteen-thousand died of malnutrition, exposure and rampant disease – a 29% death rate. During the fourteen months Camp Sumter held…

  • Fort Sumter on Memorial Day

    Fort Sumter1 was built after the war of 1812 as one of a series of coastal port defenses and named after a Revolutionary war hero, General Thomas Sumter. But it entered history as the site of the first shot of the Civil War. It is built on a constructed island formed of 70,000 tons of…

  • Some Memorial Day Thoughts

    Spending Memorial Day at Fort Sumter where the Civil War began reminded me that the first celebrations of Memorial Day, originally called Decoration Day occurred shortly after at the end of the War, and one of the most remarkable was here in Charleston. Late in the war Union prisoners were held on the infield of…