GLACIER NATIONAL PARK ROAD TRIP
September 2011
I was packed and ready to go the day before. In the morning it was all a matter of putting the cold foods in and lock up the house. I went out early to fire up the refrigerator so it would start getting cold. Usually this takes a couple tries as air gets in the propane line after a long sit, only this time it wouldn't start. I walked around to the side, took the cover off and saw the fire was going but the igniter kept clicking thinking it hadn't lit, and then everything would shut down. Great! No refrigerator, no leaving. Well, as I told the neighbor when he walked by while I was fiddling with it "The good thing is, being retired I have all time and not like my limited vacation time is being taken away by this. Plus, good this happened at home rather hundreds of miles into nowhere." I drove into town to an RV store and lucked out with them having a dust covered package sitting on a shelf containing the correct thermo-coupler. I installed it in the parking lot and BINGO, I had ignition! We were rolling by noon.
We logged in two-hundred-thirteen miles that first day stopping in one-hundred-three degree Redding at an RV park along the Sacramento River. When the lady checking us in asked if we had any dogs I mentioned no, just my pussy cat. "Could you set us up in a spot away from dogs if possible? Sinbad likes to sit outside.” So she made the effort and gave us site 64. We pulled in, hooked up and I sat on the step in the shade of the RV drinking a beer while Sinbad sprawled out on the cement. Just then an RV a bit larger than us pulled in two spots down in direct line of us. The middle-aged lady rolled out the driver side door and all hell broke loose as she beat back several barking and yapping dogs trying to follow her out. Wonderful! I sipped my beer and watched the show.
She plugged in the electrical cord, connected the water line and hooked up her poop tube, all bare handed I might add. Then she brought out this short-legged hugely overweight belly dragging-the-cement dog for a pee. That poor pooch. She returned that dog to the RV and emerged with a large black poodle and a miniature black poodle that literally dragged her at a jogging pace across the road. They did their peeing. She returned them to the RV and came out with another even larger black poodle, taking it over to the doggy area. By now this had become beyond merely amusing. As she brings back the second large poodle I thought myself If she comes out with another dog...no way. Unbelievably though, she did, this time it is an ankle-biting Pomeranian that after it does its business she carries it back to the RV. Five dogs! I finished my beer imagining what it must be like inside that RV. The smell, scratched woodwork, torn and chewed cushions, dog hair everywhere.
Later, on my way to the pool I mentioned the story to the RV lady in the office, in a nice way not complaining. She couldn't believe it. "She told me she had two dogs and a cat and her mother." I told her I couldn't believe a cat could tolerate the mayhem inside that RV−that poor cat. The RV park lady apologized and offered us a spot along the river in the high-rent district but we stayed where we were. It was too hot for the dogs to be outside. They stayed in with the air conditioner chugging away.
And this why I so love road trips.
The next day we arrived in Lava Beds National Monument just after noon and took spot A6 as it was the furthest away and afforded a nice view of the valley below. As it turned out, this happened to be the primo camp spot of the campground. I toured the visitor center then walked the nearby developed (paved) Mush Pot Lava Tube trail. Back at camp I lounged around resting after the long day’s drive. The sunset provided some pretty great pictures and was in bed soon after.
The following day began with a slow drive up the road twenty miles to the Klamath Basin Wildlife Refuge. Here I drove along the gravel road topped levees looking for birds to photograph, stopping near the end of the auto route to eat lunch. Afterwards, a short drive up to the refuge visitor center where I rescued a small snake trapped inside the building. Heading back to camp I saw a Golden Eagle eating a Great Blue Heron on road. That was too good a photo opportunity until a young kid drove by stopped and chucked the carcass off the road so as he said, “No Red Shouldered hawks would get hit”. Yeah, right. Back at camp someone had moved into our spot removing my receipt tag. There was a tent, chair and cooler all set up with no one around. The campground host had left the day before so I had to drive back to the visitor center and report it. They called in Ranger Laura who followed us down to our camp at A6. She left them a note to vacate and an hour later the guy showed up. He claimed our tag was dated the 7th which it was. But that was the purchase date, not the vacate date. Oddly he still had my tag in his pocket, like if he didn’t get away with his plan, whoever he was stealing the campsite from he could return the receipt to.
This is why I don’t like road trips.
We left Lava Beds National Monument after a two night stay-over. The morning as I prepared to leave I was approached by a man interested in our camp spot. I told him we were leaving in an hour but he’d best hurry as the claim jumper up the road had his eye on it. Meanwhile, two very old ladies came by and got into a discussion with the newcomer. By now the newcomer had already paid for A6 and had begun moving in while I sat there eating my breakfast. The two old women didn't let him come by it very easily and after a lengthy discussion eventually moved on for easier pickings. I later thought I could have auctioned off the site.
North we traveled through Bend, Oregon then veered northeast. It appeared we would be in the vast high desert lands of Oregon with no place to stay so I elected to do an early stop at the last town which would provide a place to clean up, charge up and get online. That town was Prineville in Crook County which was that very weekend hosting the Run to the Cascades Motorcycle Rally. Yippee! The one and only place to stay was the Crook County RV Park which was right smack dab next to the Crook County Fairgrounds where the event was taking place. I mean, we were like two hundred yards away from the sound stage where rock bands played non-stop, twenty-four hours long, for the entire three-day weekend. The good thing was the nine feet tall stacked sound systems were pointed away from us. Also, as the guard at the gate mentioned to me, "This is Friday and they may take a break for a few hours tonight for there is the Ultimate Cage Fight to the End being held in the Event Center tonight." Now there is a date-night opportunity to impress a young lady.
Inside the motor home was nice as I kept the air conditioner on which drowned out Harleys firing up and the constant rock music. I showered, caught up on e-mails, posted on the blog and brought the journal up to date after a few days of neglect. It was $30.66 well spent and we were lucky getting one of the last spots available during the big event weekend.
That evening wasn’t noisy at all. Even when I awoke in the middle of the night, it was fairly quiet outside. These middle-aged bikers can’t party like the young ones. I went to dump what little I had in the tanks right at our camp spot. Unfortunately when I pulled the poop tube out of the holder, half of it had rotted away in places and was unusable. After cutting off the bad half I proceeded with the dirty deed and we were on our way.
We stopped at the John Day Fossil Beds, another one of those life-long places I’ve wanted to see ever since I discovered it existed. It wasn’t how I imagined it−a vast desolate desert landscape. Instead it was hilly to mountainous land with trees and some very nicely colored hills much like the Painted Desert. I walked a few short quarter mile loops, found one tiny fossil leaf and then watched a rather large man lose his footing on a hard-packed sandy slope and crash to the ground on his hip. The show was right in front of me and he undoubtedly was very embarrassed. At least he saved his camera in spite of having lost his dignity. Had he been on the established trail this would not have happened to him. I ate lunch at the last stop then continued on down the highway to the next fossil site thirty miles on. Here was a large visitor center with a really great display of fossils, plus I could have watched them working on the fossils had it not been a Saturday when the curators were off for the weekend. Rather than see more dried up areas, and the hour was getting late with no for-sure campground, we moved on. I found Clyde Holiday Campground only twenty-six miles further in Mount Vernon. It proved to be a very nice State Park (Oregon always has nice parks) with green grass and cool shady trees. Twenty-two dollars in spot #19 with electricity, I’ll take it.
It was cool in the morning. We were underway at nine A.M. heading north on Highway 395 stopping a couple times for old abandoned barn photo opportunities. Somewhere along the road we crossed the forty-fifth parallel, the midway point between the equator and the North Pole. No wonder it was cooler this morning. I stopped at a Subway on the outskirts of Pendleton for a sandwich then continued on into Washington arriving at Lewis and Clark Trail State Park on Highway 12 just before the town of Dayton. The park was nothing like the previous night’s camp in Oregon. This place was in a very humid forest setting. I had to go pee and found the restrooms look to have been erected around the time when Lewis and Clark themselves passed through here. I think I had become spoiled to the high-life in camping and need to readjust my thinking a bit. Paying twenty-two dollars for this dusty overgrown jungle spot after paying the same price last night with watered green lawns in a cool comfortable setting was disheartening. If I was to find a better campground down the road a ways tomorrow I’ll be...well, I just hope not. Since we are in a “jungle” I went right out with my camera on the nature trail but really saw nothing of interest.
We got an early start leaving camp before eight-thirty A.M. Just past Dayton I pulled off onto another road to view a Lewis and Clark site the jungle campground host had told me about. It was only two and a half miles in and there, in a meadow alongside the river was a recreation of their encampment using life-sized cut-out metal silhouettes of each member of the party. Even Sacagawea herself was represented. It was pretty neat to see but still difficult to imagine what the scene must have really looked like two hundred five years ago. I doubled back on the road and returned to Highway 12 which pretty much follows the route Lewis and Clark used on their return trip back from the mouth of the Columbia River in 1806.
Crossing the Snake River into Lewiston, Idaho I stopped for fuel and food then pulled off once out of town to eat the other half of my now soggy Subway sandwich. Soon we would be on the hundred-ninety-six-mile long Lewis and Clark Highway Wild and Scenic Corridor which on the map showed no camping. But as it was not yet two P.M., it was too soon to stop in Kooskia where an RV park billed itself as the last stop for two hundred miles. I pressed on and soon found Forest Service campgrounds all along the Corridor. I stopped midway at a very nice campground, mostly to ourselves and for only four dollars rent with my old people discount. It was now tea time but instead enjoyed a beer while getting the barbeque going for the steak I bought earlier in Lewiston.
The next morning we continued on and pulled off at the top of Lolo Pass for no other reason than I had to pee. There was a huge parking area for their newly constructed visitor center. In fact workers were still painting preservative on the logs of the building and moving boulders about along the entry into the center. Inside I immediately saw a wall full of books, but no bathroom. I'm sure there was a bathroom somewhere but I was too excited with all the books to be had. Off I went back to the motor home for my money, go pee in there and then back inside the visitor center where I bought my book, a journal by one of the members of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Maybe the bathrooms were hard to find but not the FREE hot chocolate machine. A new book and free hot chocolate; I was a happy camper. Coincidently we were there on the very same day, September 13, as when the Lewis and Clark expedition came through the pass two-hundred-six years earlier.
That night we pulled into La Salle RV Campground just outside of Glacier National Park. It appeared to be to the closest to the park and the write-up online appeared to be good. The truth of the matter was just the opposite. (I later found out I had mistakenly been reading the reviews of an RV park in La Salle, Wisconsin) It was an unimproved camp area where most of the campers appeared to be long-term residents. I took the electric only spot for twenty dollars. Full hook-ups were thirty-five. The showers were marginally better than the Washington park. The bad thing was I had passed much nicer looking RV parks back down the road. The old fellow running the place lived in Casa Grande, Arizona. He was there giving his son a break after they went in on this place together as an investment and the son had not had a day off in two years. I can only imagine how happy the former owners were when they unloaded this pit on the unsuspecting father and son enterprise. Tomorrow, we would be in Glacier National Park where I read it was twenty-three degrees at night!
We were up before six A.M. and on our way in a little over an hour. Too excited I skipped breakfast but did get an espresso drink next to the filling station. I wanted a full tank of fuel for all the driving through Glacier Park Montana. I stopped outside the entrance to wash the windows then walked over to get a lemon muffin and another espresso drink at a nearby espresso wagon. I did a quick walk-through at the Alberta visitor center. I was now ready to go in to Glacier National Park, a long awaited visit. A ranger greeted us in line before reaching the kiosk booth. I handed her my old people card where upon she said “Now you know you’re too big to drive all the way through over Logan Pass”. No! Say this is some sort of joke! Nope, I could only go as far as Avalanche Creek where there was a turn-around. I was extremely disappointed to say the least.
I stopped at the Apgar visitor center two miles in to get more information. I had found myself in the wrong line with ranger Chatty Cathy. After about fifteen or so minutes of standing in line I found out the size limit to drive the Going-to-the-Sun Road was twenty one feet. The motor home with the rear bike carrier on back is at twenty five feet. It is also too wide as the road was is narrow as the mirrors could hit the rock walls. Then there were the ten foot high rock overhangs. The motor home stands at 10’6”. I was told it was not that far to drive all the way around the park and come in on the east side but she told me four miles of the road was too narrow and we’d have to take a detour of twenty-four miles. Then there was a twenty mile stretch that was under construction and long waits had been reported. She advised me of another detour of undeterminable length around all the mess. By then we would be at the East Entrance where we could drive in eighteen miles and be faced with a sign advising us of not going any further. “But I’ve seen tour buses go on to Logan Pass, so you should be able to”...and then she added those fateful two words I think. I really did not need all this added adventure (and uncertainty) so I never even considered trying the round-about detours.
Instead I began a leisurely drive up along Lake McDonald where for the most part all I could see was a ribbon of asphalt through a corridor of trees. Fifteen miles later I turned around at previously mentioned Avalanche Creek and slowly made my way back stopping at most every turnout. One stop I almost passed until at the last moment I saw something to read. I stopped, read the sign then walked down by the water’s edge. There I waited for this guy to get out of the way so as I could take my ‘award winning’ Glacier Park photograph. Just then his friend who was patiently waiting said “Here comes a bear.” Sure enough, a big black bear was making his way towards us along the shoreline. I ran back up to the motor home to get my long lens and my movie making SD card. The bear walked right by me and I was able to get both photos and movies. Glacier National Park came through for me and I was once again a happy camper.
Back at the West Glacier Entrance I ate lunch then continued on the highway outside of the park boundary seeing just as spectacular scenery outside the park as there was inside. We arrived at a Forest Service campground some twenty plus miles on and I called it a day at two-fifteen P.M. in the afternoon. The espresso lady earlier had told me this is exceptional weather this week here in Glacier country so for that too I was quite happy. Camp was at 4239 feet and some campers who were just leaving said it did not get into freezing range.
We decided to go on into Browning, Montana for breakfast but found no place to eat there except an East Indian café so continued on to Cut Bank. It wasn’t till the third café listed on the GPS did I find C&L Café. It was very basic in furniture and décor but the misspellings on the menu boards made up for that for entertainment. That aside, the breakfast was good. I had the smoked sausage skillet with two eggs and hash browns. It took twenty-five minutes to prepare my skillet and by then I was beyond hungry. Onward I drove, eastbound on Highway 2 paralleling the Canadian border which was thirty-five to fifty miles northward on my left. After a bathroom stop in Chester, I elected to do an early fuel stop in Chinook as there looked to be nothing else for a long way after turning south on Highway 66. The day was growing long with miles upon miles of wheat fields and no campgrounds or RV parks around for hours of driving. My ‘Cheap & Free’ campground directory showed there was a BLM campground south of an Indian reservation off on some gravel roads near Landusky. Fortunately there was a sign on the road and I wheeled in. Several miles later I came upon a nice campground with ten sites and none of them level. I know as I tried almost every one. After about twenty minutes of effort, finally I had the motor home level in spot #10 alongside a smelly sulpher stream. I paid half price for the three dollar spot letting the BLM keep fifty cents in change from my two dollars as a thank you tip for being here. I took Sinbad on a little walk and gave him claw clip for today was his twelfth birthday. It had been a long day at two-ninety- miles fighting head and side winds sweeping down from Canada.
No one else came to our little ‘private’ campground that night. Who else would be out here miles from nowhere anyway? After a quick stop at the pit toilet we were on our way to the Charles Russell Wildlife Refuge less than twenty miles down the road, which I discovered that night on another map I had which had campgrounds! I drove in five miles or so on a gravel washboard road that didn’t look like would give me much wildlife viewing. I stopped at the bottom of a green valley where I could turn around. There as I was trying to bet the RV turned around was a plethora of macro bug photos to be had among the flowering brush. I probably stayed there an hour chasing bugs. A few miles further I saw the campground, right by the road, spacious and flat! Grrrr. We continued on into Billings Montana and stayed at the KOA, the original very first KOA, the mother ship itself, and it was very nice. At thirty-one fifty it had probably the best of restroom and shower facilities I had ever seen for an RV park.
First stop after leaving that morning when I decided I didn’t want to eat breakfast was to the grocery store. There I scored on frozen dinners ten for ten dollars. I bought a lot of other stuff including a six-pack of Mike’s Hard Lemonade which turned out to be Mike’s Margueritas, a mistake purchase but still fine. I also picked up a scone and a muffin for that skipped breakfast to eat at my next stop, a Starbucks. I may pay more than I should for a drink but I’ll be darned if I’ll carry the weakness further by buying their pastries. I sat there in a post office loading zone and ate my breakfast.
On to Pompey’s Pillar to see Captain William Clark’s name etched in the sandstone bluff when he stopped by here on July 25, 1806 and left his mark. The monument was very nice with a great visitor center but you cannot imagine my disappointment upon viewing old Bill’s name after climbing the hundred fifty-foot tall rock pillar near the Yellowstone River. His graffiti was enclosed behind a framed bullet-proof faded Plexiglas window with a brass lock dangling from the hasp. Not only that, but three bronze plaques were embedded into the rock face further detracting from the image of the natural rock wall. Oh well, such are the times we live in. On down the road we arrived at the Little Bighorn Battlefield which made up for Pompey’s Pillar. This wasn’t a consideration for the trip. I merely saw it on the map and we were close by so why not? The battlefield was very interesting although try as I might, it was still difficult to imagine what took place there on June 25 and 26 of 1876. Small white marble headstones mark where individual soldiers of George Armstrong Custer’s 7th Calvary soldiers fell. Dotting the grasslands are red granite headstones showing where Lakota, Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors died defending their homeland and way of life. A tall granite memorial stands atop Last Stand Hill with the names of the soldiers who died etched into it. Nearby is circular memorial to the Indians who fought and died in the battle. Along the low rock wall circle is a life-sized wire sculpture of three Indians on horseback riding into battle as a lone Indian maiden runs alongside the final rider. Attempting to avoid the tour buses disgorging loads of people like cattle was the only bad part of my visit there. So glad I saw it on the map.
A bit further down the road was the 7th Ranch RV Park which really was a gem, with the battlefield still in sight on the far hills to the north. It cost thirty-four dollars for the night to camp where no doubt soldiers and Indians had chased one and the other a hundred twenty-five years earlier.
I was close to being the last one to leave, probably because I was the last one to get up. But I’m the last to turn out the lights at night too. That’s how it is when your biorhythm is synced to west coast time. It was now onward south into Wyoming with a rest stop at noon for lunch. We arrived at the Devil’s Tower KOA just outside the entrance station to the National Monument and picked spot #18. The lady said they were full last night but today it was pretty clear. I had a beer and then drove into the monument and was asked by the kiosk lady if I was going to camp! I did not know they had a campground here. Oh well, I did have electricity, Wi-Fi and showers for twenty-four dollars at the KOA. On the three mile road to the visitor center we went through prairie dog town where I just had to stop and take pictures. These guys are so use to people that picture taking posed no challenge. The visitor center was very minimal compared to most others I’ve seen. I did not stay long but returned to camp planning the morning for a hike and picture taking for the next day. I had my heart set for a buffalo burger dinner but was disappointed to find the KOA restaurant closed for the season. So it was a frozen dollar meal instead. An interesting side note for this KOA was that while looking it up online I saw a news article on it. One month earlier the young family man owner and a septic tank worker died in an accident in the park. Both were found dead inside the system, probably overcome by the gases and lack of oxygen. So it was a somber feeling to stay here.
I showered in the morning and decided to stay there at Devil’s Tower Campground, the park’s campground. I drove back to the visitor center to park then walked the 1.3 mile loop around the Tower taking about two hours to do so what with taking pictures of birds and squirrels and avoiding the Asians from the newly arrived tour bus. I returned to The Little House on the Highway for lunch where I visited with Bobbie, another View owner same model and year as mine. She was from New Jersey and was taking this trip solo (except for two dogs) after her boy friend died two months earlier. Back down to the Park Service campground for six dollars and took more pictures mainly of Mountain Bluebirds which were fairly friendly. I tried my luck shooting video down into the prairie dog holes using the GoPro camera mounted to my hiking stick with some success.
We left camp and took a suggested route through Hewlett to avoid the road resurfacing going on the road through Sundance. This proved to be very scenic with gusty winds pushing us along. At Belle Fourche I bought a coffee at the Pony Espresso then continued through the confusing mountain roads around Deadwood, South Dakota.
The Crazy Horse site was first on my list and I was blown away by the development that had taken place in the past thirty-five years. It was overwhelming. It was apparent a lot of money had gone into the place. I watched the informative orientation movie in one of the two large theatres which pressed the point that everything around me was the result of donations and money earned from admissions and sales of souvenirs. If nothing else, it had the most extensive Indian history collection, a display the likes I had never seen elsewhere. One of the last things to see, which only by chance I did see it, was the opportunity to buy a souvenir rock from the excavation of Crazy Horse for a dollar donation. I bought one and have since lost track which rock it is from all of the rocks I’ve collected over the years from various places I’ve visited. It was very windy and cold was miserable. As for the rock sculpture itself, it seemed no thirty-five years of progress had been accomplished. I knew now that not in my lifetime will I see the completion of Crazy Horse.
Next was Mt. Rushmore which was equally over-developed from how I remembered it. It looked so out of place from the natural setting of the Black Hills of South Dakota with polished granite columns, buildings and walkways all of which I learned was granite from Minnesota not South Dakota. Flags from every state in the Union fluttered in the breeze and I was unimpressed and somewhat disillusioned. But I’d look at the visitors around me, many of them their first time at Mt. Rushmore and their faces were filled with wonder and admiration. So be it. I’d rather them to be having a grand time anyway. I did finally get my buffalo burger with fries and a hot cocoa at their restaurant. Buffalo tastes pretty good. No wonder the Indians revered them so.
Back up the road five miles to a luxurious KOA I had passed and stayed there for the night. I was tired. All the sightseeing was too much for me I suppose.
I was awake before six A.M. after probably what was the coldest night, even if it was just forty-four-degrees outside. I walked over to the Ponderosa Restaurant for breakfast. I ordered my usual eggs and hash browns and was somewhat taken back finding the hash browns were two triangle wedged processed patties. Oh well, again. I partially filled the water tank, washed the windows and was off hunting for buffalo.
It was a scenic and interesting drive to Custer State Park which took us through narrow rock tunnels and on pig’s tail turns (that’s what they called them) in the road. I stopped to photograph some Pronghorn Antelope and was beginning to wonder if I would ever see the Bison. Finally, we came to the tail end of a group crossing the road. Although I missed the entire herd, I felt happy to see and get pictures of what I did. Then, a few more miles down the road I saw another small herd off in the distance and stopped for a while. Soon they began to make their way towards us and in time I had them right next to us in The Little House on the Highway. I couldn’t have asked for anything better. What a day! And with that we left Custer State Park to look for a camp.
Wind Cave National Park was just five miles further on and several miles into it we entered the campground which was vacant save for one tenter. I relaxed the rest of the afternoon, reviewing my pictures and wishing they were better after deleting most. We did fifty-seven miles our day of hunting buffalo. I must add Sinbad found them interesting to watch.
We were on our way at seven-thirty A.M. I saw more Bison and Pronghorn before reaching our first destination of the day, the Mammoth Site of Hot Springs, South Dakota. It was seven-fifty for admission at the senior rate and I viewed the video while waiting for the next tour to begin. By that time a big tour bus arrived packed with old people (okay, I’m old but these folks were ancient) and I felt all was lost. I tagged along with the first half of the group, refusing to use the telephones provided to hear what the tour leader was saying. I could hear well enough without all the nastiness of putting a germ infested receiver to my ear. Once the group neared the end I veered off on my own to look everything over more carefully. As more buses arrived I gave up and left thinking of lunch. On the way to a Subway I saw a Dairy Queen and pulled in to eat on the wild side. I had a double-decker burger, quite tasty along with a milkshake. I must consider Dairy Queen more often.
Next it was on into Nebraska and to the Agate Fossil Beds National Monument out in the middle of nowhere on Road 29. This I really enjoyed as only one other lady was there, some sort of a survivalist woman that she made clear to me. I distanced myself from her right away. Time was running out to take the two mile walk to the dig site but that was fine as I had seen all I needed in the movie playing in the visitor center. I drove on to Scotts Bluff where I grocery shopped then camped at a not-to-well marked city campground nearby just behind their “zoo”. I don’t like zoos so tried not to look over and through the chain link fence separating the two properties. It was a nice campground (except for the neighbor) where I showered and relaxed for the remainder of the day.
I was up early again and after a quick cereal breakfast, dumped the tanks for free, although the notice said there was a eight-fifty charge but no one said anything, and I motored on out before someone did say something. It could have been a fee for non-campers but it wasn’t clear. I needed to start heading west for home but I had to go east just a wee bit further...like hundred twenty-one miles further. I wanted to follow the Oregon Trail back to Ogallala. I breezed by an old barn photo opportunity and pulled a U-turn to go back for it. Just as I finished with my photo, an old guy in his pick-up slowed to a stop across the road and even more slowly walked on over to me. He presented me with a Nebraska twenty-five cent piece. His name was Gordon and he talked with me a go