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From Colorado by Skyhawk - Day 9 - Cheyenne to North Platte.

October 22, 2018 9:50 PM | Michael Brown (Administrator)

Today's flying was only a short two hundred miles, from Cheyenne, Wyoming, along the Nebraska-Colorado border to North Platte, Nebraska.


The weather was perfect - clear and sunny with light winds.


The scenery... well, let's just say it's flat. Very flat.

A target for the world's largest lawn darts...

The town of Pine Bluffs, Wyoming - Nebraska is just ahead.

More right angles...

A feed lot outside Sidney, Nebraska.

I like the road pattern - a new housing development, perhaps?

The former headquarters of Cabelas, in Sidney, Nebraska.

Pac Man, eating a farm.

Today's Rorschach Pond is next to KSNY Sidney Airport - a Giant Sloth, I think.

It's a face...

Irrigation canal outside Paxton, Nebraska.

The North Platte River has a braided appearance as it flows across the plain near the city of North Platte, Nebraska, my goal for the day.

North Platte Airport KLBF has two non-intersecting runways, 12/30 and 17/35. The wind was 100 at 11, so I landed on 12.

Airplanes aren't the only winged things landing at KLBF...

The fuel truck met me as I parked Cessna 493 in front of "The FBO of the Plains", as the sign called it. The FBO folks were nice enough to give me a list to my motel.

After I checked into my motel, I spent all afternoon at the Golden Spike Tower overlooking the Union Pacific's huge Bailey Yard watching the trains.

The East Hump - cars are pushed up to the top of the 30-foot-high hill by an engine or set of engines at the rear, which are remotely controlled by a switchman standing at the top of the hill. He uncouples the cars in one-, two- or three-car sets, and the cars roll down the hill to be switched by a computer onto one of the 64 parallel tracks. The car just coming off the hill in this picture is being slowed down by trackside retarders, which are controlled by the computer such that the car rolls to a stop at just the right spot without slamming into the other cars on the siding.


Tomorrow's weather looks good for the four-hour flight to Mason City, Iowa.

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