Why?

Miles today: 195

Miles so far: 1985

Creator Jim Reinder's answer was "Why not?" Hmm. Apparently inspired by his 7 year stay in England near Stonehenge he wished to create an homage or "replica" near his home town of Alliance Nebraska. As he later said (or possibly didn't) "We were able to reduce the time of the original Stonehenge construction by 9,999 years and 51 weeks". Yep, it took them a week to build. But it is (as far as possible) faithful to the design and orientation of the original. The sun sets or rises (can't remember) along the Cadillac (or whatever) on the summer solstice! Its just made of cars. Yes, its bonkers, but as a piece of art and utter folly I cannot help but admire it. As Jim possibly also said, "the advantage of wheels is they make the stones much easier to transport".

Seemed fitting!

And finally a panoramic shot of Carhenge. Usually panos bend them - in this case it is unbent!

Our first stop today in our continuing odyssey of the American west, in our new state of Nebraska, was at Fort Robinson, the effective nemesis of Fort Laramie as it took over its role, but also the scene of the death of Crazy Horse. He who had never signed a treaty with the white man, never surrendered, never been defeated, but had voluntarily travelled to Fort Robinson to discuss terms. And although I have now read several versions of the story, the essence seems to be that he was betrayed by one of his own and stabbed to death by a guard. Full details - ask Eric. The site of this event was what took us to the Fort.

Which is just as well as the actual buildings and the museum were shut for the season (in mid September in 25º heat). But that didn't stop the state park ranger relieving us of 12 bucks each to enter, whilst omitting to tell us that it was actually all shut up. We had a word!

But we are now in possession of the most expensive top box stickers if we can just prize them off our totally inadequate windscreens (where we were required to put them or face a $75 dollar fine!) and get them home! Possibly one of our very worst selfies. (The phone belonging to man with the long arms is knackered and will no longer take selfies)

Actually technically our first stop was for breakfast at yet another quirky diner, the Dairy Sweet, on the outskirts of Crawford, just 3 miles short of Fort Robinson. It might have been quirky but it did a much better breakfast than had been offered, and refused, at our hotel for last night. I couldn't even manage a coffee there, which tells you how bad it was.

Somewhat spookily as we drove through Crawford I thought it looked familiar - which sounds perverse in such an out of the way place. But then I realised Nareesa and I had stopped here at the only diner in the town a day before our appointment with the total eclipse of the sun in August 2017 in Scottsbluff, just down the road. Bizarrely the Frontier Bar and Downtown Diner had been Rob's (he was leading) choice of stop for breakfast. Sadly it was closed. But then most of Crawford looked closed. A sad looking town, probably been in decline for some time but possibly accelerated by the pandemic.

Our final stop of today was at Chimney Rock, where with immaculate timing we rolled up at the exact time the visitor centre closed. Sometimes this serendipity thing simply doesn't work! Pretty sure we saw the staff, the last to leave, pulling out of the car park, just as we pulled in. So we couldn't even work our charm! But on the plus side, we had the place to ourselves and we could take pictures of the Nebraska State symbol to our hearts content, whist avoiding any close encounters with rattlesnakes.

Rob or Eric playing the fool. I'll let you guess which.

Captions please.

And as I post tonight, we are safely tucked up in one of our better hotels, with a choice of restaurants in Bridgeport, NE. Which is just as well as we could only manage a take away pizza last night that we actually had to drive to - not because it was too far but because it shut at 7.30pm and we arrived at our hotel after our Crazy Horse experience at about 7.10pm. And there was nothing else open in the metropolis of Hot Springs, SD. We did later manage to find a sneaky bar in a bowling alley we could walk to though, so not all was lost.