Well, have I got an adventure to share with you. Let me start out by saying this write up has a lot more details than what’s the video so if you want all the details, keep reading.

Despite living in Nebraska my whole life, I’ve only seen Chimney Rock once. There’s usually been about 500 miles separating me from it. The one time I did see it was on a family vacation as a child while heading up to South Dakota.

I see a lot of pictures from Nebraska photography groups that I follow showing the chimney and it’s been on my list to go out and see again. When I realized I needed to try out all of my backpacking gear, I decided now would be the perfect time to make a weekend trip out of visiting the Nebraska Panhandle.

I got off to a slower start than I had intended. I was up too late preparing my gear, but still managed to make it out of bed by 5:30 a.m. My goal was to make the 6 hour drive and arrive before noon so I’d have the entire afternoon free, but before long, trips to the gas station and the store and a return trip home and then waiting for the local Farmer’s Market to start selling the bread and breakfast burrito I was craving, all put my departure time further back to where I ended up leaving Lincoln at 8:30.

I decided since I was going to look at Chimney Rock, a feature on the Oregon Trail, I’d look to see if there were any audio books about it to gather information to pass on for the video and to kill the time.

I stumbled upon a series called Wagons West by Dana Fuller Ross with the first book being Independence!
Honestly, when I started out, I thought it was going to be non-fiction, but about 2 chapters in I realized I accidentally got a fiction book. It was still interesting and seemed accurate enough based on my understanding of the history. It’s a really easy listen with plot points that don’t take longer than 1 chapter to clear up. The Narrator is one of the best I’ve ever heard. If you’re interested about the Oregon Trail and want something simple to pass the time, check the series out.

Driving west along Intestate 80 between sunshine and 5 minute bursts of rain got me wondering where you could still see the Oregon Trail tracks at. I remembered reading years ago that it was possible. A Google search told me there were 9 spots where they were still relatively visible and one of them was only about a 15 minute detour out of my way.

I swung up to Brule, NE where I went on the hunt for California Hill. I cut it out of the video, but I spent about an hour trying to located the tracks. I drove up and down the dirt road looking for some sign of where to go.

I was thrown off by the actual entrance because of the mailbox and behind the fence there was, what looked to be a tractor. I assumed it was private property, but after ruling out all other possibilities, I drove up and saw the Oregon and California Trail signs.

To help others out, I went ahead and did a Google Street View recording since there wasn’t one for the area yet which is now live on Google maps here.

Needless to say as is evidenced by the video, I was really excited. I spent about an hour running up and down the trail taking photos and videos and Google Street View images that I will upload soon. I had great feedback on Facebook from all the other people who grew up learning about the Oregon Trail and how they wanted to see it themselves.

As I continued towards the campgrounds, I noticed Historical Marker indicating someone who died on the Oregon Trail was buried near by. I thought that would be really neat to visit. It’s not often you see a 150 year old tombstone.

The grave site was behind a fence that looked like it was normally open to the public, but that it just hadn’t yet been unlocked for the day so I decided to hop the fence and visit it. I took some photos and a Google Street View image of it so others can visit the site anywhere in the world. Personally, I don’t see this as being disrespectful. There’s nothing more I’d like in the afterlife than to know people were still visiting my grave and learning about who I was and my life story.

By now I was way behind schedule, despite gaining an hour due to the time zone change so I headed for the lake. When I decided on my camping location, I must have glazed over the actual spelling and instead read it as Lake Miniature, when in fact it is Lake MinATARE.

Upon arriving I realized 2 things. 1. It was WINDY as heck. It must have been 20 mph sustained and gusts up to 28 mph. 2. The trees there were really old. There were hardly any smaller trees and no lower ground cover. This did not bode well for my attempts to put up a hammock which requires about 17 feet of clearance between trees that are thin enough to wrap the straps around.

I drove around the lake for about an hour trying various spots that met my needs for the hammock. I settled on about 3 different spots before realizing they wouldn’t work. The on in the time lapse was abandoned because I realized I was on sand and the metal stakes in the ground wouldn’t hold the rain fly with the amount of wind.

The entire lake shore was nothing but sand, but some areas had some foliage that allowed me to get purchase with the stake which is what I finally decided on, but it forced me to shave some width off the tree which I absolutely hated doing. I realize that if everyone modifies a camp site to their needs then soon there won’t be any camp sites left.

After spending what seemed like hours finding a spot and figuring out how to set up my hammock, I was finally done around 7 p.m. just in time to enjoy the sunset before cooking up dinner.

For dinner, I used my Jetboil Cooking Stove (see my video on it here) to cook up some freeze dried Fettuccine Alfredo by Backpacker’s Pantry. As far as freeze dried goes, it was really good.

I’d planned to do some star gazing and night photography, but the long day and lack of sleep the night before caught up with me and almost as soon as the sun went down, I was ready to call it a day.

The temperature went way down and despite putting on all of my clothes and jacket, I was still cold. Being so close to the water I’m sure affected that, but it was unseasonably cold anyway. Over night my core got too cold and I had to retreat to the car to turn on the heater. I think I had the under quilt to snug against the bottom of the hammock so it was being compressed. Compressed insulation doesn’t hold heat.

In the morning, tearing down the hammock was pretty easy. I’m not sure rolling is the best space saving packing method for all of gear though. It takes up a lot of room in my pack. I’ll have to look into folding or using a compression bag to suck air out and make it flatter.

Day 2 is when all my trouble happened.

It started with my DJI Mavic Air drone. I thought it would make a really neat transition shot to fly my drone from my current location over to the LightHouse. I didn’t realize just how far away the opposite shore of the lake was though. I in a no fly zone, but their was an airport no fly zone that ended about 4 miles away so I decided to be extra safe and only fly my drone 100 feet above the water.

After getting my drone almost a mile away, I started to lose connection. The controller said I still had 2 bars of connection left though so I figured I was just losing visual connection and that controlling the drone would still be fine. I realized I wasn’t going to have enough battery to go all the way to the LightHouse and back so I stopped, but thought about doing one of the predefined drone shots so started tapping on the phone to select one. I was still dealing with connectivity warnings.

Next thing I know, I get a notification that the drone’s altitude is -18 feet and I got one picture of the water really close before the controller stopped updating information. I was panicking quite a bit because I couldn’t even recover the drone to send it in for repair if it went down in the middle of the lake so that means replacing the whole thing. Then the controller gives me the notification that I could tell the drone to return home so I smashed that button like there was no tomorrow. Soon the drone started giving updates to the controller again. I thought the drone maybe just got close to the water.

On the way back, I noticed the camera wasn’t responding to move commands. Sometimes when it is really windy, the drone has to lean one direction really hard and it is so far that the gimbal can’t compensate so I thought that was the issue. It wasn’t until the drone landed in my hands that I saw it was covered in water. The drone had either been splashed by a wave or actually got so low that it the propellers sprayed the water around. There was even water INSIDE the drone, like where the air vents are, water came out.

I pulled the footage off the SD card and the result was even more extreme than I thought. It actually plunged briefly into the water! It’s amazing that it made it back.

Mavic Air isn’t supposed to be amphibious

Well, the gimbal never did recover and I had to send it in to DJI for repairs. I tried to convince them that this was hardware/software failure because I didn’t to anything that would have caused the drone to go down 100 feet. Also the sensors that are supposed to prevent it from crashing into the ground (or presumably water) didn’t work. They reviewed the logs and footage and said that a landing notification was triggered. I know I wouldn’t have pressed land, 1 mile away over a lake, but had no way to prove it so I just paid the DJI Refresh Care price to have them fix it and get on with my life. I am however now out of DJI refresh care fixes so the next time the drone breaks, I’ll be paying full repair price.

Well, I had a lot of things still to do so I went on to check out the LightHouse of the Plains. As I drove around the lake, I noticed I had a low tire pressure light on. I got out and saw my back driver’s side tire was a bit low. Driving around in the country the previous day looking for the Oregon Trail must have put a nail in it. It seemed like a slow leak so I thought I’d just add some air and drive on it.

Well, I hooked up my portable air compressor, but didn’t get a very good seal on the valve. I went to take the air compressor clamp off, which was very tight, and then I felt something snap and all the air started rushing out of the tire. I stood there in disbelief looking at the piece of the valve that had snapped off and was now sitting in my hand.

This meant I had to get out the spare tire. I was really concerned because I wasn’t sure if any of my other tires had nails and if I got a flat, I’d be out of luck and have to call a tow company. Also, as I’ve found out in the past, most tire shops are closed on Sundays. Fortunately a park ranger stopped by and told me that Walmart in Scott’s Bluff, just 30 miles away was open so it gave me hope.

The car falling off the jack almost impaling my foot

I set to jacking up the car and I swear, I’ve never had a car fall off a jack before. In the first time-lapse, you can almost see the tire iron gets close to impaling my foot with the weight of the car on top of it. The only thing that saved me was that my toes weren’t in the tip of my shoe.

I was afraid I broke the jack and was now even more screwed, but it seemed fine so after driving a bit to free the jack from under the car I did raised the car again, but it almost fell off again. You can see me lean into the car to push it back straight while changing the tire in this second time-lapse.

Well, I had to keep going with the video so I set to filming the LightHouse quickly so I could get over to Scott’s Bluff and get the tire fixed. If you’ve never had the privilege of driving with a spare tire, know that there is a speed limit on them. Mine says 80 km/h which equates to 50 mp/h. Can you imagine having to drive home at that speed if the tire couldn’t be fixed? A trip that already takes 6 hours at 80 mp/h and being stuck going 50 mp/h would take nearly 10 hours!

Fortunately Walmart’s automotive department wasn’t busy and they were able to get me in right away and had me on my way in 45 minutes.

I had planned to drive through Scott’s Bluff, but I knew I wouldn’t have time to do it justice so I pulled off on the side a camp ground with a good view and gave my bit of historical information. My 40x zoom lens came in handy to get a close up look at some of the features on the bluff that gave context to what I was saying without having to actually drive up closer.

Just as I was leaving the Bluff, I noticed my dash cam was complaining that the SD card wasn’t working. I tried formatting it, but it kept reporting an error. I’d used that SD card for nearly 2 years so it was just time to replace it. I drove BACK to Walmart, ran in and got a replacement SD card.

Then I was finally ready to head towards Chimney Rock. I found a nice secluded road to pull off and do my presentation. For some reason, my super nice and expensive Fujifilm X-T3 did not want to cooperate and focus on my face. I tried everything I could think of, but it just kept pulsing back and forth trying to find a lock on the focus. I’ll have to investigate this problem, but that took nearly 30 minutes to sort out to get a halfway decent image. Then the wind picked up and as I said in my video, the wind filter on my lapel microphone blew away. You can hear half way through that I had to switch to my backup microphone because the lapel mic’s audio was unusable after the filter disappeared.

The picture as recorded by my camera in a video of the timeline.

By the time I finally made it to the visitor’s center, it was after 4 p.m. In order to go to the viewing area, you have to pay for the museum fee. It was only $3 so I gladly paid that. I got to watch a video about Chimney Rock and view the timeline on the walls. I had the foresight to record the entire timeline and it’s pictures. Many of the engravings you saw in my video were taken from that recording. I just extracted the frame from my recording, processed it and added it as a new image.

This is the same engraving from above, but processed and used in my video.

I only brought my smaller Canon SX740 HS camera with me and a 360 camera into the museum so when I went out back and started recording my final piece, I was at the mercy of the wind. I had the auto wind reduction mode on which is why you can hear me at all in the end of the video, but despite some heavy post-production processing, I still couldn’t get all of it cleaned up. I’m looking into more audio options to prevent this from happening in the future.

On the way home, I kept seeing more Historical Markers and kept pulling over to take pictures and log them for posterity, for example, these “ancient bluff ruins” as noted at the Narcissa Whitman Historical Marker.

I also swung by Lake McConaughy, just for a change of view. It’s a 21 mile long reservoir. I stopped just past the dam and grabbed a few more photos.

The shoreline next to the dam of Lake McConaughy, NE

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this. I normally don’t go into quite this much detail about a trip, but this was quite the adventure and I wanted to record it as a log for myself and for you to enjoy. Please feel free to share it so other history nerds can read about my modern adventure on the Oregon Trail.

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