Niobrara State Park

We stayed at Niobrara State Park for several days the first week of Aug. It is a real nice state park with lots of deer and wild turkeys roaming the park area. It sits along the Missouri River and is home to a lot of Sandhill Cranes. We road our bikes along the bike trail that runs alongside the river. It was an old railroad bed that has been converted to a trail.

It was a very nice ride with great views of the river and bluffs on the South Dakota side of the river. We rode for about 14 miles total and then went into the town of Niobrara to see what we could find there. It looks like a nice small town and we rode thru the neighborhoods then back out to the campground.

Here is a photo of one of the cranes out in the river and one shot of us along the river. the cranes are real hard to get close too as they are very nervous so I had to use a telephoto shot from our pickup truck to get this shot.

Nebraska National Forest

We left Scottsbluff area and headed out to the Nebraska National Forest, the only hand planted National Forest in the US. The trees were planted back in the 1930's and 40's. A tree nursery was established in this area to grow the trees for this area and also other national forests.

The campground was a little uneven in most sites as it looked like they had had some rains at sometime and it had washed out some areas of the campsites making them uneven. we found a newer site further down in the campground and had plenty of room. It was hot so we decided to go check out the swimming pool!! This is the only National forest campground in the US with its own swimming pool. It was built

back in the 1940's probably to accomodate the CCC workers that were "building" the Nebraska National Forest. The pool looked nice but was crowded so we opted to go for a "swim" in the Middle Loup River which runs thru this area.

The River is about 100 yards wide and 6 inches deep in most places, so we kinda

did a float. Shasta enjoyed walking thru the water and we gave her a quick bath by splashing water on her. It cooled her off and we also got cooled down as it had been close to 100 and humid when we got to the campground.

We stayed a few days then headed to Niobrara State Park in the NE part of Nebraska.