April 10-On to Kearney,NE

On our way to Kearnery, located in the Cauker

City, NE we came upon an amazing site. We encountered the World’s Largest Ball of Twine. Evidently this little town has an annual event each year (like we have Turkey Trot) and each year the diameter keeps growing. It sounds like they have a “ball.” We both vaguely remember Bill Gist on the CBS Sunday Morning show have a feature about this and attending their festival.

We made our first destination today, Ft. Kearney State Recreation Area on the Platte River at Kearney, NE. About 500,000 sandhill cranes begin arriving on the Platte River in Nebraska in February each year to rest before they finish their long flight to the Artic Circle and their nesting grounds in early April. Unfortunately, most of them had already flown away by the time we arrived but there were several hundred of them in the corn fields that surround the recreation area.

We enjoy the sandhill cranes so much. We spent the winter of 1999-2000 at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico, helping to make their winter more comfortable. They are beautiful birds that mate for life and care for their young with love and devotion. We could learn much about family life by watching these beautiful creatures.

The Platte River is a fixture in southern Nebraska.
The North Platte River originates in the Rocky Mountains of Wyoming, The South Platte originates in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. They join together to the Platte River in western Nebraska at a town called, oddly enough, North Platte, Nebraska.
The Platte was often referred to in Western lore as a river that’s a “mile wide” and a “foot deep.” It’s river bed shifts constantly, yet it plays a very important role in the well-being of Nebraska. By the way, it flows into the Missouri River at a place called Plattesmouth, Nebraska just south of Omaha.