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| Welcome Center, Lebanon, KS |
2020 was a year that I focused mostly on upgrades to the camper as travel was difficult. We decided to try for another epic road trip in 2021. It's been a busy year so I'm just getting around to writing up about our trip. Building on a route I had been working on for a few years, we decided to check off one of my bucket list items in early summer, Yellowstone National Park. So with the school wrapping up and my busy summer season closing in, we launched out for a 16-day, 5000+ mile journey west to squeeze in some adventure before the summer heat and crowds could bring our spirits down.
Last time we headed out west was October 2013. That trip was to hit up South Dakota and take the kids to Mount Rushmore and the Badlands. Unfortunately, a government shutdown had impacted our trip and we never really got to enter the Badlands. This time we were going further west, but hoped to route back through the Badlands on our return. We left Georgia and began our same route up through St. Louis and over to Kansas City. From there, we continued on to Beatrice, Nebraska. It's a small town in the middle of nowhere but has a nice quiet campground, Riverside Park Campground, we were able to stop for a night. It's run by the city and was only $20 for the night. Nice pads and hookups. Definitely a nice little gem of a place to crash for a night on your way through.
The main reason we stopped in Beatrice was because we wanted to visit Homestead National Historic Site just west of the city. Homestead is a historical look into the laws, people, and places that were tied to the Homestead Acts passed in the 1860s. The earliest people to push west took the Oregon Trail for an opportunity at land in Oregon in the 1850s. This was prior to the Homestead Acts in the 1860s, but the Homestead Acts help push more settlers into the other parts of the west like Nebraska. The last homesteader actually completed his requirements to obtain land in Alaska in 1979 a few years before the Homestead Act was repealed.
This was an important stop on our history lessons for the trip with the kids. Later we would dive more into the Oregon Trail with them. The staff at Homestead were super friendly. I would recommend stopping in for a bit of history and to say hi if you're in the area.
After leaving Homestead NHS, we dipped down into Kansas to visit the Geographic Center of the Contiguous United States (aka the lower 48). Just outside the small town of Lebanon, Kansas, this stop is somewhere you have to put on your agenda if you want to see it because you won't just stumble on it. It's almost halfway between I70 and I80 in the middle of nowhere. It was an hour and a half detour from our original route but the closest we could see ever being to it. So we decided to get a photo before moving on.
As we headed northwest, we stopped in Gothenburg, Nebraska at the Pony Express Station for another history lesson on the early days of mail delivery. The Pony Express Trail and the Oregon Trail (along with the California and Mormon Pioneer Trails) follow the same path through Nebraska and into Wyoming. They diverge in western Wyoming with the Oregon Trail headed on a northwestern route and the others dipping southwest to Salt Lake City, Utah. From Gothenburg, we followed the Oregon Trail up into Wyoming.
More Oregon Trail adventures to follow in Part 2!
