When I woke up this morning, my tent was soaked in dew. It must be the humidity. I don’ really like to pack my tent wet so I got a late start waiting for everything to dry out.
I am thinking about a easy day. Not a rest day but maybe dialing back the mileage. There is a campground near Loup City at Lake Sherman that is about 40 some miles away. That sounds about right for the day, but we shall see how the riding goes.
It is another day of rolling hills. The wind is also slight to non existant. Again I am struck by the nice cycling that the back roads of Nebraska has to offer.
Arriving in Loup City, I found out that the Lake Sherman campground is 7 miles out of town on a gravel road. Since it is still fairly early in the afternoon, I am going to ride the next 25-30 miles to St Paul and camp at the Loup River State Campground instead. So much for the easy day. It wasn’t too bad though. The terrain is again flattening out again so it wasn’t extremely hard cycling. It was just pretty hot out and the humidity never really goes away making you sweat that much more. Finally at St Paul, I pulled into the first diner I came to. I am not sure what my servers think at these various places I eat at. I am just so thirsty that I usually have about 3-4 refills on Coke or 7-Up and they just keep serving them up and I just keep drinking them. St Paul was no different.
After my dinner, I still had to ride north about 3 miles to the campground. It is Friday so I am hoping that it isn’t filled up. There are only 10 camp sites there.
I crossed the Loup River just before the campground. It is
pretty wide but must be really shallow.
I see lots of sand bars but my biggest clue is that the few boats I see on the river are “air boats”. These are the boats that I thought were only used in the Everglades where they are shallow draft flat bottom hulls and powered by an engine with a big airplane propeller on the back. Interesting.
I found the Loup River Campground deserted. It is really nice though. There are large oaks and walnut trees lining the entry lane and nice grass areas for the tents. But as nice as it looks, it is right on the river and it is REALLY hot and humid. And more than a few mosquitos. But I did enjoy the fireflies.
That last interesting thing about the campground is that there is a fee to camp there but no place to pay. I what to pay my way but it looks like this is going to a free stay.
Air boats in Nebraska- who would have thought. The high humidity and high temps sound hard. I enjoy your photos. Being a so cal person, I would not have thought about your observation on the added bugs and humidity as you get closer to the premium real estate next to the river. Id camp as far from the river as possible as I hate bugs! stay safe!!