#2: [28-Jun-07]

23-Jul-2002 -- This confluence is over four hundred miles from the towns of Longmont and Lafayette where Mike and I live. Since the mileage was over 800 miles, we decided to rent a car. We were fortunate to get an upgrade from the Ford Taurus we reserved to a Dodge Grand Voyager Sport minivan. The best thing about it was the higher (and uncomfortable) seating position and the CD player.

Mike met me at my place at 06:00 on a Tuesday morning and we were rolling less then fifteen minutes later. We started this confluence hunt like many others by crossing over 40 North and 105 West. As always we didn’t stop or even slow down. Baseline Road leads almost directly to route 76, which we then followed northeast to the Nebraska border. At the Nebraska border we stopped in the town of Julesburg and swapped places. Mike was now driving and we headed east on route 80. Several more hours of driving brought us to the town of Gothenburg. Mike was especially keen on visiting Gothenburg as he has a cousin that lives in Göteborg, Sweden and he wanted to send them a postcard. We purchased some postcards at the big attraction in Gothenburg which was an original Pony Express Station. We continued on to the east. After several more hours of driving it was approaching noon and we were getting hungry; we stopped for lunch in Kearney, Nebraska.

After lunch we were ready for the final leg to the confluence. From Kearney we went one exit east on the highway to route 10. At route 10 we headed south. We passed through the town of Minden, Nebraska where there is a museum of pioneer life. Once through Minden we continued south towards the Kansas border. Just before the border the road was closed for construction and we had to take a detour to the east. The detour was well marked and only delayed us by 10 or 15 minutes. Once past the detour we quickly approached the unnamed dirt road that led to the confluence. The dirt roads look like nice smooth concrete on TerraServer’s satellite photographs; this is an illusion created by the pale white limestone that is common in this area. We easily found our way to our chosen point for the final walk in. The confluence was only 0.15 miles from the road. The confluence is located in the middle of a cow pasture and it was liberally dotted with their residue. It was a very hot day with few clouds in the sky and no wind. There is a pleasant copse of trees to the south of the confluence. We took the necessary photographs and relaxed under the big sky for a few minutes.

Heading back we simply retraced our steps back to the paved road. On the way back we continued to swap driving duties every few hours. Once again we stopped in Julesburg. We had dinner in Julesburg; it’s a very small town and the choices were limited. There were two greasy spoons and a place that promised subs. We chose the sub place; it was full of weird knick-knacks and smelled of potpourri. It was good to see the silhouette of mountains as we approached the Front-range. We arrived back at my place around 10:45 PM.