Night in a Pony Express Station

Wednesday April 27th      Do I really want to set out on such a miserable morning?...

Yep this is a field not a lake....

 

Struggling against a gale on a cold, wet day.......

...added to which the road was soggy and heavy going.  It was a head down and trudge day, and a relief towards evening when a man in a pick up stopped to ask if I needed help.  Kim Rhone not only sorted out straw filled loose boxes and feed for the horses in a barn just down the road, but also took a rather weather beaten traveller home for supper, shower and proper bed!  Kim and wife Mary Kay with whom I had a most enjoyable evening ...

This was not far from the location of the former Willow Island Pony Express station.  The log cabin on the site was moved to the Cozad town park in the 1930s apparently for use by boy scouts.
Thursday April 28th and the day started off fine but blustery.  A view towards the bluffs that flank the Platte floodplain.

 With a surname like Rhone, it is perhaps not surprising that one of Kim's farming projects has been a small vineyard.  He planted and nurtured the vines, but now finds it more profitable to lease the vineyard to a local wine making firm.  Passing his Reno Ridge vineyard on the way out ....

It was inevitable the moment I had found a nice patch of grass under an electricity line and unloaded the horses for a midday rest that an inspection helicopter would turn up. However they made an effort to avoid our section of line though Lady still looked askance at it....

 

I was delighted to discover that Lyle Gronewald had arranged for me to stay at Midway Pony Express station near Gothenburg, which is owned by the congenial Larry and Jan Gill.  Not only that, but Larry gave me permission to actually sleep in the log cabin!  The Gills have been committed to preserving this piece of history, and at their own expense have built a shed around it to protect it from the elements.   With the Gills, who also organised a journalist from Gothenburg and took me out for a meal....

My wet trousers are testimony to the lurking rain which caught up with me again as I was arriving!

 

Midway was so named as it was halfway between Aitchison and Denver on the stage line.  The log building is thought to be the only Pony Express station in Nebraska still on its original site.

The kitchen in the log cabin, which also served as my bedroom.... 

.......of course it would not have had a concrete floor in those days - this has been laid as a conservation measure.

Midway was a home station, and it was an immense privilege to be able to stay in this cabin which housed so many riders in the past, including a couple who will go down in history.  Jim Moore rode the hundred and forty miles from Midway to Julesburg and back again (as the eastbound rider had been killed by Indians) in a time of fourteen hours and forty six minutes.  This constituted an average speed of eighteen miles an hour, which as a former endurance rider I know is going some!  William Campbell was reputedly the last surviving Pony Express rider when he died in 1934. 

Ready to set off on the morning of  Friday April 29th...

This photo clearly shows the shed which has been built by the Gills to protect the old cabin.

 

PS. In researching this post I have just learnt to my great sorrow that Larry Gill passed away on 23rd June, the evening before the Pony Express Re-ride went through. He was a true gentleman and I was honoured to have had the opportunity to meet him.