Family

Colorado Vacation 2024 Part 1, Nebraska and Enchiladas(twice)

Between certain academic terms, Aria has a break. For her April break, she decided to stay in Colorado, but invited me to visit during the latter half of the week. So I drove to see her in my Mustang.

Along the way, I decided to stop and explore something based on a highway sign that read something like “See 10,000 rail cars a day!” This turned out to be the Golden Spike Tower, located in Union Pacific’s Bailey Yard in North Platte, NE.

Golden Spike Tower, North Platte, NE

Some of you remember that I am a rail fan, having built a HO scale railroad layout when I was in 7th grade, with my dad, following plans I bought at a hobby shop in San Antonio. When I built it, I modified the layout to include a larger yard, because I loved lots of tracks and switches. Bailey Yard is much, much larger. In fact, it is listed as the world’s largest classification yard, 8 miles from end to end, and a couple miles wide. Their website states: “Bailey Yard has 17 receiving and 16 departure tracks handling 14,000 rail cars every 24 hours.  3,000 cars are sorted daily in the yard’s eastward and westward yards, nicknamed ‘hump’ yards. Using a mound cresting 34 feet for eastbound trains and 20 feet for those heading west, the hump yards allow four cars a minute to roll gently into any of 114 ‘bowl’ tracks.” I was able to view all this from 7th and 8th floors of Golden Spike Tower, situated adjacent to the yard. See captions for each photo, describing what we’re looking at(click on any picture to see it full size and notice more details):

Bailey Yard, looking west and into the diesel shop
Bailey Yard, zoomed into just 5 of the 14 locomotive bays
Bailey Yard, looking into the outdoor bays and some of the 17 western tracks
15 of the western tracks
Eastern tracks, stretching out 2 miles into the distance
150th anniversary Golden Spike, North Platte
Small portion of an H.O. scale model of the engine shop

I visited a couple of friends along the way, including my friend Anna(MIT). We had dinner at Carrabba’s in New Berlin, WI, where we just ordered drinks and appetizers and chatted with the bartender. Calamari, Shrimp Scampi and Tomato Caprese with Fresh Burrata. I love the lemony sauce that came with the calamari:

Next, I visited Karen(high school band) and her daughter, Grace, in Strasburg, CO, just west of Denver. At Karen’s house, I cooked enchiladas and rice in exchange for a place to crash. I would visit them again on the way out, because I was invited to attend Grace’s senior choir concert. More on that in a later post.

Enchiladas and rice, Take 1

When I got to Arianna’s apt on Thursday that week, we cooked enchiladas and rice again! We had too many to fit into the baking pans, so we squeezed a couple into a miniature baking dish:

Enchiladas and rice, Take 2, in the tiny baking dish

Tomorrow, I will tell you about driving up Pikes Peak!