We left our volunteer location on Tuesday, September 7 about 9am. We drove almost 30 miles before we had a tire blow out so we pulled over and called a mobile tire repair place. Since this is out west, the closest place was 55 miles from us. We were very lucky to have a very wide paved truck turn around area where we waited until the repair was complete.
We continued on our way and the first interesting place we stopped was North Platte, Nebraska. Now you are wondering, what could be interesting in North Platte, NE (I was wondering that myself). As we are driving through the cornfields of NE, we saw this tower that seemed out of place.
This was the Golden Spike Tower. Although this was not the official location of the famous golden spike, this IS the location of the LARGEST railroad yard in the world, encompassing over 2800 acres! We went up in the tower to the observation deck so we could see as much as possible.
That was just the start of it as the yard was eight miles long. In the next picture you can see the diesel shop where they can work on 37 diesel engines simultaneously.
Moving on from there, we next stayed in Kansas and came across the town Victoria, a quiet village of about 1,000 people. But here was the real surprise, there was a place called Cathedral of the Plains, which was a joint German and Russian Catholic cathedral that was the largest cathedral in the west. It was unbelievably beautiful and the inside looked much like so many cathedrals we have seen in Europe.
