Before leaving Walmart, we bought an industrial-grade fan and stuck it between the two front seats, facing forward.  Hopefully the increased air circulation will add a degree or comfort, as the air conditioning still isn’t working.

We drove to the visitor center at the North Platte’s Bailey train yard, the largest rail classification station in the world:

Hey, there we are!

Flags of the states with Union Pacific rail:

An adjacent corn maze:

The black freight car is rolling down one of two “humps” in the yard.  The cars are rolled down the hump, and their inertia carries them through the switched rails until they hitch on to the appropriate train:

We left North Platt and stopped near Kearney, Nebraska at Fort Kearney (not to be confused with Fort Phil Kearney, which we visited on day 7):

We are definitely going the wrong way:

We then headed East towards our next destination.  We increased our speed to 70 so we would make it, something we had not done since our tire failure in Toledo.  Just outside Beatrice, someone motioned us off the road.  Looks like one of the RV tires was beginning to fail.  Thankfully, we were right near another Tractor Supply:

We lashed the failing tire to the roof, bought another wheel, and swapped the spare that we bought at the Tractor Supply in Toledo with the remaining good tire.  We now were running on the two new Tractor Supply tires, had the good original tire as a spare, and the faulty tire on the roof.  This is really getting old.

Of course, we completely missed getting into the visitor center of our next stop, Homestead National Monument outside of Beatrice:

The “holes” in the states indicate how much of the state’s land was given away using the homestead act:

Beautiful sunset:

M and B sporting their hats from Tractor Supply:

 

Heading South, we rolled into Wymore, the town founded by Sam Wymore:

Wymore isn’t what it used to be, I guess:

It was late, so there wasn’t much more to see.  We headed South and East where we spent the night at the Walmart of Hiawatha, Kansas.

We drove 362 miles today.  The map indicates our intermediate stops at Fort Kearney (B), Homestead NM (C), and Wymore (D):