Dispatch 11: Johnson Lake SRA to Lake Ogallala SRA

Zane Hoeslton, a maintenance worker for the city of Eustis, Nebraska, was driving through downtown when he saw two guys on adventure motorcycles. Jerod and I were looking for a place to grab breakfast. Zane owns four Kawasaki motorcycles, so he stopped and asked us where we were headed? The sign on the door of his Chevy pickup read, “Village of Eustis—Sausage Capital—You’ll Love our Wurst.” Surely the sausage capital had a breakfast joint. Zane said no, but we might find some local sausage to cook later at the H&J Grocery and Beverage. It was a community hangout with a coffee bar, tables, and some grab-and-go lunch items. I ate a ham and cheese wrap and a whole bag of spinach. 

We rode through the Loess Canyons in central Nebraska. The gravel road meandered through a life-sized topographical map of abrupt folded hills. Jerod and I stopped to herd a lone calf off the road and back into a fenced pasture. 

Large hackberry trees and red cedar are prolific in the Loess Canyons. Landowners have dubbed red cedar, “the green glacier,” and routinely conduct prescribed burns to control its encroachment on the Great Plains. 

We stopped at Potter’s Pasture, a 1,400-acre parcel of private land for open to public use with 32 miles of hiking and biking trails. Steve Potter, a North Platte attorney, established the Pasture so everyone could experience the Loess Canyons. Steve passed away in 2019, but friends Paul Brasby and Steen Nichols, alongside other stewards, carry on his legacy. 

We left Potter’s Pasture and picked up Government Pocket Road. Its surface was minimally maintained per the Nebraska road sign. I gave my bike a little extra throttle, spun the rear tire, and dirt tracked around a sweeping curve. I can take or leave the Runza sandwich, but Nebraska, you had me at minimum maintenance road.

We followed canal roads to the Sutherland Reservoir where the bubbler, a raging waterfall over the reservoir’s spillway, flowed back into the canals. Two anglers stood on the shore at the base of the rapids, hoping to catch some walleye. 

We camped at the Lake Ogallala East Campground, where we used coin-operated showers. Above us loomed the massive dam for Nebraska’s largest reservoir, Lake McConaughy.