This past weekend we rented a camper from the Air Force base and drove it 280 miles west of here to the town of North Platte, Nebraska. They were holding their annual “Railfest”, this big Union Pacific Railroad/Town of North Platte celebration weekend. The UP sponsors everything, lots of fun for everyone. There’s a festival at the town park, plus lots of train-related activites throughout the rest of the town.

From 2008 09 20 Camping_RailFest_BaileyYard_NorthPlatteNE

We visited several historic UP locomotives, visited the 8 story Golden Spike observation tower, and got to ride in a little mini-train.

From 2008 09 20 Camping_RailFest_BaileyYard_NorthPlatteNE

 

From 2008 09 20 Camping_RailFest_BaileyYard_NorthPlatteNE

 

From 2008 09 20 Camping_RailFest_BaileyYard_NorthPlatteNE

For Sunday morning, I made arrangements for tickets for a bus tour of Bailey Yard, the UP’s classification yard. That was one of the most incredible experiences for any railfan, and even *I* found it impressive. Dave writes more about it here.

We drove home right after the tour, taking our times by driving east on U.S. 30 from North Platte to Grand Island (about 115 miles). This way we could parallel the UP tracks and saw at least 20 trains!

As for the camping, once Dave and I got over the initial shock of (a) requiring about 40 gallons of gas to get the camper from Omaha to North Platte and (b) everything you have to do to set up the camper at the RV campsite (water, power, leveling, starting up the fridge), we figured we’d have a relaxing weekend on our hands. I made a nice chicken and rice dinner with our dutch oven, then we toasted marshmallows and made Smores with the campfire.

From 2008 09 20 Camping_RailFest_BaileyYard_NorthPlatteNE

 

From 2008 09 20 Camping_RailFest_BaileyYard_NorthPlatteNE

 

From 2008 09 20 Camping_RailFest_BaileyYard_NorthPlatteNE

But at 1am Friday night, we were awakened by an alarm bell: the propane detector was telling us “no more propane”, although we hadn’t used any since dinnertime. Actually, a circuit board went bad in the 3-way power converter unit (which is what seamlessly transfers power from battery to AC for the onboard fridge, water pump and lighting)…so overnight the power switched from AC to battery and the battery died.

Dave and I did about an hour’s worth of troubleshooting, between 1-2 am Friday night…and gave up and went back to sleep angry. By Saturday, we just told ourselves we have a big hardened tent. Then we went on and enjoyed the rest of our weekend.