Travel by Mule

Junk Heap Mule Browse and the Fair Ground

Today a guy asked me, “why do you like mules?” I told him, “because they eat and drink less than a horse and they’re tougher.” What I really wish I could have shown him was Cracker teasing a grass snack from between some junk tires and batteries.

Cracker snack: it’s hard to tell there’s anything worth eating in that pile of tires but Cracker, being a hearty mule….
….always seems to find something worth eating. Here, a mouthful of grass… Continue reading

Aerial Burial

The yellow body on the bridge caught my eyes and I pulled the mules to a halt. A yellow warbler dead on the cement. I scooped it up in my gloved hand. I could do better.

I think it was a warbler. If you know more about this bird leave me a comment in the comment section.
The bird as I found it.

Dying on a bridge is a lonely way to go. No rotting away gently in the grassy… Continue reading

Pig Walking with Landri

Landri Loos shows pigs. She lives outside Hazard, Nebraska. Recently she took me for a stroll with her show pig. Click the video player to learn why a girl would walk a Nebraska pig 15 minutes a day.

Landri’s dad Trent is a broadcaster and sixth generation rancher. Looks like Landri has the makings of Gen Seven.

Post Script

Big thanks to Landri for taking me for a walk with her pig. Additional thanks to her parents Trent and Kelli… Continue reading

Anselmo: The End of Farming

Mules Brick, Cracker and I have arrived in Anselmo and the end of farming in this part of central Nebraska.

Anselmo as seen from space: the dividing line between green (farm land) and brown (ranch land)
Anselmo as seen from where I’m writing you. The building on the right is the old Peoples State Bank built in 1915. Now abandoned.

By “the end of farming”, no, I don’t mean they’re canceling the Husker corn crop this year. Rather, the mules… Continue reading

Broken Bow 4-H

11 years ago, almost to the day, I passed through Broken Bow with mule Polly the our “Lost Sea Expedition” voyage. Today, I rode in through the front gates and received the same kind of generous welcome I received over a decade ago.

Cracker Scratcher: the mules’ ears were an immediate draw (Custer County Fairgrounds, Broken Bow, Nebraska)

The fairground was packed with trailers, horses, parents and kids. All setting up for this coming week’s 4-H show. Despite… Continue reading

Sunday Sleep Medicine

Sleepy the Cement Indian. Spotted outside a school on the outskirts of Meredosia, IL, where I crossed the Illinois River with the mules. This heavy eye lid look is what happens when you don’t get enough sleep. Or maybe it’s just the high school art department’s paint job…

Howdy Pilgrim. Feeling sorta sleepy this Sunday morning? Don’t sweat it.

Here’s some ancient Indian advice. Crawl back in to your tent bed and get some more nods. That’s what I… Continue reading

Mason City, Nebraska

A highway crew, a bible rodeo camp, an inventor and a Nebraska city named after a jar. Here’s the day in photos.

Tom Cooper: inventor, fabricator and human manure composter. Here, aboard the bus he lives in. (Mason City, NE)

Okay, Mason City has nothing to do with canning but that’s where we ended up tonight (July 27). I rode the mules out Trent and Kelli Loos’s driveway this morning at 6a and made Mason City, 18 miles away, just… Continue reading

Wake me to Say Good Bye

“Come see what Landri wrote you on the whiteboard,” Trent Loos said. Landri is Trent and Kelli Loos’s youngest daughter.

Landri

The Loos family had put the mules and me up and now it was time to move on. I walked in to the kitchen and read my whiteboard farewell.

“Please wake me…..” (Hazard, NE)

Please wake me

Out here traveling across Nebraska with my mules, hellos come in the evening. Goodbyes come in the dark. That’s because the mules… Continue reading

Walking to Hazard With Mules: Trent Loos and I Talk Mule Rambling on “Rural Route”

Trent Loos lives the life he broadcasts: here releasing semen on his breeding boar “The Rookie”

Trent Loos: sixth generation Nebraska rancher, friend and broad caster. This week I spent a few nights with the Loos family catching up on times gone by.

The morning after my arrival, we talked mules, floods and Quincy, Illinois on his “Rural Route” program. Click on the audio player below to listen in to 2 friends catching up.

“Rural Route”: from Bernie’s house to… Continue reading

Bison Dawn

Bison dawn

Mules Brick, Cracker and I are entering the land of the bison. Outside Hordville, Nebraska, we rode past our first herd. They were the farmed, not wild, kind. The bison above wasn’t too wild either. It’s a bronze cast at the Lee G Simmons Conservation Park and Wildlife Safari where the mules and took a day off.

I

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