Greetings from Mountain Time

What used to be 10p is now 9p. We’ve fallen back an hour, like losing Daylight Savings Time. The mules and I have entered Mountain Time Zone.

Brick to Cracker: “Eat fast. We have one less hour of grazing tonight”. (outside Seneca, NE)

Today (August 2) the mules get a well deserved day off – along with grain and a double dose of carrots. Tomorrow we head toward Whitman.

Brick checking out Glen’s 1981 Ford Pickup. Glen was hauling tires for an event at the county fairground. (Mullen, Nebraska)

We crossed The Line outside Seneca, Nebraska. Last night we spent the night at the fairground outside Mullen. Thanks to everyone at the fairground (Val, Glen and Lucie and all the others whose name I’m blanking on) for hosting us. Also George Most for letting the mules cross his yard on our way from Norway to Seneca.

Some Photos from the Day

Moments after our Mountain Time arrival a van pulled up. Dawn Mallory (light blue shirt) and a bunch of friends and family poured out to have their photo taken with the mules. What a great Mountain Time welcome!
Seneca: population, according to a resident, “about 2 dozen”. They still have a post office which operates 2 hours per day.
Like so many mid-western towns, Seneca is facing severe depopulation. Here, what appear to be uninhabited homes just off Seneca’s equally deserted downtown.
At first I thought this was an adobe structure. Not so. A Seneca resident told me it was the remains of a vault that stood inside a bank. The bank was torn down. The vault remains.

Return to Seneca

This wasn’t my first visit by mule to Seneca. I dropped by 11 years ago for the “Lost Sea Expedition” Public TV series. While there, I met Senecan Gene Hansen. He worked for the BNSF (Burlington, Northern Santa Fe) railroad and came up with an industry-specific way of cooking – on a locomotive engine.

Eugene “Gene” Hansen with Part 2 of his “Locomotive Menus” cook book. (Seneca, Nebraska)

Gene wrote a cook book on how to cook on a BNSF locomotive. A line out of his book reads, “put on at Ravenna taken off at Seneca, 3 hours at 8 throttle with 3 units placed on a 6000 GE.” Ravenna and Seneca are towns in Nebraska. “8 throttle” sounds like something you don’t have on your oven. You might have to use your regular oven instead of giant locomotive (that would be the “6000 GE”).

Eugene has written 2 “Manifold Menu Cookbooks”, the Original and Part Deux.

You can hear the interview I did with Gene during my 2008 visit by clicking on the audio player below.

More photos of mule Polly and my 2008 visit to Seneca right here.

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