Panorama Point Nebraska State Highpoint – Road Trip Day 4

danaelizabethx State High Points, Uncategorized , , , , ,

On day 4 of our road trip my dad and I got up early and drove to Panorama Point in Nebraska.  I took a screen shot of the directions from summitpost.org because I knew this highpoint was in the middle of a field so I wasn’t sure how much cell reception I would have.  The instructions from that web site were perfect and took us right to the highpoint.

From I-80 in NE:

-Take Exit 8, just East of the WY-NE border
-Go S on CR 17 for 10.0 miles until dead-end
-Turn W (R) on CR 8 and continue for 4.2 miles
-Turn S (L) on CR 9 and continue for 1.0 miles
-Turn W (R) on CR 6 and continue for 2.0 miles
-Turn S (L) on CR 5 and continue for 2.0 miles
-Turn W (R) on dirt road with sign, cross double cattle guard (for bison!) and continue for 1.0 miles to a bend to the right (NNW), and continue0.2 miles to the highpoint marker

The road heading back is not paved – expect gravel and stones.  You could hear the constant “PING” of them hitting the car and an occasional “KLUNK” of a larger rock.  I was holding my breath the whole time – especially near the end where there were a few ruts in the road, making it tricky to drive, but we made it!

This is on private property and the owners ask for a $3 per person donation to visit the summit.  There are envelopes and a donation box right at the start of the lane.  The owners ask you to not hike down the lane because of Bison on the property (note the strips you have to drive over which Bison will not cross.)

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Road Trip Days 1-3

danaelizabethx Interesting Places, State High Points, Uncategorized , , , , ,

“Do you realize we have driven for 3 days and over 1500 miles and still didn’t get to any of the state highpoints yet?”  my dad pointed out.

It was true – my Dad and I planned a road trip and we were supposed to go to Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Illinois to visit those highpoints, but they were calling for some crazy storms in that area so we decided to just keep driving and hit Nebraska, North Dakota, Iowa and Illinois instead.

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Life is Good Duathlon – Race Recap

danaelizabethx Cycling, Running , , , , , , ,

I signed up for the Life is Good Duathlon awhile ago because I wanted to try a multi sport event without the pressure of swimming.  For a duathlon you run/bike/run a certain amount of miles whereas a triathlon is swim/bike/run.  Both a du and a tri have an area in-between called transition where you set things up ahead of time for the next part of the race.  You place everything on a folded towel next to your bike.  For example, if doing a tri, you have things set up so that when you run in from the swim, everything you need for your biking portion is ready to go.  Then when you finish the bike portion everything else is set up for your run.  There are many different lengths of races to choose from so I started looking for a short course aimed for beginners.  I stumbled upon the Life is Good Duathlon at Peace Valley Park – there were 2 lengths to choose from – short (2 mile run, 5.5 mile bike, 2 mile run) and long (3 mile run, 11 mile bike, 3 mile run).  I decided to go for the short course as I had never even attempted anything like this before and didn’t know what to expect or how my body would handle jumping from one activity to the other back to back.  I did a little research and it seemed like it would be a good beginner course to try.  I assumed both the run and bike would be fairly flat as it stated on their website that there was a  hill that was too much for most people so they rerouted the course this year to take that hill out.  Well you know what they say about assuming right?  🙂

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Ocean to Bay bike ride

danaelizabethx Cycling , , , , , , ,

Every time I think of Delaware I think of this scene from Wayne’s World:

Yup – so for the 2nd year I headed down to Delaware to take part in the Bethany Beach Ocean to Bay bike ride.  I was a little nervous as the weather channel was calling for up to 40mph winds – not something I really felt like riding 30 miles in, but after watching the documentary The Man Who Cycled The World I figured if Mark Beaumont could ride his bike through the desert in a crazy sandstorm I could probably tough it out for a few hours – plus  I already paid for the place we were staying.  🙂

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Hershey 10k 2016- COMPLETE!

danaelizabethx Running , , , ,

HERSHEY PARK HAPPPY……so today was the Hershey 10k – except instead of smelling like chocolate – it smelled more like worms as it was raining like crazy when we got there and drizzled for the entire run.  It wasn’t bad though – it actually felt nice as I warmed up from running and kept the pollen down so I didn’t have to worry about allergies!

This race ALMOST didn’t happen for me as on Tuesday I realized I couldn’t find my confirmation email.  I went on the website and sure enough I couldn’t find my registration info – I was freaking out.  Usually this race sells out fairly early so I was really worried I wasn’t going to get a spot.  I have no idea what happened – either when I registered it didn’t go through correctly or I thought I registered and actually didn’t.  This was at 10:00am and registration closed noon that day – how crazy that I just happened to be looking and realized this!!  So I registered right away and managed to secure my spot and get a confirmation email.  WHEW (Also for my 15k coming up at the end of this month I couldn’t find that confirmation email either – I managed to contact someone involved with the event who confirmed I was registered and good to go – yikes!  I really need to make an email folder with all these emails – which is what I was trying to do when I realized I didn’t have these 2)

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