We stayed at Fort Kearny State Recreational Area for 4 nights. (It’s pronounced car-nee; and the city and fort ARE spelled different — it’s not a typo!) I didn’t think there would be anything to do there, but we ended up enjoying several things. It’s a large campground, with at least 7 different lakes, so it was pretty easy to get a lakeside site. There are also lots of shade trees. Of course, the site that I picked was one of the least shady ones, ha. And more than half the campground is first-come, first-serve and was empty. The reserved sites are close to each other, so since most people reserve ahead of time, we had neighbors even though there were lots of empty spots. So, if we stayed here again, I’d probably just pull in and find a site after arriving. But there was also a $12 / per night extra day fee on top of the campground price, so it’s not one of the cheaper electric-only campgrounds around. Nice enough, though.
We went river tubing the first day we were in Kearney. After parking the truck at the take-out spot, we bungeed our deflated tubes to our bikes and rode beside the river, along Betty’s Trail, to the put-in spot. We used our handy little inflator to quickly inflate the tubes, then floated down the 2.3 mile Kearney Water Trail. We were pleasantly surprised that we had the parking lots and river all to ourselves, which was nice after being in so many busy touristy areas for the past couple of months. However, it did make me wonder if there was anything wrong with what we were doing. But no, we had a nice, relaxing, peaceful float along the river! The river was a little high and moving faster than normal, so we floated the trail in about 1 hr and 15 mins, instead of the 2 hrs that a website said it would take. There were lots of curves in the river, which kept it interesting and required us to paddle some, but it wasn’t too strenuous. The trail had two small drops / white water areas, which was fun, too. It was calmer tubing experience than most we’ve had in other rivers, but still fun and worth doing!
On our last day, we rode our bikes along the hike & bike trail from the campground, going across an old wooden bridge over the Platte River and through a tunnel under I-80, before getting to the nearby Archway, a museum that goes above and across I-80. The museum gives the history of people traveling along the Oregon Trail in the 1800s, and the progression of railroads and automobiles traveling the Lincoln Highway. It was a super cool museum, with awesome displays/decoration, helping you feel immersed in the experience. Tickets were $15 each, which was very reasonable and worth a visit if you’re ever driving through and have a couple of hours to spare.
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