325: OH, GIVE ME A HOME, WHERE BUFFALO BILL ROAMED

My photographer’s alarm rang at 6:00am on Sunday July 6, 2025, and the second day of our trip was about to begin in West Branch, Iowa. The first site of the day, however, would be visited by Tom and me while Vicki was getting ready and her stuff packed. That meant one thing – the two of us had plenty of time to visit Herbert Hoover’s birthplace and gravesite before meeting my photographer’s wife back at the hotel for departure.

As a creature of habit, Tom followed the same route we travelled the previous night from the Days Inn to the nearby Herbert Hoover National Historic Site parking lot; he also parked the Jeep in the same spot. The morning was already hot and humid, and there was some haze in the partly cloudy sky when we arrived at the small two-room cottage where the future President was born around midnight on August 10, 1874.

At seven o’clock in the morning, Tom and I were the only ones at the birthplace – and that was just fine with me. And truth be told, I was a lot more comfortable posing for photos in the daylight than I was under the cloak of darkness. There weren’t any orbs flying around the home during our visit, and I never once had the feeling of someone or something watching me.

Herbert Clark Hoover was born in the bedroom of the 14-by-20-foot cottage, and he lived in that small home for the first three years of his life. Although the doors of the cottage were still locked on that early Sunday morning, I posed in several locations around the historic site – including in front of Jesse Hoover’s reconstructed blacksmith shop and at the pea stone intersection of Penn and North Downey Streets near the front of the cottage.

Tom and I spent roughly 20 minutes in the vicinity of President Hoover’s birthplace, but after my photographer carried me back to the Jeep, the two of us headed off to our main objective of the morning – Herbert Hoover’s gravesite. On June 29, 2015, I had the honor of making my first visit to the grave of our 31st President – and now, I was headed back for the fourth time.

Tom and I began our Presidential quest in 2013, and since then, I’ve been to every Presidential final resting place with the exception of Jimmy Carter. After Carter’s funeral on January 9, 2025, his gravesite has been off-limits to the public. I’m sure Tom will make sure we get down to Plains, Georgia as soon as Jimmy’s gravesite becomes accessible to the public, which will likely happen sooner rather than later.

After a short drive past Hoover’s Presidential Library, which was closed due to an ongoing restoration project, the two of us arrived at the scenic hillside overlook situated roughly 550 yards directly behind the President’s birth cottage. Following Hoover’s death at the age of 90 on October 20, 1964, the President was laid to rest on the hillside on October 25th.

The remains of First Lady Lou Henry Hoover, who passed away on January 7, 1944, was relocated from her grave in Palo Alto, California and reinterred next to her husband shortly after his burial.

Each time I’ve visited the Hoover’s gravesite, a true sense of simplistic tranquility has filled my entire resin body. The site consists of twin Vermont white marble ledger stones, etched with only their names and life dates. The beautifully landscaped berm of plants and shrubs, situated behind the memorial, is impressive as well.

After I posed for numerous photos standing on Herbert Hoover’s grave marker, Tom placed me on the ground next to the memorial so I could stand in the footsteps of another President. It turned out Gerald Ford had made a pilgrimage to West Branch on October 18, 1989 where he was the keynote speaker at a conference held at the Hoover Library. During that visit, Ford was escorted to the gravesite where the 38th President paid his respects to the 31st President. It’s hard for me to describe how much I love standing in the footsteps of our Presidents, which was the reason I got so excited that morning.

I was in a state of shock when I saw Vicki was already packed and ready to go when Tom and I returned to the hotel at 8:20am. Even though our early morning adventure had taken longer than my photographer expected, I anticipated his wife to still be lollygagging with Tom not there to crack the whip. And if Vicki ever found out what I thought, she just might add more cracks to my fragile body.

Fifteen minutes after we rendezvoused with Vic at the hotel, we were on the road and headed West. From an opening in the camera case, I watched the countryside flash past all the way through the state of Iowa and into Nebraska. That meant four hours of non-stop cornfields and endless fields of “three-armed eyesores”, also known as wind turbines.

At the moment we crossed the Missouri River into Omaha, Nebraska, I would’ve bet money that we were headed straight to Gerald Ford’s birthplace. As a matter of fact, Vicki posed that same question to her husband when she asked whether or not we were stopping there. When Tom replied that we weren’t going to Ford’s birthplace site because the photos he had captured in 2021 were perfect, I thought his wife might faint and drive off the road.

About an hour or so after we drove non-stop through Omaha, a large, dark brown figure appeared on the horizon roughly fifteen miles from Lincoln. No, it wasn’t a Sasquatch. Those tall and hairy critters don’t typically hang out in Nebraska, and who could blame them? A few minutes later, however, when the object finally came into focus, I heard my photographer tell his wife it was the State Capitol Building and he began barking out directions on how to get us there.

Once Vicki had parked the Jeep about a block from the tall structure, I got my first good look at the 400-foot monstrosity in front of me. I won’t lie; a sense of disappointment came over me when I noticed Nebraska’s Capitol didn’t feature a dome. But my dismay changed when I heard my photographer say the building was open on Sunday and he wanted to visit the observation level. After all, there’s nothing better than viewing endless fields of corn from four hundred feet in the air.

There were two areas where Tom placed me for photos near the exterior of the second tallest Statehouse in the country. At the West entrance, I stood alongside the Lincoln Monument, which not only honored our 16th President, but it represented the city’s namesake as well. Then I was taken to the North entrance, which was where President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered a campaign speech on October 10, 1936. Since my cameraman was unable to find any photographic evidence of exactly where FDR spoke near the building, I stood alongside a fountain with the North side of the skyscraper rising up behind me.

During his address, Roosevelt said the newly constructed Capitol was “worthy of a great State” and he promised the 30,000 voters in attendance there would never be a federal tax on farms and homes as long as he was in office.

Although I thought the exterior of Nebraska’s State Capitol Building was underwhelming, the interior wasn’t much better – especially when we discovered the observation level was closed to the public due to an ongoing restoration project. After I stood for photos on a couple of mosaic-tiled areas of the floor, the three of us left the building and headed back into the 95-degree heat of the early afternoon.

We had already logged over 300 miles that morning, and we weren’t close to being finished for the day. While we were still in the parking lot near the Nebraska Capitol, Vicki used her phone to make a hotel reservation for that night – which was 225 miles away in the city of North Platte, Nebraska. Tom had assured his wife we’d get to the hotel at a decent time, plus it would put us in position to reach the Salt Lake City area the following day. But it turned out my photographer had an alternative motive to stay in North Platte. Tom discovered the ranch where Buffalo Bill Cody lived for 25 years of his life was located in North Platte and he wanted to see Bill’s homestead before sunset.

It had been a grueling 225-mile ride from the Lincoln to North Platte, and about the only thing I saw from an opening in my camera case were endless cornfields, which painted the countryside as far as my resin eyes could see. When we arrived in the town of about 23,000 residents, Tom directed his wife to the Northern part of North Platte where she pulled into the parking lot of the Buffalo Bill Ranch State Historical Park Museum at precisely 5:45pm. Unfortunately, we were forty-five minutes too late to tour Cody’s house, known as Scout’s Rest Ranch, but my photographer figured he and his wife would spend some time walking the grounds.

After Tom and Vic bypassed several of the State Park’s self-serve permit stations, which saved my thrifty companions fourteen bucks, my photographer carried me over to the large, two-story home where the Cody family once lived. At the moment my photographer walked close to the house to place me on the front porch, however, Tom caught a glimpse of a figure, clad in white, out of the corner of his eye. The mysterious apparition was standing behind one of the upper-floor windows, even though the place had already closed for the day. When my camera guy stood back to get a better view of the person in the window, he or she had vanished. Throughout the rest of our 30-minute visit, we never saw one person come out of the home, nor did we see anyone near the mansion. At one point, Tom told his wife what he saw in the house, and once again, Vicki scoffed at his wild imagination. I kept my painted lips shut and didn’t let on that I saw the figure in the window too.

William Frederick Cody first came to North Platte, Nebraska in 1869 as a Fort McPherson cavalry scout. About a decade later, Buffalo Bill began to purchase hundreds of acres of land on the outskirts of town, where he eventually started a large ranch, which he called Scout’s Rest Ranch. At the same time, the Western legend founded ‘Buffalo Bill’s Wild West’, a circus-like attraction that toured annually. Buffalo Bill transformed himself into the nation’s largest and most famous showman, and became friends with numerous Presidents – including Theodore Roosevelt, Ulysses S. Grant, and Woodrow Wilson.

Once I had posed for numerous images near the exterior of the 18-room mansion, Tom carried me out to the “back forty” where I got a closer look at Cody’s original 1887 barn where he had the words ‘Scout’s Rest Ranch’ painted on the roof. Those white letters were large enough to be seen from the Union Pacific railroad tracks a mile away, which was free advertising for the great showman of the Wild West.

I thought the Scout’s Rest Ranch was cool, and it would’ve been even better had we been able to get inside the house. Even though we were limited to walking the grounds because all of the buildings were closed for the day, it was still an honor for me to stand in the footsteps of the most famous figure of the American Old West – Buffalo Bill Cody.

It was nearly seven o’clock when we finally arrived at our hotel, which was the Quality Inn on the South side of North Platte. While Vicki went into the lobby to register, I watched Tom as he loaded up the luggage cart for the second night in a row. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, my photographer began a discussion with a couple who had parked their trike-style motorcycle next to us. When my camera guy discovered the man and woman were from Columbus, Ohio, Tom didn’t hesitate to mention that we were from Michigan and we “hate” the Big Ten Football Team from their city. I rolled my painted eyes and thought to myself, “There’s no better conversation starter than to tell someone their college football team sucks.”

Once our gear was unloaded into our room, my companions and I headed to dinner at Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers, a place recommended by the Ohio motorcyclists. They bragged and told my photographer the diner featured the best chicken fingers in the country, and the very first restaurant opened in Columbus in the late 1990s.

When dinner was finished, I overheard my photographer tell his wife exactly what his thoughts were about Raising Canes. “That motorcycle guy from Ohio was full of crap. Not only were those NOT the best chicken strips I’ve ever eaten, but the first Raising Cane’s opened at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and not in Columbus. That’s what I get for listening to a short guy who operates a motorcycle with three wheels.”

Back in our room, Tom placed me alongside the television set where the two of us watched Jake Cronenworth and his San Diego Padres defeat the Texas Rangers 4-1. Even though Cronenworth played a great game and collected an RBI single during the victory, I felt very uneasy once my photographer extinguished the lights at 10:15pm. There was good reason for my anxiety. After all, an orb flew around the Hoover birthplace during our visit on Saturday night and we may have spotted a ghost during our visit at the Cody Ranch House today. We’ve had two possible encounters with the paranormal and we weren’t even close to the Pacific Northwest, which seems to be the epicenter of weird phenomena such as Sasquatch, Skinwalkers, UFOs, Shapeshifters, and alien beings.

For the rest of that night, I stood alone in the darkness and let the words of the calming song ‘Home on the Range’ run through my resin head.

“Oh, give me a home where Buffalo Bill roamed, where spirits watch the wild bison graze. The further we head West; we’ll experience the rest; and I hope to survive the next twenty-plus days.”