Where the East Lets Go: Bernie's Week 10 on the Cowboy Trail
Past the halfway point of his Great American Rail-Trail thru-hike, Bernie Krausse spent Week 10 on Nebraska's Cowboy Trail — where the cornfields thin out, the grass takes over, and the East finally lets go of the West. Storms, prickly pear, fellow travelers, and small-town grace.
All photos by Bernie Krausse
Somewhere in the middle of Nebraska this week, Bernie Krausse watched the country change hands. The cornfields he'd been walking through for days thinned out, the grass took over, and cattle started drifting up to the fences to size him up. "The eastern side of this vast continent is simply vanishing to that of the West and the great wide open," he wrote one evening. Past the halfway point of his Great American Rail-Trail thru-hike — the first known end-to-end walk of the route — Bernie spent his tenth week on Nebraska's Cowboy Trail, and it's where the whole trip started to feel like a different trip.
Bernie Krausse
Great American Rail-Trail - Westbound
Started: March 28, 2026
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188 Miles of Cowboy Trail, and a Storm Most Nights
The Cowboy Trail runs 188 miles into Valentine on old railroad grade, much of it fine red gravel, through towns spaced farther and farther apart. Thunderstorms chased him the entire way. Most nights one rolled through; one morning at 4 a.m. he packed up fast and rode out a downpour asleep on a picnic table under a pavilion while two inches of rain hammered the metal roof. He's learned to read the radar before he reads the sky.
What kept the week grounded was everything between the storms. Junipers showed up west of Johnstown — the first conifers of the crossing. "The Great Plains have put an end to the deciduous empire," Bernie noted, and from there it was prickly pear, blooming thistle, his first wind poppy, and meadowlarks calling off the fence lines. The high point, literally and otherwise, was the Niobrara River Bridge coming into Valentine, where eastern red cedar and ponderosa pine open up over the river. He calls it the crown jewel of the Cowboy Trail, and the photos back him up.
Suddenly, He's Not the Only One Out There
The other thing that changed this week: Bernie stopped being the only one out there. Just east of Stuart he spotted two backpackers, Jenny and Sammy, walking O'Neill to Valentine — the first foot travelers he'd seen since the C&O Canal towpath back in Maryland. A pack of road cyclists was working the corridor too, and a support driver pulled over to load him up with snacks. A couple riding in from Montana hollered across Main Street in Bassett: "Are you Bernie? Keep walking!"
And then there's Justin. A cyclist riding the Great American from Washington, D.C. to Washington State caught up to Bernie on the trail and was glad to find the 8,000 services waypoints loaded on Bernie's Gaia GPS. Sorting out where to eat, sleep, and refill every single day is real work when you're moving through country this empty — and Justin's now in touch with us and plans to send back what he encounters on the road ahead. That's how this data gets built: boots and tires on the ground, one report at a time.
A Week of Small-Town Grace
The small towns took care of him the rest of the way. A retired rancher in Atkinson pressed a twenty into his hand for meals. A cafe full of people in Bassett sent him off with encouragement, including a waitress whose husband dreams of walking across the country himself. In Valentine, a motel owner heard his story at check-in and handed him the night for free. Bernie has a word for stretches like this one: grace.
He's also doing the quieter work of a long walk — the kind that happens in your head over thirty-mile days. "If I try to walk across the country I am in my head," he wrote. "If I allow myself to walk across the country then I am doing so with my heart and without resistance." Twenty years ago he had a dream that he'd lead a walk across the country in his fifties, finishing in the Northwest. He's 59 now, and out here in the cornfields he keeps coming back to it: hike it and they will come.
Week 10 ended with Bernie stepping onto US Highway 20 for a long road walk west toward Gordon — South Dakota off his right shoulder, the clock rolling back into Mountain time, the West finally close enough to feel. Out on the shoulder, somebody had left him a note. Written in tar on the road, just for him: Hi B.
Keep walking, Bernie. We're right behind you. 🥾
Hike Your Hike - John.
Hiking America's GPS tracks for the Great American Rail-Trail are free — download them anytime and start mapping your own route.
What Bernie is verifying mile by mile is the services waypoint layer: where to eat, sleep, and refill across the entire corridor. That's the part that turns a line on a map into a walkable or bikeable plan, and it's what a Hiking America subscription unlocks. More than 8,000 waypoints and counting.
