Ogallala Livestock Barn: Kathy's Kafe

Clint and I took a road trip around the country last week, mapping out a few interesting—and, admittedly, a few very uninteresting—stops along the way. I've always been more of an "off-the-beaten-path" traveler, and I'm giddy to have found me a man that's on board with that. Give us a narrow road to unknown treasures over a blinking neon arrow to a tourist attraction any day.

The "Giant Coffee Pot" stop on Thursday turned out to be a bust, but the accidental breakfast that we found on Friday morning more than made up for it.

We pulled over in Ogallala, Nebraska. A small ranching town, we had a hard time finding a restaurant of any sort, so pulled into a gas station to ask for advice. We were directed on down to, and I quote, "the sale barn."

Breakfast in a sale barn? Yay! Ok! What's a sale barn? We scooted down to find ourselves at at Kathy's Kafe, at the Ogallala Livestock Sale Barn, and parked in a big dusty lot next to cattle pens. The  aromatherapy and white-noise (mooooo!) made for instant interesting ambiance.

When we walked in looked around, we knew we'd hit the jackpot. "Yes!" ::fist-bump:: We found a booth, and the waitress promptly brought me coffee, "hon." I love it when waitresses call me "hon."

Our orders were placed, and we could see into the small kitchen where ham was promptly sliced, and sausage was pattied. Clint ordered the Ham 'n eggs 'n pancakes:

I never order sweets for breakfast, no pancakes, waffles, sugary cereal. Still, I had to have a bite of Clint's pancakes, and they were to. die. for. They tasted like they were made out of vanilla cake batter. I had another bite, and maybe another, even though I do not like pancakes, I mean it, now. But I would eat these every day if I lived in Ogallala.

And this was my breakfast. Ah, nothing like a stick-to-your-ass ribs breakfast to get you through 10 hours of rasslin' cows riding down the highway in luxury. No, this was not on my diet, but baby, if I'm eating with cowboys, I'm by-God going to eat like one.

Yeah, cowboys, real live cowboys. Hats and chaps and boots.

And the cows to go with them:

The sale pens next to the livestock barn had stairs to an overpass so that you could walk up and check out the wares. A cowboy's jewel case. We wandered up after breakfast, and watched a few cows being herded out of barns and into trucks. They didn't care for us that much. They raced toward us, and came to a screeching halt when they realized we were standing overhead, and refused to go under the "bridge" we were standing on, until a—what—a cowpoke? A cowpoke sauntered up behind them and hit a plastic thingy on the ground to get them going. "Get along, little doggies." (He didn't say that; wouldn't it have been cool if he'd said that?



Oh, I can't get along little doggiee....

Kathy's Kafe at the Ogallala Livestock Barn. It really was our cup o' tea, and you must go there if you're ever meandering through Nebraska.

Hon.