Ok, now I know why red state dwellers voted for you know who. So that everyone else might be as miserable as they must be.
Iowa and Nebraska are states a lot of people claim to be from, but I’ve never known anyone who went to live in those states from somewhere else.
There’s a reason, it’s the sameness of landscape. Another cornfield, another row of bare, broken trees. (There was a ice storm last week that accounts for a lot of the trees.) You’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. The towns try to project some identity with differently painted water towers, but they just look the same too.
We started in Des Moines and ended up in Sidney, Nebraska. The weather started out pretty nice; 28 degrees and calm. We soon passed into Nebraska at Omaha, which was bigger then I imagined. The freeways twist here and there almost like the Bay Bridge maze.
I kind of liked it right outside of Omaha, we stopped at a rest stop overlooking the Platte River valley and took in a vista that was what I imagined Iowa would look like. Seems that Nebraska is much flatter then Iowa though.
The view never changed, at least until dark. As we gained elevation we did see more and more snow on the ground. First snow I actually had to drive through this trip was in Kearney. Kearney is a dump, at least what I saw of it. Had some lunch and got out of there as fast as we could.
Hit another rest stop out side of Kearney. This one had a lot of snow on the ground, but pretty much the same sort of vista.
We saw Kyle’s old roommate Josh pass us just west of the 74/80 split. He’s headed back to Corvallis, but left Des Moines 3 1/2 hours after we did.
Our final stop for the day is Sidney, also known as Cabela’s world headquarters. We got here at 10 till 8, and they closed at 8. I did buy a sweater though.
While we were in Cabela’s they announced that I80 was closed eastbound right outside of Sidney due to blowing snow, which started about 10 miles east of here. (As I write this, it is 28 degrees out, but with a wind chill of 12 degrees.) The fact is it is closed westbound, outside of Cheyenne. (Cheyenne was our original destination for the night.) So we’re stuck here until it opens again, which should be the morning.
One last thing, if you are a vegetarian or a Djarum smoker stock up before you get to a red state. If you ask for a Garden Burger or a pack of Djarums you will be greeted with a blank stare.