r/midwest

I've lived here my whole life and this view never gets old. I do not take it for granted

Porcupine mountains, Michigan

What the Hell Is… Nebraska?

I drove through all of the lower 48 states when I was 21, about 24,000 miles in two and a half months.

And if you asked me which state was the most boring to drive through?

Nebraska was like a southern North Dakota. I-80 runs about 455 miles (733 km) across the state, more than six hours of driving, punctuated mostly by the rumble strips waking me up from boredom.

So I asked my AI a simple question:

Sell me Nebraska.

Apparently… I may owe Nebraska an apology.

The first thing Luna threw at me was the Sandhills. Nearly 20,000 square miles of ancient sand dunes that are now covered in grass, forming the largest stabilized dune system in the Western Hemisphere and one of the biggest intact native grasslands left in North America.

Okay. That’s mildly better than corn.

Then she mentioned the birds.

Every spring, roughly a million sandhill cranes gather along Nebraska’s Platte River valley during their migration. At peak times, thousands can crowd into half a mile of river. It is considered one of the great wildlife spectacles in North America.

I did not see those.

I saw Highway.

Then things got weird.

Nebraska has a 76-mile National Scenic River called the Niobrara, with cliffs, rapids and more than 230 waterfalls along part of its valley. Nebraska. Waterfalls. Apparently I was driving through the wrong Nebraska.

Then there’s Chimney Rock, one of the great landmarks of the westward migration. The National Park Service says it was mentioned in more emigrant diaries than any other landmark on the Oregon Trail. Imagine crossing half a continent in a wagon and finally seeing that thing rising out of the plains.

Nebraska also gave us Arbor Day, first proposed there in 1872.

And, considerably more importantly, Kool-Aid was invented in Hastings, Nebraska, in 1927.

Then Nebraska played its final card:

Carhenge.

Someone near Alliance recreated Stonehenge using old automobiles.

Thirty-nine of them.

At that point I had to admit Nebraska understood road-trip culture better than I had given it credit for.

So perhaps Nebraska isn’t boring.

Perhaps Nebraska is quiet, and Americans have become so accustomed to mountains, cities, oceans, neon and spectacle that enormous empty space registers as “nothing.”

Driving across it at 21, I wanted something to happen.

Now?

Give me an empty two-lane road through the Sandhills, a WRX, nowhere I have to be, and about six hours.

I might finally understand Nebraska.

Nebraska, I think I owe you an apology.

Photo credit: https://benwright.photos/

Source: STL Aerials

The sun sets as cattle graze around an old schoolhouse left behind by time.
Oglala National Grassland
Northwest Nebraska