#28 NEBRASKA

The “Cornhusker’s State” quarter features an ox-drawn covered wagon carrying pioneers in the foreground and Chimney Rock, a natural wonder & National Historic Site that is near the North Platte River. Maybe some day I’ll see it in person – the quarter makes a pretty good argument for seeking it out. The sun is in full view behind the wagon; with little imagination you can feel the heat.

Practically anywhere travelers go in Nebraska they encounter reminders of America's westward expansion. The state is crisscrossed by the Oregon and Mormon Trails, the Pony Express, the Lewis and Clark Trail, the Texas-Ogallala Trail and the Sidney-Deadwood Trail. Even the signs for state highways contain a covered wagon outline.

This trip to Nebraska came about because Omaha was by far the most affordable airport to fly into for our anniversary trip to a lighthouse on Minnesota’s Lake Superior. Sure, Omaha is 550 miles away from our destination and yes, gasoline is $4 a gallon, but flying into OMA presented an opportunity to travel to 5 states! How could I pass it up?

I was immediately impressed by the airport. It appeared new and inviting. Our hotel, the Downtown Omaha Hampton Inn was equally sparkling. I spotted six Hilton properties downtown, definitely a good destination for Hilton junkies like me! The suite upgrade reinforced my sentiment.

The largest city in the state, Omaha is a prosperous city of 400,000; home to five Fortune 500 companies. It is birthplace to Gerald Ford, Warren Buffett and TV dinners. ConAgra’s world headquarters back up to the pastoral Heartland of America Park & Fountain where we enjoyed circling the lake despite uncomfortable temperatures. The city has many parks and public areas with art and would be a great place to walk if only it was 20 or 30 degrees cooler! Old Market, a former warehouse district which is now a cultural destination complete with several converted lofts (considering a 1,300 sq. ft. loft rents for $575 – I should live there too!), is right downtown. The collections at the art deco Joslyn Art Museum reputedly hold their own in the museum world, and the Durham Museum at the old Union Station is an affiliate of the Smithsonian. Filmmaker Alexander Payne is from Omaha and his movies “Citizen Ruth” 1996, “Election” (1999) and “About Schmidt” were filmed here. That’s a whole lot of artsy-ness!

French fur traders first visited Nebraska in the late 1600’s. After the US acquired the region as part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, Lewis and Clark explored the territory during their expedition from 1804-1806. The Lewis & Clark expedition seems to be an ongoing theme in my travels. It wasn’t by design but I was very interested to learn that the Lewis and Clark National Trail Historic Center was right next to Rick’s Café Boatyard where we had a comfortable lunch overlooking the Missouri River. The banks of the Missouri, the longest river in North America, comprise the state line between Nebraska and Iowa with one exception. Carter Lake is a small section of Iowa that falls between the Omaha Airport and the city of Omaha. Carter Lake was the original streambed of the Missouri River prior to a flood in 1877 which changed the course of the river. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the disputed land was in fact part of Iowa. In 1920 with no services from neighboring Council Bluffs, IA, Carter Lake voted to become an annex of Omaha, NE but that city didn’t want them, so Carter Lake incorporated as a city unto itself in 1930 and remains a thumbnail part of IA today.

The National Park Service Lewis & Clark site had an interesting display and presented a half hour documentary by Ken Burns that gave a comprehensive account of the expedition. It sure cleared up some confusion I had in Montana and will help me out as I continue in their footsteps up into the Dakotas.

Road Food recommended the Bohemian Café; an over-the-top kitschy Czech eatery. We opted for dinners of the recommended roast duck and sauerbraten. The paper placemats list the lyrics and sheet music for the house song…

Dumplings and kraut today

At Bohemian Café

Draft beer that’s sparkling, plenty of parking

See you at lunch, okay?


How could you go wrong? The rye bread and soups were truly great, the Pilsner Urquell (served in an enormous ceramic mug that our diminutive waitress had difficulty hefting to the table) was sparkling. Entrees were less than stellar with Czech dumplings on the side which would have been better put to use as doorstops, but I would go back in a heartbeat. The waitresses wore bright red dirndls and polka music wafted in the background and the décor was hideous. It made me smile so!


The next day our exodus from Omaha had to be on Highway 6 “Nebraska’s First Highway” The brochure assures us that it’s leisurely AND scenic with plenty to see and do. I can’t vouch for that because we were only able to travel 20 miles or so before we veered north but it felt good! The website sure does a good job convincing me I want to travel Route 6 all the way next time! Getting out of town we skirted the Gerald R. Ford Birthsite and Gardens and finally made it by Father Flanagan’s Boys Town Suddenly we were in rural Nebraska surrounded by corn: acres and acres of corn. We had opted for two-lane roads rather than the Interstate and were rewarded with postcard perfect farms and small towns. The town of Kearney, a bit east of our route sits precisely between Boston and San Francisco., you can’t get much more mid than that!


One of my favorite small burgs was Oakland, NE, a Swedish community that took their heritage to heart. A miniature stone house marks the site of the first Oakland settler’s 14’ by 24’ sod house built in 1875. (see picture above)

Our final Nebraska hurrah was lunch at the Crystal Café. The Crystal Café is essentially a gas station diner. There’s ample parking for trucks but referring to it as a truck stop seems too grandiose. It was listed in Road Food (I LOVE that book – Thank you again Lois!), and written up in Gourmet magazine. Someone in South Sioux City is adept at PR and I’m grateful. The place was packed with an assortment of truckers and families. We appeared to be the only tourist types. The food was good! Go there if you get the chance. Five inch deep pies looked to be incredible but we resisted. My favorite part of the meal was watching a table of four get up to leave. They were older; three women and one man. One of the women was dressed in black with a lace collar. By her dress, I believe that she was Mennonite but forgive me if I have that wrong. One woman and the man said goodbye and the other two old ladies crawled into a very small late model convertible, a Minnie Mouse car if I ever saw one! Watching those two staunchly Midwestern matrons tool off with the prim passenger clitching her hands to her grey braided bun and lace collar as they pulled onto the road was priceless!

Nebraska boasts some rather interesting facts:
· Arbor Day was created in 1872 in Nebraska by J. Sterling Morton.
· If you add up the total miles of all of Nebraska’s rivers, no state has more.
· The first time in U.S. history that two women faced off in a gubernatorial election was in Nebraska in 1986.
· On July 4, 1882, Buffalo Bill Cody ran his first rodeo, in North Platte.
· From the Aug. 1, 2008 USA Today: “How green is Nebraska going? Officials say the plants at Homestead National Monument near Beatrice are native to the state and require little water. At Scotts Bluff National Monument, foot and bike trails cut vehicle exhaust. At Omaha’s River City Roundup, the rodeo arena dirt will be recycled, and used cooking oil from Nebraska Sate Fair concessionaires will go toward biodiesel.”
· State motto: “Equality before the law” which sounds a little anti-establishment to me.
· And my favorite: A law in Blue Hill states that no woman wearing a “hat that would scare a timid person” is allowed to eat onions in public.

Bruce Springsteen’s unsettling song, Nebraska, relates the tale of the killing spree of Charles Starkweather, inspired by Terrence Malick's film Badlands:
"From the town of Lincoln, Nebraska, with a sawed-off .410 on my lap."
I’d like to do better with my choice of NE song but I couldn’t locate all of the lyrics to Stan Freburg’s “Whatta they have in Omaha”.

There is no better literary tribute to Nebraska than Willa Cather’s My Antonia. Last fall, when John was traveling to southern Nebraska to go deer hunting, his daughter presented him with a gift of this classic novel. He gratefully accepted and took it along. Unbeknownst to any of us (even him!), he was traveling to Red Cloud, home of Willa, the Willa Cather Pioneer Memorial , and the Willa Cather Historical Society. Reading the book greatly enhanced his trip and when he returned I eagerly picked it up last December. (Thank you, Clare!) Now I find myself confronting Cather quotes everywhere and look forward to reading it again. Book Club Classics! chose My Antonia and quoted the following passages:

As I looked about me I felt that the grass was the country, as the water is the sea. The red of the grass made all the great prairie the colour of wine-stains, or of certain seaweeds when they are first washed up. And there was so much motion in it; the whole country seemed, somehow, to be running…Perhaps the glide of long railway travel was still with me, for more than anything else I felt motion in the landscape; in the fresh, easy-blowing morning wind, and in the earth itself, as if the shaggy grass were a sort of loose hide, and underneath it herds of wild buffalo were galloping, galloping…

I kept as still as I could. Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.

All those fall afternoons were the same, but I never got used to them. As far as we could see, the miles of copper-red grass were drenched in sunlight that was stronger and fiercer than at any other time of the day. The blond cornfields were red-gold, the haystacks turned rosy and threw long shadows. The whole prairie was like the bush that burned with fire and was not consumed. That hour always had the exultation of victory, of triumphant ending, like a hero’s death — heroes who died young and gloriously. It was a sudden transfiguration, a lifting-up of day.

Definitely gives the reader a sense of place!