"Honestly, It's Not For Everyone"

A hunger for the Great Plains & the country's least desirable state

One gift of a long road trip is the unknown. You have a plan to move from here to there unencumbered by preconceived plans and stops. It is a Zen pilgrimage—if you allow it to be. Moving down the road through places you’ve never been, dust is wiped from your soul, and it expands. To travel is to grow. It is freedom. It makes you want more of it, to delve deeper, to drink life in gulps of gratitude.

That’s what Nebraska was to me.

We only had a single day, and it was a long one, but now I want to return.

As we’ve gone from stick season to mountain greenery in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, I find myself imagining the small rolling hills, flat prairies, and gaping skies of Nebraska. I can hear the meadowlarks in my daydreams, see the crops inching upward, and stand among the waves of undulating grasslands.

We’ve been to most parts of our country, but other than a couple of stops near Omaha when we did not bisect the state but dropped down on the eastern edge along the Missouri River …