A lazy Sunday afternoon

in ,
near Blencoe


With gas nearing $4 a gallon, my love of road trips is getting to be near as expensive as a drug habit. It's $50 to fill even the tank of my little Subaru. Despite that, I've been feeling restless again of late, and went out for a little bit of Sunday afternoon exploration. I spent some time photographing the north downtown section of Omaha and then took off into the Loess Hills of Iowa.

I fear there's nothing too exciting to report. It's definitely good to see some green growing again.


Blencoe

near Council Bluffs


Also visited: Crescent, Honey Creek, Modale, Mondamin and Onawa, Iowa.

Homeward bound

in ,

Until today, the weather had been near perfect for my travels. The closer I got to Nebraska, the worse the weather got. I woke up to 30 degree temperatures and a dull gray sky in Goodland, Kansas. It didn't take long for a persistent cold mist and fog to develop. By the time I got across the state line to McCook, there was a nasty mix of what appeared to be rain, ice and snow all at once. Maybe Nebraska is trying to tell me something.

Both photographs today come from Goodland before the weather really went south. The small city boasts what they claim to be the world's largest Van Gogh painting. As I stood there, shivering from the cold, I couldn't help but wonder what ol' Vincent would have made of the spectacle. Some little town in middle-of-nowhere western Kansas with an eighty-foot tall easel next to a Pizza Hut displaying a copy of a piece of art made by a long dead Dutch schizophrenic that may have ate a little too much lead paint.

The photograph below is from downtown. I'm not sure what Caldwell's is or was, but there sure is an interesting array of imagery posted in the window.


detail from photograph of Caldwell's

Colorado

in ,

I'm really going to miss the mountains. While I only saw what amounts to a small fraction of the state today, Colorado was fantastic. Pictured above is the Arkansas River along US Highway 50 near Cañon City.


It comes as a surprise to people that I don't really plan out my travels very much. I choose an eventual destination, which sometimes manages to change by the end of the day, and head in that general direction. Most of the time, and especially in my experience on this trip, the best roads are not the ones that Mapquest or your Garmin will recommend. For example: Today I made a last second decision to take Colorado Highway 69 north from Walsenburg. The highway follows the Sangre De Cristo Mountains up to canyons of the Arkansas River. It was a great drive and took me right near a place I had never even considered for this trip: the Royal Gorge Bridge.

Unfortunately, they now charge $29 for a single adult admission to the bridge, so, being a poor college student at the moment, I was only able to peer down into the gorge from the rather makeshift overlook outside the gates. This horse by the west entrance didn't seem concerned.


I headed back east through Colorado Springs towards Kansas. It's not long after a person leaves the shadow of Pike's Peak that they are confronted with miles and miles of flat grasslands that seem to stretch on forever. Soon I'll be back in the croplands of the corn belt, home in Omaha once again.

The last image is of a bar along US Highway 24 in Peyton. A guy got out of a pickup while I was taking the photograph and just stood there, dumbfounded. I said hello and got back in my car.

Also visited: Trinidad, Gardner, Westcliffe, Calhan, Ramah, Simla, Limon and Arriba, Colorado.