Day 3: Escape from the Corn

By the end of the second day, we had begun to feel a kind of shock at how far we were from where we had started, relative to how little time had elapsed. I guess when you do this sort of thing in an airplane, it happens so fast you don't have time to think about it. But when you are travelling from city to city and timezone to timezone in an automobile, the impact is much greater.

Iowa's gentle undulations gave way to the long, unremitting plains of Nebraska. It was as if some giant being had ironed everything west of Lincoln completely flat. Only once we began to get closer to the northeastern tip of Colorado did we begin to see the wrinkles that betrayed the foothills to come.

We entertained ourselves by listening a cassette recording of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, which David had brought along. When that was finished, we were still in western Nebraska, so we listened to MP3's (we have along one of those cassette-deck adapters for a CD player, which turns out to work just fine with the headphone jack of a PowerBook).

You can click on these images to see an enlarged version.

Welcome to Nebraska, land of corn and ... well, corn. And, apparently, the home of Arbor Day (although it beats me why a state with as few trees as Nebraska seems to have would earn that particular distinction).

An island in the midst of a sea of corn, the little town of York stood like a blotch of concrete on the golden face of a child. In keeping with Nebraska tradition, all the signs are tall (so that they'll be visible over the corn).

After a lunch of corn on the cob, David and I walked back toward the car to continue our journey.

All around us, sweeping fields of corn waved their rustling leaves at us in an ominous manner.

Suddenly, we had a shocking realization. The corn was advancing on us! We stood there, slack-jawed with amazement, as it came closer and closer!

We stood petrified, our feet riveted to the ground, as the corn came so near we could see the yellow of its ears!

Oh no! The corn got David!

Thank heavens! It turns out all the corn wanted to do was tickle David. Here he is laughing uncontrollably as the stalks tickle him under the arms.

The corn was pleased that we were so good-natured about the whole thing, and insisted we take a picture of them with David, for the family scrapbook. We promised to send them a copy of the photograph once it was developed (we didn't tell them it was a digital camera).

Michael, the intrepid explorer, at last discovers the edge of the corn field. He looks up in amazement...

Wendy's!
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Okay, enough fun with the camera for now. Back on the road.

At the risk of getting a little too corny even for us, here is a panoramic composite giving a full 360-degree view of York, Nebraska. An ear's eye view?

(Please pardon while Michael is beaten repeatedly about the head and shoulders for making bad puns)

You can click on either of the following two images to see a full-size composite. The top image is the left half of the panorama, the bottom image is the right half.

Cruising down the highways of western Nebraska, we were relieved to finally be free of the tyranny of the corn. Since the roads were so straight, we just locked the steering wheel, put up our feet, and enjoyed the ride.

One nice feature of Nebraska (and, apparently, most of the other states in this part of the country) is that the speed limit on the interestate is 75 miles per hour, rather than the frustrating 55 or 65 we are accustomed to.

With all this open space, I guess they don't worry about how much room the median strip takes up. This one, for example, seems to occupy about half of southwestern Nebraska. Keep off!

Michael sits and does a little writing in his journal at 40d49m26.4s north, 97d35m47.9s west.

Meanwhile, David was off amusing himself with the camera again (and a good thing too, or else we wouldn't have all these pictures for you). It seems they find it necessary to keep all those highway travellers out of their fields.

After hours of unremitting flatness, the ground at last began to ripple gently, presaging the foothills to come. We were speeding (in a figurative sense, not a legal one) toward the northeastern corner of Colorado, in some anticipation of seeing the mountains.

Muhahahaha! Colorado!

(Sorry, I couldn't think of anything more interesting to say about this particular transition)

In the golden light of the setting sun, we at last saw the distant graying peaks of the Rocky Mountains, the backdrop for tonight's destination, Denver.

The sun sank slowly in the west, and the deep blue beauty of the night sky draped over us.

As any creative procrastinator knows, moonlight is the best sort of light by which to pull creative pranks.