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Nebraska is a BIG state. Especially crosswise and on two lane roads

I think I mentioned below that we bought a Rand McNally road atlas for this trip. This is where it pays off.

Doreen has been tracing our route with a yellow highlighter (I will post Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas later) so we can remember where we were. Here is the route through Nebraska:
You may note that it ends in Chadron. That is where we ran out of daylight.

We would not have run out of daylight had it not been for COVID19 and the Oglala Lakota.  More on that later.

But on out way from Kansas, we went through the geographical center of the lower 48 US states.

See:


It is just outside of Lebanon, Nebraska.

and yes, that is a cedar tree.

We took a self portrait:


Then a nice lady asked if we wanted her to take our photo. We said, "Sure!" This is what we got:



Of course, I took her photo, too. But not before taking a couple of photos of myself, first. (Thanks, Matt!)

I am not sure I mentioned this below, but on the first leg of the trip, we listened to Charles Portis's book True Grit. Very appropriate for the territory we were driving through.

For this leg of the trip, we listened to Willa Cather's book My Antonia. Again, very appropriate, and as we were listening we were on the Willa Cather Memorial Highway. Which went through the Willa Cather Memorial Prairie.

You should read both books, but if you drive through this part of the country, you should definitely listen to this book.

It looks like this:


Much of Nebraska looks like this:



Gently rolling sand hills (Indeed, they are sand dunes that grass has stabilized) and very few trees:

It is nice, in its own way.


So here's the story of the deportation from South Dakota.

As we were peacefully driving along Nebraska State Highway 20 (a scenic route) the Google Lady said we could save 7 minutes by heading north on State Highway 87. Now, 7 minutes may not sound like a lot, but I was trying to get to the place we had rented in Keystone before well after dark. Sunset there was at about 7:00 PM, and this would get us there about 7:30, with what I hoped would be crepuscular light.

All went well, and we crossed into SoDak:

But about 500 yards past that snap, we were stopped at a roadblock entering the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation for the Oglala Lakota. Even though we were only driving through, they would not let us enter. We had to return back to Highway 20, head over to 385 and get to our destination, after many curvy mountain roads (probably glad it was dark) about 8:45. 

Not the worst story in the world, but I can tell you this - driving from 9:00 AM CDT until 8:45 MDT really takes it out of you. Not that it was not worth it.

We did see a nice sunset because of that.


When we got to the place in Keystone, Mt Rushmore was lilt up. You can see it from our porch:
Nice, eh?
 

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