FACT: Nebraska is flat

My wife and I recently pulled up stakes and moved from Chicago to Denver. It was a move I have wanted to make for many years and now was an ideal time to take the leap and go. Since we're not rich by any means we decided to move ourselves across country. Trust me when I say that there is not a whole lot that compares to driving a 16' Budget truck 1000 miles through the American heartland. As someone who is an aggressive driver to begin with, the idea of driving about 70 mph the entire time was only made bearable by the rattling and shaking the truck made when surpassing 75mph.

We decided to pack up the truck and leave Chicago on Friday evening and drive to Davenport, IA. The original plan was to pack up on Saturday morning and drive to Kearney, NE. Suffice it to say that it was a good thing the original plan gave way to the final plan. We didn't get on the road in Chicago until 3pm... on a Friday... the same weekend as the Air and Water Show in Chicago. Needless to say traffic was terrible and I had been unable to adjust my passenger side mirror, making lane changes virtually impossible. What should have been a 3 hour drive to Davenport took 5 hours. Not only did it take us 2 hours to get out of Chicago, but we hit a nasty rain storm driving across Illinois. Couple that with the fact that I was not used to driving the truck yet, and the fact that we were traveling with a dog, it quickly dawned on us the trip would take longer than anticipated.

After a quiet evening in Davenport, we got up early, managed to adjust the mirrors on the truck (FINALLY!) and set off across the country. I had not driven across country since 1992 and I have to admit that Iowa is a nice state. Plenty of green, rolling hills makes for pleasant scenery. Our destination for the evening was North Platte, NE. Once we hit Nebraska the only elevation change seemed to be the actual curvature of the Earth. What should have taken about 8-8.5 hours took closer to 10-11. That's a long day in Nebraska.

Some random thoughts while driving through Nebraska:
1. If one were to pick an interstate and drive from end to end, stopping at every "Americana" site along the way, how long would it take to make the trip?
2. One such sign advertised a "Danish Museum" and "Danish Windmill." It's pretty obvious what the latter was, but I couldn't help but wonder if the former was a museum of all things Danish, or a collection of pastries.
3. I don't know what Taco John's is, but it looks disgusting.

Sunday we made the last leg of the journey in 4 hours on the dot. Not too bad, and once we got into Colorado at least there were a few hills to break up the monotony. The northeast corner of Colorado isn't much to write home about, but it's better than Nebraska. Seriously, it seems as though when people were drawing the state boundaries they said, "we can't include that hilly part of there. It would ruin the whole flat thing we're going for here..."

The moral of the story: Either hire movers and fly across country or drive a car that is capable of attaining speeds of 80-90mph for long stretches of time in order to get out of Nebraska as quickly as possible.