Nebraska

"At the age of thirty-five one needs to go to the Moon, or some such place, to recapture some of the excitement with which one first landed at Calais." That was Evelyn Waugh in 1945, writing the foreword to 'When The Going Was Good', a compendium of his pre-war travel writing. The book is now out of print, because it's mostly Waugh's unexpurgated observations on the appearance and habits of the natives while travelling through Africa and South America.

I picked up a second-hand copy in Omaha, just by chance. Omaha is an unfashionable city in a mostly rural state, but the bookshop in question was still comfortably bigger and better-stocked with serious books than anything I've ever encountered in England. There's life in the republic yet.

Anyway, Waugh had a point, and recapturing excitement is especially hard in a place like Nebraska. There's not a whole lot going on. The only things I knew about Nebraska beforehand were a) it's the title of a Bruce Springsteen album, to which I've never listened, and b) in 'Big Bang Theory', the character Penny is from Nebraska, because it's a subtle way of showing that she's from...nowhere.

Some valuable travel advice, if you ever find yourself driving past Lincoln, Nebraska: keep driving. Omaha is nice though. I stayed in a fairly funky suburb called Dundee which was full of nice eateries and general leafy pleasantness. Then I picked up another rental car, and took off. Out in the wide open spaces - and by heck there are plenty of them - one finds interesting natural rock formations, one of which is pictured. And also there's CarHenge. It's a thing. Again, see picture.

I've got the car for a little while yet. Nebraska isn't the only big flat pile of nothing around here. Stay tuned for more quiveringly exciting updates from me.

Downtown Omaha

Holy Sepulchre Cemetery, Omaha
No particular significance - I just like the way the photo came out.

Smoking and morbid obesity are both absolutely fine and don't let anybody tell you otherwise

Nebraska State Capitol in Lincoln

CarHenge
It's a full-scale Stonehenge replica. All these cars are real, including the upright ones.
Some people just have too much time on their hands.

Chimney Rock

Edd vs Food #107
eCreamery, 5001 Underwood Avenue, Dundee, Omaha
Ice cream sandwich (identical cookie underneath) with sprinkles

Des Moines, Iowa

"I come from Des Moines," Bill Bryson once wrote. "Somebody had to."

It's actually quite a nice city, and I can imagine that living here would be perfectly pleasant. But I'm struggling to think of anything interesting to tell you about it. Fortunately I timed my visit (unwittingly) to coincide with the one notable event that actually happens here, which is the annual Iowa State Fair, a celebration of Iowa's huge farming industry and also a must-do for any presidential candidate in an election year. This is a mid-term year, but nonetheless former VP (and undeclared candidate for 2024) Mike Pence showed up at the fair a couple of days after I did.

There was a stall selling edible crickets. Yes, as in the insects. They're full of protein, apparently, and farming them produces a carbon footprint many times lower than traditional sources of meat. I opted not to indulge. But they were advertised as a 'Gateway Bug' (gateway drug, geddit?) and that won my personal Pun Of The Fair contest, comfortably beating the 'Southpork Ranch' and a cow-based exhibit called the 'Mooseum'.

English is not my AirBnB hostess's first language and this has given me an opportunity to practice my slightly rusty Spanish. Obviously the USA has millions of people of Mexican descent and indeed birth, but I'm reluctant to open conversations in Spanish in case it comes across like I'm assuming they can't speak English. There's also the fact that Mexican accents are quite tricky to get used to. Most of the tuition I've had in England has been from Colombians, who are much easier to understand. This is why I generally root for Team Escobar when watching episodes of 'Narcos' on YouTube. 

By the way, both of the letter 'S's in the name Des Moines are silent, and it's "deh-moyn" not "day-moyn". So now you know.

Downtown Des Moines

Cattle on show at the Iowa State Fair

This is not an Edd vs Food.
Even for a human dustbin like me, the thought of actually eating a Pork Picnic was just too much.

Let's call him....Sean

Caught in a thunderstorm downtown. Hurrah for public pianos.
Especially ones on which all of the keys work and are in tune.

Signs like this are ubiquitous in the more prosperous American suburbs.
All very worthy, although 'no human being is illegal' is somewhat vacuous.
If that were true, we wouldn't lock our front doors at night. But we do.

Edd vs Food #106
Poutine at El Bait Shop, 200 SW 2nd St, Des Moines, IA.
Poutine is a Canadian dish: basically meat, potatoes, cheese, and gravy.
This one was very generous with the tater tots, but distinctly stingy with the cheese curds.

South Dakota

I had the rental car for a week and I did 1800 miles in total. Slept in the car three nights out of seven. Why not, after all? The weather is plenty warm enough and it's more secure than a tent. Saves a bit of money too. 

Here's a Google Street View of one place where I bedded down in splendid isolation. It was a cloudless night and, once the moon dipped below the horizon, the stars came out in very great numbers indeed. Somehow the sky just seems bigger here. At one point I contemplated putting my blanket on top of the car roof and sleeping in the open air; but the coyotes were howling in the distance, and some of the insects were as big as pigeons. I stayed in the car.

My time in South Dakota coincided with the 2022 Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, the world's largest event of its kind. Harleys thronged the highways. In this state, as in quite a few others, there's no compulsory requirement to wear crash helmets. You see people riding half-ton motorbikes at 80mph, wearing nothing but T-shirts and shorts and sandals, and maybe a bandana, while 18-wheeler trucks thunder by at close range in both directions. It boggles the mind even before you consider that these people won't get free healthcare if they crash.

I saw thousands of solo male riders, and hundreds of male riders carrying their ladyfriends on the back, and a few dozen solo female riders; but the one thing I've never seen in all my days, the Black Swan and Abominable Snowman and Loch Ness Monster of motorcycling, is a female rider carrying her manfriend on the back. Something to ponder there.

On a vaguely similar note, when I went to Mount Rushmore, it was perhaps predictable that the crowd there would be almost exclusively white. I saw only one African American and that was a lady with a white partner. I suppose you can't expect black Americans to be too enthusiastic about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, both of whom, y'know, owned slaves. 

Personally I preferred the scenery in the surrounding Black Hills (irony unintended) with their lush forests. The Mount Rushmore carvings themselves are rather like the Statue of Liberty: you've known all your life what it looks like, and then when you finally get to see the thing, it looks like you expected it to look, and it's a case of 'well, there it is'. So you take a photo or two and then you leave. Box ticked. I try not to invest too much time in this kind of thing.

For me the highlight of the week was Badlands National Park, one of the most spectacular places I've ever seen, which is - if you'll excuse the immodesty - really saying something. See pictures below.

View from outside my cabin at dusk.
At the South Dakota / Wyoming border, near a town called - irony of ironies - Newcastle.

Mount Rushmore, obviously

Wind Cave National Park. This is the roof of one of the caves.
I did a 90-minute underground walking tour and banged my head several times.

Pleasant little hike in Badlands National Park.
However, one has to keep one's eyes open.
(Zoom in on the middle of the picture...)

Badlands National Park
Every layer of rock represents ten million years or so.

Badlands again

Badlands panorama

In Mount Vernon, SD (pop: 461)
The greatest AirBnB of my life to date.
My hosts were out for the night so I had this house to myself, plus this dog for company.
Forty quid!

Edd vs Food #105
Chicken & bacon ranch mac'n'cheese with spring onions and garlic toast
Shenanigans, 1903 S Ellis Road, Sioux Falls, SD