Misko wanders through Nebraska

Started in Ashland, Nebraska where I was privileged to address the 100 attendees to the Nebraska Writers Conference. Photo's below show me giving the keynote address, then standing with my publisher, Rudy Shur of Square One Publishing Inc. in NY. We were causal and cold. It snowed both days we were there and this was spring.

Then we headed for Holdrege where a book club has featured my novels and met with four of the ladies during their afternoon bridge club session.

Thence we journeyed to Red Cloud, the storied hometown of Willa Cather. We whipped around through the Willa Cather Museum, bought one of her books that I didn't have and asked them to carry my Nebraska book As All My Fathers Were. They took my info and promised to look into it. Red Cloud and other towns in Nebraska still maintain some streets that were originally paved with red bricks. They are not quiet to travel on, but they sure have lasted a long time.

Then it got cold. We took the Southern route toward North Platte thinking south is better than north when it's getting windy, cloudy, snowing and the temperature plummets. Generally that is a good idea. In this case the historic blizzard reached from Kansas up to North Dakota so it hit all of Nebraska a good lick. Just before it hit we had 80F weather getting to Crawford, Nebraska and got to visit the Crawford Library which had purchased my books. 

Driving into Valentine, Nebraska was a treat and easy to get there from Crawford. We took a room in a fine motel, ate at a local BBQ that featured fine wine and my favorite Scotch. What could be better?
The next three days put me to remembering what a Nebraska storm is like. Temperature dropped to 7 degrees, wind hit 50 mph, airports, roads, restaurants--everything closed. When it cleared up three days later I asked the parking lot snow plow to please remove the two feet of snow from behind my car so I could get out. My car was surrounded with two feet of packed solid on all four sides. When I backed it out I took this photo of where it was parked.

We looked at the road reports and figured we could make it to Lincoln in a day if the roads were on the good side of "wet, slushy, snow" which the highway patrol was saying. Off we went and slid into Lincoln in between storms. The next day to Omaha to deposit the car and fly home to Alaska where it was warmer, the wind only 15 mph and sunny for 18 hours. I so wanted some good kolaches but none were to be had where we were so we sampled a Nebraska special, a Runza.

Tis an enveloped sandwich with ground meat and cabbage. No doubt it will fill you up and if you aren't too choosy about what you eat, by that I mean ignore all the components of the Runza, it is quite good.

So there you have it. An eight day road trip around the outside edge of Nebraska. My favorite drive through area was Ash Hollow up near the Niobrara River. We saw wild turkeys, quail, antelope, hawks by the dozens, and big country with always three or four windmills working in the pastures. I could imagine Seth and Richard riding over that land with Filoh cussing them every mile.