Nebraska - corn, cricket carnage and flat land ...

Hey everyone. Yesterday we cycled into Nebraska, into a new time zone (Central) and passed our 1000 miles marker. We really are cyclists now!

It seems that every day or so the scenery changes. After leaving the Rocky mountains of West Colorado we were suddenly in rolling hills and farmland. The prevailing north-west wind changed it's mind and gave us a light headwind as we cycled north-east to the top corner of Colorado. The roadside has been covered in wild sunflowers (nice) and crickets (not so nice). I've been trying not to kill them, as they jump out of the way of my wheels, but someone (i won't name) has been killing as many as he can! Now into Nebraska and the cornfields are plentiful, along with hay and cattle, and still the sunflowers and crickets. It's pure farmland for as far as we can see. The rolling hills seem to have flattened, and the wind is now unusually from the East (we're going East!).

We're cycling away from the main traffic routes, through rural towns, which highlights how much of rural USA is out of business with large, old "for sale" signs. In most small towns 90% of the businesses have been shut down for some time, and they might just have a post office and gas station remaining. The old buildings have been left as they were, and the abandoned cars, trucks just sit there in the growing grasses. I watched the animated movie "Cars" when with the Morgans in Boulder, which highlights the move of businesses from old towns, to anywhere near an interstate. We're seeing this every day. It's a great movie by the way - Sam Morgan's favorite!

Now we're travelling on highway 30, known as Lincolns Highway, east across Nebraska. It's the old main road, but with the new interstate following the same route only a few miles to the south, there's very little traffic. We also know we can get food and water nearby. Being near the interstate also has the advantage of the Rest Area's, which are set aside for truckers and drivers to use the restrooms and park and sleep for the night if they're tired. So for us that means free camping, though no showers. We did get woken by rain at 3am one night, when we were just sleeping under the stars, and had to sleep the rest of the night in the corridor by the bathrooms, but it was warm and dry. That was our first rain in a month, but we expect more from now on, as afternoon thunderstorms seem to be common here in the midwest. The weather has cooled a lot, which is great for cycling in the daytime, but the mornings aren't quite so pleasant.

We are averaging about 60 miles a day at the moment, which should get us churning across Nebraska pretty quickly, and into Iowa early next week. We have a rest day planned for Wednesday, so better push on! Thanks for all your posts and replies - we love reading them!