It rained in this part of the country today, significant rain. When the availability of a good place to stop to let Jack out coincided with a lessening of the rainfall I felt blessed. We stop often during the day, every one to two hours, and we got lucky several times, other times we got wet.
We drove on the Bridges to Buttes Scenic Byway for the first 150 miles or so, it is Hiway 20 in Northern NE. Even in the rain it was a lovely drive. There are lots of birds, including wild turkeys (there must be a large population of turkeys in NE for me to have seen so many from the car), pheasants, water fowl, raptors, vultures and other birds I cannot identify abound. Highway 20 is lightly used, I could slow down and even come to a stop as usually there were no cars in view in either direction. Ponds and marshes are the reason there are so many bridges. Wooden bridges for walkers and bike riders and railroads I guess as they weren't being used by automobiles. Many bridges, many windmills, and many buttes with groves of tall deciduous trees interspersed between the wetlands and grasslands.
At Valentine, NE, we switched to Hiway 275, it was picturesque as well, but much of the time had an olfactory quality I found unpleasant. Cattle feedlots were responsible for the stink. As we neared Iowa the feedlots were replaced with farmland, green rolling hills, or plowed earth, but still there were the groves of large trees slicing thru the vistas.
Crossed over the Missouri River for the second time today, this time it was much larger.
The rain has abated, our evening walk was dry in a stiff breeze, almost a gale. Tonight we are on a hill overlooking an expanse of farmland and a sky roiling with clouds as the sun neared the horizon, exhilarating weather. Maybe it was just that it had stopped raining that made me feel so uplifted. No funnel clouds at that time, I searched for one.
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