Into Iowa

Bob Kerry Pedestrian Bridge

As I have mentioned before, Google Maps keeps changing where I have been. As I ask it each week how to get from Cape Flattery to Miami, it keeps changing the route, including the path through Washington, which used to go over Highway 2, then switched to Highway 20, and now runs over I-90. A couple of days ago, Google Maps said the Bob Kerry Bridge was 1,844 miles from Cape Flattery; today it says 1,837. So bearing that uncertainty in mind, I am near Mineola, Iowa, about 18 miles past the bridge that spans the Nebraska-Iowa border.

I will write about Iowa next week (preview: there do not seem to be a lot of thrilling things to do in Iowa), but before I made it to Iowa, I passed through Omaha, Nebraska, last town in Nebraska and the biggest city I have visited so far (population 479,529.)

Surprisingly, at least to me, Omaha looks like a place you could spend a few days and find some things to do. Among them:

• Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium. Depending on who you believe, it's either 160 or 130 acres of zoo and aquarium plus a replica of an Alaskan port town, with restaurants. Zooreview.org (I'm pretty sure this is a real thing and they're not spoofing me) gives it five paws out of five.
• The Old Market District. Cobblestones, 19th-century buildings, and places to eat.
• The Durham Museum. A big, restored, 1931 railway station.
• Lewis and Clark Landing. A 23-acre park next to the Missouri River. The river marks the boundary between Nebraska and Iowa. Since Lewis and Clark followed the Missouri River for most of their trip to the West Coast, they came through here.
• The Bob Kerry Pedestrian Bridge. A 3,000-foot pedestrian bridge runs across the Missouri River between Nebraska and Iowa, and it so happens that Google Maps sends me across this bridge on my way to Miami. It looks very cool. I would take that walk.

 Also, there are plenty of Runzas in Omaha.

Week 46: In Nebraska, Near a Runza

This week I am a few miles past Arlington, Nebraska, a village, per the Internet, of 1,657. Arlington is close enough to Omaha (25 miles) that you could easily commute from there, but I guess the suburbs of Omaha aren't much.

Rather than try to find a picture of the town, I decided to check out the entire state of  Nebraska, so I found a site titled "15 Fun Facts About Nebraska." Not all 15 of the facts are very interesting, but here are a few:

• There is a place called Carhenge in Nebraska, a replica of Stonehenge made with cars.
• There is a lighthouse in Nebraska, oddly enough. It's next to a lake.
• There is a fast food chain in Nebraska, called Runza, with 82 restaurants. They sell stuffed pastries, maybe similar to pierogis, although apparently German in origin. If I go to Nebraska again, I want to try Runza.
• Nebraska is not very populated. Sounds familiar.
• It's home to many big-name stars. Examples they give are Fred Astaire, Marlon Brando, Gerald Ford, and Nick Nolte. At least Nick Nolte is still alive, age 81. Fred Astaire died in 1987. I guess they do say "It's home to many stars" and not "Many stars live there."

They did not mention Chimney Rock, but that merits a bonus picture.

Jarrod learned about Chimney Rock when he was very young, because it was a landmark on the Oregon Trail. Wikipedia says it was also on the California Trail and the Mormon Trail. Travelers wrote about it back then because it was very recognizable and let them know they were on the right path.

There are two Runza restaurants in Fremont, Nebraska, a few miles from Arlington, and one in Bennington, ten miles ahead. After I pass Bennington, I will be in the greater Omaha area, where there are at least another 16 Runzas, so I will never be too far away from one until I make my way into Iowa this coming week.

Week 45: Starting The Second Half

West Point, Nebraska, looks suspiciously like the last Nebraska town.

If you want to walk from Washington to Florida by crossing the fewest number of states, you can do it in only eight: Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, Missouri, Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida.

Instead, I have passed through six states already, and will walk more in Nebraska, plus eight others: Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida.

The biggest town I have walked through so far is Spokane, Washington, but in the second half of the walk, in the more densely populated half of the country, I will visit Omaha, Kansas City, Memphis, Montgomery, and Tallahassee, then end in Miami. Instead of writing about tiny unknown places, I can spend a little time writing about places people have heard of.

Right now, my sights are set on Omaha, less than 80 miles ahead, then crossing the Missouri River into Iowa.

Halfway

 

Today I passed 3,500,000 steps, halfway to Miami. Google Maps keeps messing with me by changing the path I have already walked, so to be honest it is not so easy to say just where I am, but let's call it Wisner, Nebraska, although my path actually leads a few miles south of town. Next to a cornfield three miles south of Wisner, Nebraska then.

My revised goal was to get this far in 318 days (318 times 11,000 = 3,498,000), but I made it in 315, so just a shade ahead of target.

If I had just decided to walk this far, it would still be a pretty good accomplishment, so I am happy to be here.

Week 44: The First Half

This week I am near Norfolk, Nebraska, less than 50,000 steps from 3.5 million, which is halfway to Miami, so I will take a look back to where I have been. Next week, I will pass the halfway point and  lay out the plan for rest of the trip.

I started on October 1, 2021, so I have been on the road more than ten months and am sneaking up on one year. I started from Cape Flattery, Washington, which is at the far northwest corner of the Olympic Peninsula, not as far north as you can go in Washington, but as far as you can get from Miami.

At the end of October, November, and December, I was still in Washington, which is surprisingly large, especially if Cape Flattery is your starting point. I walked 486 miles across Washington, which I could easily do now in less than three months, but my pace was slower back then. It is easy enough to think the weather was to blame, but I did much better in January and February, which are the coldest months. The truth is, at first Arlo did not want to walk with me, which meant I had to leave him with Jackie while she was working, which put more burden on her. Having a dog made it harder for me to walk.

Fortunately, that seems like a long time ago, because Arlo got his mind right, maybe sometime in December, and started acting like a real dog and wanting to walk. Since then, we have picked up the pace.

I walked across 75 miles of Idaho in two weeks and spent the next four month-ends in Montana. After walking along the reasonably well-populated Highway 2 all the way across Washington, I passed through some truly remote areas in Montana, grinding out over 680 miles before cutting through 20 miles of the northeast corner of Wyoming and into South Dakota. My path as determined by Google Maps took me surprisingly far east and not so far south, but from Eastern Montana the path turns more south and more directly toward Miami.

I ended May and June in South Dakota, and July more than halfway across Nebraska. About three quarters of the way across Nebraska I will hit the halfway point for the trip having been in only six states, and having spent more than 90% of the time in only four of them. The second half will cover more states.

Some highlights so far:

• First blog post October 11, 2001, entitled "Jigsaw Puzzles," and this walk still reminds me of a jigsaw puzzle, although I have started and finished one puzzle and started another since October. It's a long walk.
• Arlo starts walking with me. Don't know when  that started, but it has made this work.
• In January, made it out of Washington and hit my first one million steps.
• Visited Lincoln, Montana, former home of the Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber.
• Found morel mushrooms.
• Eventually made it out of Montana.
• Passed through Colony, Wyoming, and got a t-shirt from Jarrod to commemorate the event.
• Wrote several Game of Thrones posts.
• Visited the area in South Dakota where Jackie and I had our first date in 1992.
• Walked 33,000 steps in one day in Las Vegas, after walking over 19,000 the previous day.

I am looking forward to passing that halfway point, probably Thursday, and moving toward the finish line.