The Philosophunculist Travelogue, Part Three: Nebraska

‘Marooned’ by Howard Pyle

Along I-80 somewhere in Nebraska, you will enter a zone where your car radio picks up only four stations: country, country, religious talk radio, and country. To free your mind from this insanity, you pull into a gas station. In the bathroom you find a half-naked trucker, his back blanketed with a botched snake tattoo, taking a bath in the sink.

All you have left then is the road. It’s cruel, really.

Even pirates were kind enough to leave the marooned with a loaded pistol; Nebraska leaves you with 400 miles of……Nebraska.

Oh yeah, Nebraska has Chimney Rock. We added two hours to the trip to see this monument because hey, it didn’t seem too far out of the way, and it’s in the game Oregon Trail.

This can be said of the stone erection: It’s worth driving by, if you live within sight of it. Cool to see, yes. Worth a detour on an overnight road trip? Nah. But we can say we saw it. Someone, somewhere, at some point will be impressed by that, maybe.

After Chimney Rock, there were some bluffs and semi-interesting geological features, for about ten minutes. And a fox. We saw a fox. Then, back to I-80, and on into southeast Wyoming……..