October 16…. Nebraska

Oh, what can I say about Nebraska?

There’s sand. And cows. And corn.

Yea, that’s about it. 😁

We spent a couple nights in Valentine NE this week. Kinda rainy and cold so we didn’t do much. Susanne played with her rock treasures, and we walked a couple trails in the Ft Niobrara Wildlife Refuge. Saw a pretty waterfall.

And a few more buffalo… Don’t Pet the Fluffy Cows.

And we walked a couple miles on the Cowboy Trail, a 319 mile long rails-to-trails project, stretching across the state.

About a quarter of the entire state is covered by the sand hills, a huge area of grass stabilized sand dunes, not used for much more than cattle grazing area. We drove through more than a hundred miles of it yesterday. Yep. Sand dunes. And more sand dunes. And lots of cows.

Breaking out of the sand hills, the land flattened out a bit and we started seeing some small corn fields. And then some larger corn fields. And soon it was corn as far as the eye could see in every direction.

Nebraska is second in the US, behind only Texas, producing over 20% of the nation’s cattle, and is the third largest producer of corn in the US, behind Ohio and Illinois. 99% of the Nebraska corn crop goes to cattle feed and ethanol production. Makes sense, grow the corn to feed the cattle and use the ethanol to run the tractors to harvest the corn. A golden triangle. Now you know more about Nebraska than you ever thought you would. 😉