July 1, 2009 - Des Moines to North Platte

A slate grey dotted with white lines kind of day. The road is long and straight on this bit of the trip. It's always the same hue of geen on the borders and ash-blue in the sky. There aren't even any clouds to keep us company.

No murders that we know of at the Bavarian Inn last night. We wake up slowly and check out quickly passing through the centre of town to inspect the Capitol buildings (golden domed... impressive) and stop for a fill'em-up brekkie. Eggs, bacon, hashbrowns and toast – it's become something of a ritual by now.

I fell asleep in the car on the highway and awoke in rural Iowa on the way to a Dutch Windmill. It was a nice detour but when we arrived at the windmill we weren't exactly blown away by the novelty of it. We did manage to find another this n' that shop with antiques and great treasure-junk stuffs. Today we bought a Kodak Duaflex II Camera. I don't know what year it's from and they no longer make the 620 film it requires but I love the thing. At first we thought it didn't focus properly, as the viewfinder's up on the top of the camera and everything seems distorted, but then we realised that this camera has to be held at stomach height and looked at with your head facing perpendicular to the floor to see the image you're taking properly. It's a square format and really makes you LONG for the film to come back into production. I don't care if there are digital cameras or if those old formats yellow over time. Old photos never hurt anybody by being yellow. Memories fade and change over time too, and I'd rather embrace the square format, rather than pretend it never existed.

Omaha is a great little city. What a surprise. We didn't see most of it of course, but what we did see, the old market town, I liked. Cute little designer shops, art galleries and nice restaurants. It seemed very cultured and refined and I think Omaha is a city, given more time, I'd explore further. The sense of humour of the locals is lost on me however. The old man in the tourist info place kept making jokes I didn't understand and his face kept going from full smile to flat, evil stare, without warning. It reminded me of breakfasts in my childhood, passing the cereal box back and forth in front of my face and changing expressions with each obstruction of view. I was better at it than my brother and was glad that it sometimes made him laugh. But back to Omaha's locals, the same thing happened with our waiter at the 'Twisted Fork' restaurant who fancied himself a bit of a comedian. He was trying to make jokes, but they didn'ìt work at all and when he joked that we couldn't leave cause he was keeping our credit card I called him creepy to his face. He agreed. It was a quite creepy delivery of an obscure joke.

Back in the car we're too late for the Pioneer Village and The Arches Roadway Monument nearby Kearney so we push through, stopping at the Sapp Brother's truck stop for gas and a coffee. Our waitress is surprised all we want is coffee and offers us pie (if she doesn't we get it for free, says so on the wall). Fabri picks up a copy of the New Testament (“take your free copy now!”) and realises that if he reads the first 4 pages of this version he'll have the summary of the whole old testament, he puts it back before we leave and as we do the waitress recommends some things to do in North Platte, where we should arrive in about an hour.

We don't see too much of North Platte on the way in but I have my suspicions that there's not too much of North Platte to see in the first place; more investigations on this come morning. The Inn isn't offensive though it's very motelly. There is an outdoor pool so I rush up to the room to change and hop right in. My co-swimmers are all pre-teen and supervised by a texting 14 year old. We're not sure if she's the mother or what.

Back at the room I shower and change and then we head out to the Depot, which is just around the corner and the restaurant the waitress at the truckstop recommended ('but have never been to, just looks like a place I'd like to go to someday'... she says the same thing about Chicago and Italy during our conversation). It turns out to be a really nice place; a converted train depot and really adorable and afforable. I have ribs (which always make me think I should go back to not eating red meat) and Fabri has nachos and rice. We vow again to stop eating this much. Both of us look much more spherical since we've been here.

Visualizzazione ingrandita della mappa

423 mi – circa 6 ore 22 min

Americas Best Value Inn
602 E 4th Street
North Platte NE 69101
US