West of Omaha, Nebraska, Interstate 80 crosses the Platte River, a tributary of the Missouri. From that crossing westward, the highway runs up and through the Platte Valley, paralleling the river and, at times, fording its braided channels. At North Platte, the primary river forms from the merging of its North and South forks; the former heads in the mountains that surround North Park, in Colorado, while the South Platte rises from tributaries along the north rim of Colorado's South Park; the South Platte's North Fork rises along the Continental Divide and the Platte River Mountains near Kenosha Pass (on U.S. 285).
Crossing Nebraska on I-80 yesterday, I found that the landscape of eastern and central Nebraska is dominated by its famous cornfields while cattle ranches characterize its drier, more western reaches; of course, the Platte and its riparian woodlands wind along and through these landscapes and southern extensions of the Nebraska Sandhills rise along the north edge of the valley in central and western Nebraska. Renowned for its waterfowl and spectacular sandhill crane congregations in October and March, the river and its floodplain lakes harbored only small flocks of Canada geese and American white pelicans on that hot summer day.
West of North Platte, I headed southwest on Interstate 76, which parallels the South Platte River. By the time I reached our farm, in Littleton, Colorado, I had traveled 550 miles from Omaha and gained 4340 feet in elevation (a very gradual climb indeed).
