Continuing my detour through Nebraska, I left Grand Island and headed east on Interstate 80 this morning. Since the Platte River is well north of the highway east of that city, the landscape took on the characteristics that one associates with the Great Plains.
Broad views of relatively flat terrain, quilted with crop fields and grasslands, extended north and south of the highway; trees were primarily limited to homesteads, small towns and creek beds. As I approached Lincoln, the topography became more hilly, trees were more abundant and the streams were larger and more numerous; of course, this change reflected the fact that I was entering the western edge of the American Midwest, where annual precipitation is greater than it is on the Great Plains.
Finally, I crossed the lower Platte River thirty miles west of Omaha. Much larger than its braided, western section, the Platte would soon empty into the Missouri; both rivers originate from tributaries that rise in the snowfields on the Eastern Slope of the Continental Divide.
