6/26 - Omaha to Summit, SD

A good 335 mile drive up I-29 from Omaha to Summit, SD……as peaceful as any interstate driving we’ve ever done.  The countryside is beautiful all the way up I-29 from Kansas City.  Nebraska, Iowa and South Dakota are full of gorgeous green farmland as far as the eye can see.  At some point closer to Nebraska we left the non-stop corn fields behind and changed to luscious looking grassland.  It almost made us hungry and we aren’t even cows.  We saw a lot more cows today, too.  They were all out in the fields…..no feed lots here.  Happy cows.

Grain storage facility along I-29 in South Dakota.  

Storm clouds over I-29.  The rain we went through wasn’t heavy and it didn’t last long. The clouds were beautiful to watch.  To the right and left were puffy white clouds and blue sky with this mass of gray storm in between.  This is Big Sky country where you can see almost forever.

One of the beautiful farms along I-29. 

I’ve always pictured South Dakota as being really flat but it isn’t.  It's flatter in the middle but gets hilly again in the west.  If it weren’t for the tough winters this state would have a much bigger population. 

A pedestrian in the gas station parking lot.  His friends had flown off by the time I got the camera. 

WHAT ARE GULLS DOING IN SOUTH DAKOTA???  Did we take a wrong turn somewhere?  We’ve always found it odd that shore birds show up in the WNC mountains, but this is the center of the continent!  Gulls are opportunistic scavengers but this is really surprising. It would make sense if this were nearer the Great Lakes, but they are also a long way off.