The road trip. Day 3: Omaha
While the 10 hour drive to Nashville on the first day may've been miserable for a variety of reasons, the trip to Omaha nearly killed us. To avoid Kansas City and the inevitable traffic around it, we ended up taking backroads for the first half of the day. And let me tell you, Missouri is boring.
Lia took her first stint behind the wheel, so I was completely free to look around and appreciate the vast lack of interesting things in the middle of Missouri.
We switched back a few hours later, just as we crossed into Iowa, and just as rain drops began falling on the car. Then the storm started. Then the flash flood warnings ignited our phones. And then the tornado warnings had us completely spooked.
Thankfully, the roads were mainly flat, but the rain in the last hour of Iowa was unlike anything I've ever experienced. The wind whipped across the flat farmland and buffeted our small car. We hung behind a truck ahead because it was swaying a little too eerily for our liking, but we had to switch the music off because the water hitting the car was so loud.
The spray from the road was terrible, and it only added to the sheer amount of water in the air. It seemed like you'd drown if you just stepped out the car, as there was so much rain, surely there wasn't enough room for oxygen.
No thanks to yet more dickhead truck drivers, we survived. The storm was good for the crops at least.
The traces of the previous day's storm gone, we quite liked this little park in downtown. Even the guy grinding up weed just out of shot.
My dad sent me a screenshot of our location to show that we'd made it about halfway across the country. Exhausted from three days of colossal drives to make it that far, we decided to call it an early night, but got some grub at a small Mexican place just down the road from our Airbnb. They had Mexican Coke, a Champions League match replay on the tv, and a language barrier meant I was even able to impressively spew out some broken high school Spanish to order our food.
Next morning, a little more energised, we wandered around downtown Omaha for a bit before hitting the road again.
"Quick tattoo before we head out?"
Our breakfast was underwhelming, but we did really enjoy the Old Market area, with its cobblestone pocked streets, and endearing - but presumably tourist trap - small stores.
Lia took a photo of the sewer cover for me. One of my weird sources of pleasure is cities with cool manhole covers. Omaha's was pretty fun; Charleston, SC's is two cannons and a palm tree; and Lia knows one of the reasons I love her is because her hometown has the only triangular manhole covers in the country.
And I took this one for her, because I know typography is the way to her heart.
We sped around the waterfront park, anxious to make time to both our pitstop in Sioux Falls and ranch accommodation in the Badlands for the night. We were also quite looking forward to cooler weather, as by the time we got back to the car we'd both broken out sweating. We live in Boston. We're not used to this.
The waterfront park, linking to the Missouri River. Probably not the same colour.
I threw out the leftover nachos I'd convinced myself I'd eat, and we set off to South Dakota, where it really got fun. Never thought I'd say that.
