{"id":7792,"date":"2024-07-02T07:22:59","date_gmt":"2024-07-02T11:22:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tubridy.net\/newblog\/?p=7792"},"modified":"2024-07-02T07:23:31","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T11:23:31","slug":"southwards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.tubridy.net\/newblog\/excellent\/southwards\/","title":{"rendered":"Southwards through the Heartland"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sunrise at Sioux Falls, South Dakota<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

After leaving North Dakota, we spent six days traveling leisurely southward through the region west of the Mississippi. We drove around 200 miles per day on average and drove the back roads as much as possible to get a better feel for the state and area<\/p>\n\n\n\n

South Dakota<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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South Dakota – Puppy Dogs Beware!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

We stayed that evening in Sioux Falls. We heard the falls looked like tiny Niagra Falls, so we had to take a look. The park at the falls provided a most excellent sunrise walk! <\/p>\n\n\n

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Big Sioux River in Sioux Falls<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The Big Sioux River was above flood stage. I saw other places further south where the rivers had swollen their banks.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Flooding in South Dakota<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
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Nebraska<\/h2>\n\n\n
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Nebraska Makes Fifty<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

When I worked for Hewlett-Packard, my first job involved supporting marketing and sales activities in the Midwest. We had just introduced Tsunami, a 2-channel digital signal analyzer that proved to be a big hit for mechanical testing. I spent several weeks visiting many of the sales offices in the region. I made it to all the states except one: Nebraska. I did land at the airport in Omaha and change planes, but I always remember I never actually made it there.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Nebraska Makes Fifty<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

I must say I liked the little I saw driving through the Winnebago Indian Reservation there. It seemed like it had a nice vibe. <\/p>\n\n\n

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Swedish Church in Oakland, Nebraska. It was interesting how the different European cultures persisted after settlement in the last half of the 1800s, another consequence of the inheritance laws in Europe at the time.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

I stayed too far away to see Omaha and the next night outside Kansas City. They were both quite a bit bigger, which made for an interesting and sometimes frustrating excursion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Missouri<\/h2>\n\n\n
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Missouri<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Northern Missouri had some nice areas, like Lake Winnebago. This name appeared at various points so far in the slide south. It is associated with the Ho-Chunk people who were forcibly resettled in many of the states along our route.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Missouri Crop Fields<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The northern part of Missouri resembled the rolling hills and crop fields of Nebraska. As I moved further south, it became less developed, at least along the route I chose.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Lake Winnebago Missouri<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

As we drove further south, the landscape changed to resemble the South. Many churches and the Ten Commandments started appearing on billboards. It was not a great vibe compared to the earlier part of the trip. We were now in the Ozarks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Ozarks<\/h2>\n\n\n
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The Ozarks in Missouri<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The Ozarks have always had an interesting connotation to me. My Mom had religious survivalist friends who lived here and took her money for bullshit supplements. It seemed to be a hotbed of addiction when meth became popular. It’s sort of a white trash state in my mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite my astounding prejudice, I found a certain beauty here. It’s pretty much the same as any place in the rural south. It’s sort of an ‘unchanged by time’ vibe.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Fort Smith, Arkansas, was a strategic fort on the Missouri River in the 1800s. It played a big role in suppressing the Indian uprising and the infamous ‘Trail of Tears’ relocation of the indigenous people to Oklahoma. Most of the structure you see here was a prison. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The final drive into Hot Springs was quite nice. We climbed to around 1500 feet and saw some great visits. As we got closer to the Ozark lakes, more vacation rentals and boats started appearing. We were headed for one of the playgrounds of this part of the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sunrise at Sioux Falls, South Dakota After leaving North Dakota, we spent six days traveling leisurely southward through the region west of the Mississippi. We drove around 200 miles per day on average and drove the back roads as much as possible to get a better feel for the state and area South Dakota We … Continue reading “Southwards through the Heartland”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7808,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[135,130,134,132,136,133],"class_list":["post-7792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-excellent","tag-arkansas","tag-missouri","tag-nebraska","tag-north-dakota","tag-oklahoma","tag-south-dakota"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.tubridy.net\/newblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/Sioux-Falls-1.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tubridy.net\/newblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tubridy.net\/newblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tubridy.net\/newblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tubridy.net\/newblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tubridy.net\/newblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7792"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.tubridy.net\/newblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7810,"href":"http:\/\/www.tubridy.net\/newblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7792\/revisions\/7810"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tubridy.net\/newblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.tubridy.net\/newblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tubridy.net\/newblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.tubridy.net\/newblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}