We set off from the Days Inn, Grand Island, at 9:00 for the usual
Wall-mart top up and vanilla latte at Starbucks.
We’ve got another 5% tornado risk today and we’re heading
for the Nebraska/South Dakota border, potentially to Yankton SD, where I’ve
been on the last 2 trips. Big place, small world,s which gets even smaller as
we once again pass through Central City! We stop to take a few snaps just in
case, heaven forbid, we never come by here again.
We stop at a truck stop and I go through the biennial ritual
of buying a milk chocolate Hershey Bar, just to check that it still tastes of
sick. OMG! The extract of vomit no longer appears on the list of ingredients
and it’s actually edible. Even Liam agrees.
At 14:00 we cross the Missouri and head into Yankton. Last
time we were here we crossed an interesting bridge so I thought I’d grab a bit
of video footage as we crossed. Looks like they’ve built a new bridge since I
was here last and we crossed that instead. We did a u-turn and re-crossed the
river to have lunch at a park overlooking the Missouri. More small world stuff,
as I remember coming here on a long chase on a supposed “epic outbreak day” in
2008 which never materialised and we watched a storm whizz past at 60mph. It’s
really windy as we try to eat our lunch so we retreat to the Suburban. It’s
also a cold, northerly wind which tells us we are too far north so we retreat
further south in search of warm, moist air.
Suddenly, as if from nowhere we’re on a storm directly to our
south west. Where did that come from? We engage chase mode and speed off
through Bloomfield. We’re still too far north though and the storm in undercut
by cold air which cuts off the inflow and puts paid to that chase.
We continue west then south towards Norfolk and stop for a
Dairy Queen. I have a small Chocolate
Extreme Blizzard, an incredibly rich chocolate ice cream full of bits of
chocolate. I borrowed some of McDonalds wifi to make a Skype call home to be
told that it’s freezing cold back in Blighty. I sympathise as I try to eat my
ice cream as quickly as possible before it liquefies in the baking hot sun…We’re
back in the warm air which is reassuring. I get half way through my Blizzard
and start to feel sick so it gets binned. How on earth do people eat a large
one? Probably by not eating a Hershey Bar and a packet of Skittles as an
entrée…
There’s a decent looking storm to our south which suddenly
becomes severe warned. It towers to 47,000 feet and teases us with some
rotation, a brief wall cloud and some cloud-to-ground lightning. It’s already a
bit disorganised and starts to weaken so we target another cell near Schuyler
to our south east. By this time we were driving at dusk through torrential rain
and the Suburban had a couple of twitchy moments. This storm had some good
structure and served up some monster bolts of lightning and some small hail
which we watched from a gas station in Arlington.
Peter must have tried 10 hotels in Omaha and Lincoln but
they were all full so we ended up in the Econo Inn in Fremont which was cheap
but clean. We went to Pizza Hut. I have no idea what a “hand tossed base” is,
and frankly I don’t think our waitress did either.
I was quite tired with a bad head so resisted the Sierra
Nevada Pale Ale in my suitcase and retired to bed. It was only then that I
noticed a lump in my lower back. A tick had got me! I roused Liam who reluctantly agreed to
operate. The only surgical tool we had was…a Leatherman multi tool with the
tick removing pliers attachment…
In the somewhat undignified position bent over the sink Dr
Smith got to work. Twenty minutes later, and after a lot of wiggling, writhing
and the occasional scream…the bugger was out. It was only at that point I
thought to check that the curtains were closed…Went to sleep paranoid that I
had contracted Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever or worse!
Total miles: 439 
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