Day 3: Kearney NE - Yankton SD

So, Friday.  It rained overnight, and was still doing so, albeit with little conviction this morning.  Top stayed up all the way to Omaha, but no great hardship as I had eschewed the scenic route in favour of a simple run down I-80.  Just outside Kearney is a this:

Apparently

The Archway is a museum of and monument to Nebraska's and the Platte River valley's role in westward expansion

which must cause no end of celebration among the Native Americans.  Though perhaps not as much as this advertising-announcement I saw later:

And they also have one of these:

which the Native Americans probably find a poor substitute for the real thing too.  Although it's one up on Milton Keynes.

So, Omaha, and indeed Council Bluffs, across the Mighty Missouri in Iowa.  For the Union Pacific Railroad has a museum in Council Bluffs - the first transcontinental line having kicked off its eastern end from Omaha.  The museum is surrounded by parking meters.  I have no change.  I mean, None.  At.  All.  I can install an app on my phone and pay that way.  I don't think so, not least because it would eat every last penny of credit I have on my account.  This is Iowa, remember, where you're not even allowed to smoke outdoors at Interstate rest areas.  So yea! And verily!  A resounding "Fuck Off" to the place.

Back over the Mighty Missouri and to the Riverfront complex.  There is a bridge:

and a statue:

The latter - depicting as it does "Labor" - will probably be removed by enraged Republicans before long.

And then to Lauritzen Gardens and Kenefick Park.  These are next door to each other on the valley side.  The former is a dead restful and actually rather fab series of gardeny bits, or at least it would be restful were it not for the constant noise of I-80 just over there ==> and the occasional low-flying aircraft.  Some highlights:

Eglė the (Lithuanian) Serpent Goddess

Mount Fuji (not actual size...)

Kenefick Park exists only to accomodate a couple of GBFO Union Pacific locomotives; the snappily-named EMD DDA40X (aka "Centennial") and the American Locomotive Company 4000-class 4-8-8-4 "Big Boy".  The former is 30 metres long and weighs the thick end of 250 tonnes; the latter is even more biggerer and heavier.  And there they sit, perched on a hill above the freeway.  How the blazes did they get them there?

...but I made a bit of a bish and didn't fit it all in...

...but I couldn't walk far enough backwards to get all of this one in!

Time for Emily to earn her pay again.  The motor-car has a built-in TwatNav, but so far I have only used it in small doses, because there's no way to change the voice and being given directions is very much like being harangued by Sarah Palin.  Emily has seen me to Yankton SD, via not-the-Interstate and through more rain.

Yankton is famous for, er, well, it will be famous for a triple canine slaying if the fucking hounds of hell in the room next door don't STFU.  I am tempted to dob them in to The Mgt, as Teh Roolz say "pets must not be left unattended", which these clearly are.  Which would start off someone's bank holiday weekend very nicely indeed.  Alternatively, I could just make an unholy row while getting up, getting packed and getting noisily underway with a nice loud V8 tomorrow morning.  Bah!