When I was 9 years old, my family moved to Denver. I was the oldest of 5 children; it was a new beginning for our family and a place my father loved. He and my mother still live in that first house they purchased and raised a family 51 years later. Before moving to Colorado, we had always heard about the Rocky Mountains, as we passed the Nebraska border into Colorado on that first trip we thought the mountains would be right there, instead, it took another 2 hours before could see their low outline on the horizon. Eventually, we would see those mountains every day we were in Denver.
My parents were both from Nebraska, my mother grew up on a farm in the south-central town of Kearney and my dad is from Omaha. Over the years we made over 100 trips to visit family in Nebraska.
Recently I drove that trip northeast from Denver on Interstate 76 to Interstate 80 over to Kearney and on to Omaha for a cousin's 50th-anniversary wedding celebration. Along the way, I got to see some of the same landmarks I've passed for half a century and remembered the changes that have taken place.
On fields outside Denver distribution centers have been built...better tax rates than in the city. Formally active houses and farmsteads were still standing, but long vacant. We drove by farms that had been featured in farm magazine articles for some advanced design or technology that the owner had developed. Miles and miles of green grass fields (lots of rain this spring) were interrupted by corn fields and cattle feedlots in northeastern Colorado. Stopping in a small town to pick up breakfast, we commented on how the McDonalds had been relocated across the street, or a new gas station brand had been built, small changes in a small town.
Once into Nebraska, there was an unending carpet of cornfields...and a few cattle feedlots, trees demarking rivers or where windbreaks were planted by early settlers. One of my favorite places is a rest area where you can actually see the covered wagon ruts left by pioneers who turned southwest from the Oregon Trail along the Platte River to the Santa Fe Trail. Even this rest area is planning to be relocated.
This drive has evolved over the years, first as grade school kids going out to spend the summer on our grandparent's farm. The first long driving road trip my parents let me take as a junior in high school for spring break. As time went on, I was driving to and from college, stopping to spend time with grandparents, aunts, and uncles on the final leg of the trip to Lincoln. Over the years we drove thru snow storms and in cars without air conditioning in heat waves.
As time has gone on the trips for Thanksgiving or Christmas, family reunions, cousin's weddings, then aunts, uncles, and grandparents funerals, and more recently weddings of my cousin's children. That drive has come full circle.
Unless you have to travel that way, I suggest that you do not take this road. Almost any mountain road west of Denver would be a more beautiful drive. Pacific Coast Highway, Monument Valley, Yellowstone/Montana/Idaho and so many others all are much better scenic drives. But for me, none of these drives have memories from Denver on I-76 & 80. Many times I will be working in my office and pleasant memories about some portion of this Colorado/Nebraska road will come to mind... and that's why it is my favorite drive.
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