Some recent health challenges (and the resulting physical restrictions) forced us to cancel our big Canadian Rockies road trip this month.

I would have been traveling and camping for nearly a month, with Jen joining me for the middle two weeks, opting to fly in/out to maximize her vacation time. I was really excited about the trip, and was due to head off early next week. But alas, we’ll have to wait until next year to see those gorgeous mountain views.

That’s left us with some unscheduled vacation days that we need to fill in August or September, as we’re already generally booked for the remainder of the year. There aren’t many good options, given the temps and avoiding elevation (one of those pesky health restrictions). To fill some of the time, we ended up building out an 8-day trip to Ohio and Pennsylvania for Jen to mark off a bunch of national park units. Of course, you may remember that I just did an extended Ohio-Pennsylvania road trip in May, so alas, there will be few new things for me to see. That’s ok, I always enjoy traveling with Jen no matter what we do or see.

That shorter trip left us with an additional three day weekend to utilize. Weekend camping trips are out, as it’s either too hot in the low lands, or I’m restricted from higher elevations.

And so we started checking Google Flights to see if there was a cheap ticket somewhere. Welp, nope, not many options other than LA and SF, which we are already visiting in the next 6 weeks.

Except one destination, that is.

$88 roundtrip, nonstop, with flight times that seem optimized for our schedule.

What’s that destination? A place improbably named Grand Island. Where is Grand Island? In Nebraska. The middle of Nebraska.

So we booked it.

What’s there to see in the middle of Nebraska? No fucking clue. I’ve never been there, as my mostly blank counties map shows. But we’re going to go explore and see what we find.

And let’s be honest here; we’ll be happy enough marking off a bunch of these counties, whether we find anything interesting there or not. After all, the whole point of our quest to visit all 3144 counties in the US is to mark off those blank spots on the map. And right now, Nebraska is the blankest state on my county map—I’ve only been to a paltry 29% of the state, all along the edges.

So, we’re flying to Grand Island, Nebraska for a long weekend to visit some random, cornfield- and/or sandhill-filled counties. A somewhat ridiculous trip by most sane standards, but a trip we’re doing anyway. After all, we always have a blast exploring new places together, so I’m sure we’ll have a good time on this trip, too.

And at least I’ll finally make it to Carhenge.

EDIT to add:

One challenge for this trip is that the rental car situation sucks. Not only are the cars generally expensive (about $100/day), but they inexplicably come with a 100-mile per day limit. I haven’t seen mileage limits from major rental car companies in more than a decade, and never for such a rural place where you have to drive long distances to get anywhere of note.

But we found a work around. Because we’re flying in after work, we don’t technically need the car until the following morning, since we’re simply grabbing a late dinner and heading straight to bed. So we searched the local area for an offsite location. It’s half the price and has unlimited miles, which is crucial for a trip like this. Guess which one we booked.

Another minor challenge is that the cheap flight does not include any bags—carry-on or checked—even though it clearly shows that it does when you search in Google Flights. Take note when booking! We’re okay with that, as it’s only a 3.5 day trip and we should be able to fit everything we need into a personal item.