Nebraska's Boring Tourist Pitch Might Just Work

Are you a tourist heading to Nebraska? Unlikely, but if you go, hop into
 a livestock tank and float down a river. They do that there, apparently. 

I've been to Nebraska, and frankly, I don't find it all that exciting. A lot of people don't.

Oh, in Nebraska, there's nice places, things to do, and the people are wonderful. (The previous Nebraska tourism campaign was called "Nebraska Nice.")  Still, the parts of Nebraska I've seen, it's a little bit of a yawn.

But every state wants to draw tourists, and Nebraska is no exception. The state has a new tourism campaign that's a bit counter intuitive, but it might just work. Or not. We'll see.

"Honestly, it's not for everyone," is the Nebraska tourism tagline.

The campaign has an uphill battle. Nebraska consistently ranks as the "least likely state" tourists want to visit, according to the Omaha World-Herald.

Certainly, Nebraska has its unique qualities.

One print ad in the new tourism campaign goes like this, according to the Omaha World-Herald:

"Lucky for you, there's nothing to do here," is the headline on one print advertisement that displays a smiling band of partygoers, floating down a Sand Hills stream in livestock tanks in the Nebraska-invented sport of 'tanking.'"

I have to admit, tanking sounds so bizarre I'd like to try it. At least once.

The landscape that I've seen in Nebraska is very flat and featureless. But I've obviously not been to every corner of the state. One of the new Nebraska tourism ads is headlined "Famous for our flat, boring landscape. The photo shows a couple jumping around an interesting, rocky landscape in Nebraska's Toadstool Geologic Park.

Another part of the new tourism campaign is headlined "Festivals for everything from mud to testicles."  That refers to the Nebraska's Roumd The Bend Steakhouse, which features deep fried sheep (!!!) and beef testicles.

Before you roll your eyes at that, do remember we here in Vermont have festivals like the Black Fly Festival in Adamant, which celebrates those clouds of tiny, biting insects that ruin any attempt to go outdoors in the otherwise lovely month of May.

We in Vermont can also enjoy the annual Burdock Festival in Benson, which is supposed to have us enjoy those extremely annoying weeds with those spiky burs that cling to our clothing if we even get close to that plant.

Of course Vermont is a much more of a tourist mecca than Nebraska. Vermont is just completing its High Holy Season, in which easily more than 3 million  tourists descend on the Green Mountain State to watch leaves die in the autumn. OK, they're gorgeous, colorful deaths, but still.

Stephen Colbert recently noticed the Nebraska tourism pitch, and he added lots of suggestions for other states to use.

North Dakota; "You can't visit all 50 states without visiting North Dakota."

I go to South Dakota fairly frequently, because I have relatives there. The state's OK in terms of interest, but Colbert has this tourism slogan idea: "South Dakota: When North Dakota's full."

Colbert even had a suggestion for Vermont: "Not gonna win an award for best state or nothin' but have you seen New Hampshire?"

Yep, the rivalry between 802 and 603 is alive and well.

He had a few more suggestions. Here's the Colbert tourism clip:

Here's the Colbert clip:

Sorry, Rhode Island Is Nothing Like Iceland

A Rhode Island tourism video had a skateboard
doing his moved near a really cool building, but
the building is not in Rhode Island, but in
Reykajavik, Iceland. Ooops.  

I've been to Rhode Island and it's a nice little state to visit, trust me.

I've never been to Iceland, but I'm told it's a wonderful, beautiful place to visit. I want to go.

However, it would be hard to confuse Iceland with Rhode Island, but a consultant for the Rhode Island tourism office did just that.  

According to the Associated Press, Rhode Island tourism unveiled a spiffy new video showing the wonders of visiting the tiny New England state on your next vacation.

Says the AP:

"The video's intro features a skateboarder outside a glass building and has a narrator saying, 'Imagine a place that feels like home but holds enough uniqueness that you're never bored.'"

Sounds great, but the glass building in question is the Harpa concert hall and conference center in Reykjavik, Iceland, and not something in Rhode Island.

The mistake was quickly caught by eagle-eyed people on social media who apparently have been to Iceland.

The Rhode Island Commerce Corporation, which released the errant video, said a local firm that was tasked with editing the video were told to use only images taken in Rhode Island.

Somebody there goofed, and accidently used images from elsewhere.

The video, which cost $22,000 to make, was promptly yanked and set up for a do-over, though the cost of the work will be on the editing company and not the state of Rhode Island.

The Associated Press had a better suggestion.

Maybe they could have kept the video and just touted the gorgeous wonders of "Rhode Iceland."

My Introduction to South Dakota

I'm not really well traveled. In fact, I'd never been west of the Mississippi River. Until today.

I'm writing this from Yankton, South Dakota, where I'm visiting the in laws and other relatives and friends.

We stopped in Vermillion,  South Dakota today on the way
from the Sioux Falls airport to Yankton, where I will spend the week.
Vermillion reminds me a lot of Bristol, Vermont

I've only been in South Dakota for a few hours, but I'm impressed.

Where my hosts see flat, featureless plains, I see a unique beauty. On the drive from the airport in Sioux Falls to Yankton, the landscape was fascinating.

 I didn't have much time to take pictures today, but I will try the rest of the week.

The scenes were beautiful because they were simple.

An isolated tree in a vast cornfield. A church poking up above the plains with a huge expanse of open landscape and nothing else around it.  A crumbling, abandoned farmhouse collapsing slowly and gracefully in a small thicket of trees.   You could see forever, and watch the cloud formations seemingly 100 miles away.

We stopped for lunch on the way to Yankton in the small town of Vermillion, South Dakota. I felt at home there, in large part because its downtown looked a lot like Bristol, Vermont.

There are quirks in South Dakota that I'm not used to in Vermont. There's quite a few small scale casinos and rather shady looking payday loan centers interspersed among the solid, stolid old businesses in sedate small towns across the state.

And my inner fifth grader came out when I saw the bad humor in the name of a Sioux Falls convenience store. It is called "Kum and Go."  I am not making this up.

I left Vermont at the end of a week of record rainfall and flooding that finally broke on Monday. I arrived in South Dakota to the beginning of what promises to be a  week of flooding,  severe storms and a tornado threat. I feel like that guy who always has a raincloud above him.

Yankton seems like the most peaceful community in the world in which to live, even if it has a minimum security federal prison in a former college smack dab in the middle of town.

Even the prison is relaxing. It is gorgeous,  with tree-lined, park like grounds, with prisoners milling about outside, just chilling. The inmates are all white collar or non-violent convicts, so there's little physical threat to the public.

The prison grounds are so beautiful I almost want to commit a crime. Almost.

I'm staying at Jeff's parents' house, which is adjacent to a beautiful golf course. They have a sunroom, which looks out into the course. Jeff's parents say they often get up early and sit in the sunroom, just enjoying the scenery. I can see why.

We probably won't do much out here in Yankton. Let's face it, Yankton is not Manhattan. Heck, it's not even Manhattan, Kansas. But that's the point. Sometimes we need a place that's calm, solid, homey, quiet.

It's been a tumultuous few weeks in Jeff's life, and in my life. We've both been working our butts off. He's been traveling all over the place, working. We lost our beloved dog Bailey a few days ago.  

The friendly quiet of Yankton is going to be the perfect place to recover and recharge.

Awesome Public Art in Frederick, Maryland

I've been visiting relatives and friends the past few days in Frederick, Maryland, a really nice small city west of Baltimore.

A centerpiece of downtown Frederick is Carroll Creek Park.  It's basically a canal that runs through the city center of historic old buildings, very good restaurants, funky shops, art galleries, and antique stores.

Not so distorted mural image

And a distorted version, from
different angle

Carroll Creek Park is basically a flood control project so that high water never ruins this nice town. But why does flood control have to be ugly?  So the park, a prominade of pathways, grass, and especially wonderful public artwork goes through the center of town.

In this post you see two photos of what seems to be part of a mural depicting a young girl. One photo looks pretty good, the other is badly distorted.

I've made no mistakes or done no funny business with either of these photos. They are raw photos. No photoshopping, no touching up. Just two photos taken on my Canon rebel, shot in full auto mode.

The only difference was I took the photos from two vantage points. The one that doesn't seem too distorted was taken looking diagonally at the wall. The one that's very distorted was taken straight on.

I have no idea how the artist did this, but depending upon where you stand, the mural image of the girl is badly distorted, or not.

There's other cool stuff in Carroll Creek Park. My husband Jeff has been here before. As we approached a small bridge in the park, we stopped about 50 feet from it and  he asked me what I saw ahead of me.

"Well, there's some nice ivy hanging on to some of the stone work on the bridge. I love the detail they carved into the stones on the side of the bridge. Is that a little fountain on the side of it." I replied.

This is all painted ivy and
stonewor, not the real thing

"We'll keep walking," Jeff said.

As we got closer I saw that everything I thought I saw from a distance wasn't what I thought. Everything was painted on the bridge. But it looked totally real. Again amazing.

There was other artwork as well, including some beautifully rendered ironwork shaped into trees, leaves, dragon flies and other items.

I'm not sure who decided to create this beautiful, interesting artwork in Frederick, but it was a beautiful investment.  Check it out if you're ever in that area

Big Trees, Harmony and No Worries in Vermont

While on a work assignment in southern Vermont, I stopped for a sandwich at the Harmonyville Store, in a section of  Townshend called Harmonyville.

Vermont's largest sycamore looms
over the Harmonyville Store

I have to say it was with great trepidation that I was in Harmonyville. I had this irrational thought that anybody who steps foot in this village with the melodious title would have to prove they could sing, and sing damn well.

And if the singing voice is sub-par, the village elders would stand me up in the Harmonyville Store parking lot and give me a 21-gun salute, so to speak. My funeral services would be held at a later date.

When I sing, I sound like a horny walrus with a wicked case of strep throat.   Any day now,  a military Special Ops unit will call me, whisk me away to Syria, and make me sing Lady Gaga's song "Bad Romance" outside the palace of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, as a way to finally rid that country of its embattled dictator.

Anyway, there were no embattled dictators in Harmonyville, Vermont, at least as far as I could tell. And (YAY!!) nobody asked me to sing.

Which left me time to see one of Vermont's most wonderful attractions looming over the Harmonyville Store. It's the state's biggest sycamore tree.

You'd think that's not a big deal, because I swear Vermont has, like 12 sycamore trees, total. It's practically all sugar maples, here, folks.

But this sycamore is truly amazing.  The fact that I'm telling you its 175 years old and 115 feet tall with a 63 inch diameter just doesn't do it justice. The trunk is so huge, if four NBA players suddenly decided to hug the sycamore in unison, their fingers would not meet each other.

The sign proves that the big tree
in the background is damn big

(By the way, if you ever see four NBA players hugging the Harmonyville sycamore, call me, STAT! I want a picture of that.)

The sycamore has at least seven main branches, each the size of a 150 year old maple. Even the sycamore's leaves live large. Some were almost twice as big as either of my hands.

One of those enormous branches looms directly over the roof of the Harmonyville Store.  If it ever fell, it would smush the poor little Harmonyville Store just as much as the ant I killed in my kitchen yesterday when I stomped on it with my work boots. I'm still trying to scrub the ant remains from the floor.

I asked the nice young man at the cash register about that sycamore threat. He said he doesn't give it a second thought. "I'm not the type to worry," he said with some understatement.  "Besides, the tree is leaning the other way."
I let it go at that and didn't ask the store clerk to sing, just to check. I didn't want to cause trouble.

So I went outside and ate my sandwich under that beautiful sycamore tree.  If only it could talk.........

A view looking up the trunk of Vermont's
largest sycamore tree.