Due to Covid-19, many of the free or inexpensive outdoor New Year’s Eve celebrations have been cancelled. A few have come back, though, in 2021. (Updated for New Year’s Eve, December 31, 2021.)
New Year’s Eve in the Midwest for $25 or Less
Nebraska
Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge Connects Two States
A few years ago, on our first visit to Omaha, we crossed the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge. The impressive 3,000-foot s-curved bridge, one of the longest pedestrian bridges in the nation, spans the Missouri River and connects Council Bluffs, Iowa, with Omaha, Nebraska. So I wasn’t surprised when the bridge was on the itinerary on my recent press trip to Council Bluffs. Even through it’s the same bridge, and I again took the obligatory photo of one foot in each state, seeing the bridge from the perspective of Council Bluffs rather than Omaha somehow seemed a little different.
Book Review: Detour Nebraska
If you love history and enjoy traveling the Midwest, be sure to read Detour Nebraska (The History Press, 2017). Part history lesson and part historic attraction guide, author Gretchen M. Garrison guides you through Nebraska region by region. She explains the history of a city or attraction and shares details of what the attraction offers today.
Crossing the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge
When you walk across a state line with camera in hand, and the line is clearly marked in paint, aren’t you required to stop and take a photo with a foot in each state? Okay, maybe not required, but certainly hard to resist. Thus, the photo below, in which we are half in Iowa and half in Nebraska on the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge, referred to more commonly as the Footbridge.
12 Fun Facts You May Not Know about the Midwest
One fun part of travel is learning interesting facts about the places you visit. Following are bits of trivia I’ve picked up about each of the Midwest states:
Golden Spike Tower: Visiting the World’s Largest Rail Yard
From the eight-story Golden Spike Tower in North Platte, Nebraska, visitors to Union Pacific’s Bailey Yard, the world’s largest rail yard, watch all the action. Rail buffs can spend hours watching the trains from the seventh-floor open-air observation deck, a perfect place to take photos, or from the enclosed eighth-floor observation deck, where someone is always on hand to answer questions. Trains come into the yard where the cars are reclassified, hooked to a train and sent on their way. To give you an idea of how large the Bailey Yard operation is, here is a breakdown of the numbers: