Joseph Vavak 8/22/16 Joseph Vavak 8/22/16

West and home

Photographs from a Sunday afternoon in southwest Nebraska before hitting the road home...

Lamar, a tiny place located a mile or two from the Colorado border off of US 6, marked the last town south of the interstate that I had yet to visit. This leaves me with just 9 more towns to visit on the official Nebraska highway map. One obsession leads to another, from a random photo project documenting Nebraska to visiting all 93 counties to exploring every single town.

Joseph Vavak 8/20/16 Joseph Vavak 8/20/16

Nothin' but blue skies from now on

One last road trip before fall arrives, a quick tour of the southern border of Nebraska along US 136 and NE 89 to McCook. I'm crossing off the last few towns I've yet to visit south of I-80 and stopping by a places I haven't seen since my initial travels for ninety-three back in 2007. Returning to some of these towns, like Wilsonville, is like seeing an old friend, even if we only met for a very short amount of time several years ago. Not much changes in these parts.

Tomorrow I'm headed towards the Colorado border and then back home across the state.

Visited: Milligan, Superior, Abdal, Red Cloud, Bloomington, Naponee, Harlan County Lake, Republican City, Alma, Orleans, Stamford, Beaver City, Hendley, Wilsonville, Lebanon, Danbury, Marion, Grove Cemetery, and Culbertson, Nebraska. Oberlin, Traer, and Herndon, Kansas.

Post title: Willie Nelson - Blue Skies

Joseph Vavak 7/4/16 Joseph Vavak 7/4/16

I'm going high, high up on some lonesome hill

It's hard to believe that it has been almost ten years since I first set out to explore Nebraska and began work on what would become ninety-three. In the years since, I've continued to photograph every corner of Nebraska, keeping track of every place I've visited along the way. The result is the following map:

The blue dots represent places I've visited, from towns to natural areas to cemeteries to state-lines and more. The red dots (of which 16 remain!) are the few towns I've yet to visit in my travels. As with the ninety-three project, it would have been a heckuva lot easier if this is what I had planned from the beginning. Despite that, it's been a fun journey and I'm looking forward to completing this personal challenge in the next year or so.

All that remain: Amelia, Brownlee, Chambers, Champion, Cummingsville, Elsmere, Huntley, Johnstown, Lamar, Lebanon, Milburn, Milligan, Naponee, Palisade, Purdum, and Wood Lake.

Photographs from an unseasonably cool July 3rd along the edge of the sandhills...

This was my first visit to the Olson Nature Preserve near Petersburg, a small, semi-remote public nature reserve along Beaver Creek. It's one of the more fascinating natural places I've found in the state. The area around the creek is a wetland, with tall Cottonwood Trees and tall native prairie grasses. Along a ridge, there is a cool, dark woodland full of tangled old Oak trees. And on the other side of the ridge are the start of the sandhills complete with cacti and more desert-like grasses. And all of this within a mile or so walk from the parking lot.