The Great Plains
South Dakota with a thunderstorm imminent I am a mountain man. I grew up in the mountains. I climb mountains, take pictures of mountains, and generally seek out mountains of all shapes and sizes to live my life among. I don’t know why topography is so important to me, but I need to make my home in the mountains. However, I absolutely love driving on the plains. As most Americans over the age of four know, there is a large swath in the middle of America that was once an ancient seabed, stretching over a thousand miles east to west and several thousand miles north to south. This region is called the Great Plains. And they sure are great… Most mountain or ocean dwellers like me often disregard the Great Plains as endlessly boring, utilitarian, uninterrupted wasteland that is simply a distance hurdle while traveling between the more interesting parts of the world. Whenever I talk to someone who has recently driven across the USA, invariably they will complain about the worst part of th