yesterday’s trip was the first chance I have had to take a drive down I 29 from Omaha since the first flood that occurred this spring. in fact I was driving back from Sebetha the day before that flood. words will never be able to describe adequately the shock and sorrow I felt seeing all those fields under water, STILL after all this time!!! it’s a little longer trip taking interstate but the drive is effortless. 

normally I would have cut over to the Nebraska side at highway 2 but it’s still under water, 34 is under water still, 136 under water still, 159 closed,  I ended up having to drive to st Joseph and take 36 across to KS. 

I  would not hesitate to say that all of the farm ground between the Missouri river and the bluffs that run parallel to I 29 on the east that there were maybe 10 fields that had something worth while growing in  them. The corn bins that were busted open from swollen wet corn were many.  anything that can float from tires, propane  tanks,  fuel tanks,  insulation,  whole trees and branches of all sizes, mountains of corn stalks. small buildings,  drifts of sand and dried moss, many many items I could not identify stuck in fences, leaning  on houses,  and just scattered randomly as far as the eye could see.  Many pieces of equipment sitting around with high water marks on the tires obviously have not moved since. In years past I would have seen endless sea of tassels by this time of year.

I drove through Persival which was my usual shortcut to highway 2 and the town looked like a war zone with huge heaps of damaged furniture drywall and trash looking rotten and stinky and then south of town I hit the road closed sign. had to backtrack to the interstate. 

many roads including interstate had huge washouts 12 to 30 inches deep at the edge of the pavement.  Maps say its 130 some miles between Omaha and st Joseph MO and from what I could find roughly 600 “river miles ” considering a fractal look from all the twists and turns the river takes on its normal path. I could not find how many acres are included in that stretch of floodplain but considering most of those fields are 500 to 1000 acres each. I could count on both hands how many fields on the whole trip down there that are even planted and count on one hand the number of fields that will be worth running a combine through.  Just think that is just a very small region out of the whole Missouri-Mississippi floodplain  that has been devastated.  I have tears in my eyes just talking about what I saw. it’s one thing to hear about it on the news but driving through it was sickening.  you feel like you’re driving through the middle of an inland sea.

What a catastrophe for us all.