{"id":23635,"date":"2020-09-09T10:00:16","date_gmt":"2020-09-09T17:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/community.nrs.com\/?p=23635"},"modified":"2020-09-08T12:02:09","modified_gmt":"2020-09-08T19:02:09","slug":"escape-to-nebraskas-niobrara-river","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/community.nrs.com\/duct-tape\/2020\/09\/09\/escape-to-nebraskas-niobrara-river\/","title":{"rendered":"Escape to Nebraska’s Niobrara River"},"content":{"rendered":"

Upon reaching Nebraska, I exhaled in relief. Every direction offered nothing but rolling hay fields, plots of corn, and patches of wildflowers. I drove through the occasional rural town, mostly empty except for a few locals chatting around pick-up trucks in the shade of grain silos.<\/p>\n

\u201cThank god for the Great Plains,\u201d I blurted, uttering words perhaps unspoken since frontier preachers arrived by wagon train.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It was the second week of July, the fourth month of the pandemic, and my fifth day driving west like an outlaw fleeing the Deep South. My first day, I bypassed south of Atlanta on rural roads and stopped to stretch my legs in the square of a pleasant town. Immediately, a county sheriff\u2019s vehicle began circling, with the deputy inside watching me closely. Looking up, I realized I was standing under a massive confederate monument. All around the square, restaurants and shops were packed with crowds who seemingly dismissed the virus as overhyped or a hoax.<\/p>\n

Pushing onward, my next stop was the riverside ghost town of Old Cahawba in Alabama. The site director later said strangers on the streets of nearby Selma were arguing about whether masks prevented or caused Covid. To say it was a strange time to be traveling across the U.S. was a major understatement.<\/p>\n

After months being locked down in the coastal Low Country of South Carolina<\/a>, I was finally out trying to salvage the timeline for my next book, Adventures on the Outlaw Trail<\/em>. The project combines stories from the Wild West era with a trip guide to land and water adventures, outlaw hideouts, and historic sites along old escape routes.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Reaching the Ozarks<\/a>, I tried to keep to my original spring schedule, despite it now being humid summer. On the hot morning of my third day, I hiked into the Irish Wilderness, above the Wild & Scenic Eleven Point River. Here was where Quantrill\u2019s Raiders once launched their murderous bushwhacking campaigns and where the Jesse James Gang formed.<\/p>\n

I probably looked like a marching drum major, using a branch to sweep the trail of cobwebs. Returning from Fiddler\u2019s Spring, I was chased by a nearly three-inch and definitely 10-legged spider\u2014which maybe just wanted someone to chat with about everything going on in the world? Next, I drove through Gads Hill, site of the gang\u2019s first train robbery in Missouri, on my way to the headwaters of the Current River, where they hid out afterward.<\/p>\n

But something felt off in this hilly region known for quirky and isolated locals. Trucks flying massive confederate flags seemed to be patrolling the highways. The campgrounds were overflowing with typical summer crowds, but strangers who normally kept a polite distance were getting closer to one another than usual. Like they were overcompensating. I could almost see viral mists forming in the few feet between talking mouths.<\/p>\n