I'm a son of the Great Plains. I love the Great Plains, but I've found over my life that almost all folks that aren't from the Great Plains "don't get it".
I don't want to put anyone off, but be realistic about what
you enjoy and what a cycletour in this area of the country entails. A recent tour report referred to this as "The Road to Nowhere" (the author was not from the Great Plains.) There are reasons that Adventure Cycling Association's mapped routes scamper across this part of America rather than traverse its length. Likewise, the historic Oregon, Sante Fe and Mormon Trails saw the Great Plains as a region to cross - as quickly as possible - as the settlers went to other more benign places for habitation. The Great Plains Trail's route down through western Nebraska, eastern Colorado and eastern New Mexico transverses thousands of miles of some of the driest, flattest, most wind-swept land in the USA with pretty nearly the lowest population density. Those big green areas on the map marked "Forrest Service"? Yeah, they're National
Grasslands.
