DRIVING ACROSS WYOMING, eastern Colorado, and all of Nebraska, you find three different kinds of flat. Wyoming is flat dry desert with jagged ridges and mountain clusters rising up all around us. We felt like we were driving through the trough of a great dirt bowl. Leaving Boulder headed to Nebraska, we saw only miles and miles of grassland against the skyline. It’s as if we were on top of the world. No distant ridges appeared along the way. Nebraska was cornfields left and right followed by cornfields left and right.

After driving 374 miles, my Find Craft Beer App began blinking and pulsing. Craft beer was in the vicinity. Be on the lookout. The sign up ahead read, “Welcome to Kearney and the University of Nebraska.” Exit, lane right.

Downtown Kearney is old. Streets are cobbled brick and super wide. They undulate with age. The buildings are mostly rundown, renamed, reconditioned, or restored. We had a specific destination in mind. It was not the institute of higher learning. It was the institute of higher being, the Thunderhead Brewery. We found it right in the center of old town on the bricks.

The inside was small, modest, with 11 beers on tap. A few guys of great girth in white T-shirts sat at the bar in the back. A few families sat at the tables eating pizza with their kids. Pizzas, pretzels, calzones, and Thunder Spuds were the only menu items.

It was not the college-town sprawl of endless long tables and Lopers sports memorabilia that I’d imagined. It was hole in the wall. “Oh, well,” I said. “If the food and beer is good, it doesn’t have to be plentiful.”

Susan had one of her I’m-always-on-a-diet green salads, and I ordered the Thunder Spud, a giant baked potato with all the fixings. She had the Prairie Peach Wheat and I had the Cropduster IPA. Zounds. They were delicious, rich in complex flavors that played boisterously in your mouth on the way down, then lingered after the swallow for a last game of softball.

I don’t know how to describe beer. I lasted 30 years without being able to describe wine either.

Thunderhead had their beers in cans, so I made my first purchase, a six-pack of Cropduster and another of Prairie Peach. My lonesome cooler was so happy.

We drove 133 miles and pulled over at Zipline Brewery west of Lincoln, Nebraska. It was shiny, state-of-the-art, housed in a new building with lots of glass and grass. Inside, of course, ziplines ran across the ceiling, for decoration. We bellied up for a shared flight. We found the beers all good. Two guys settled in beside us and we struck up conversation.

Turns out they were both school teachers and they absolutely loved their jobs. One guy was a P. E. teacher, K-12, and the other was an industrial arts teacher K-12. We asked how they could teach shop and physical education K-12. They said they worked in a very small school in a very small town with only 55 students total. They said they could fit their whole faculty on a tour bus, and their principal was a part-time teacher. They know all the kids, all their parents, and they all love each other and were two of the happiest teachers I ever met. It made us feel real good to talk to them. The beer helped. I bought a growler of the citrus-packed New Zealand IPA.

When finished, we were going to drive to Des Moines, Iowa, but the two bartenders, the two teachers, and another guy at the bar who nodded in agreement, suggested we stop in Lincoln and eat in the Haymarket District. Sure. Why not? We’re in no hurry. We’ll grab a quick bite.

Wow. The Haymarket should be on everyone’s destination list when driving across country. There were thousands of parking spaces and no place to park. We drove around block after block of crowded restaurants and nightclubs. Why isn’t this place famous, or are we just out of touch? Their website touts 44 restaurants and pubs. We had ribeye steaks and red wine and stayed so late we couldn’t make it to Des Moines.

We did drive out of Nebraska and into Iowa but it grew dark and the highway construction projects started up and we were too far from Des Moines for comfort, so I turned on my phone and said, “Siri, please find us a hotel within 25 miles of our current location.”

Siri came back with, “I found plenty of hotels within 25 miles of your current location.” A Motel 6 was four miles ahead in the town of Avoca. I called and secured us one of two remaining rooms.

Then we almost died. We took the exit, got to an unlit cross street, made a left, drove past the motel on our left, made another left, but then missed the turn into the motel and were headed back the way we came. Susan was driving and almost got back on I-80 going west. “Stop! Stop!” I yelled. “Don’t turn there! We’ve got to turn around and go back.” Flustered, tired, in the dark, with me yelling at her, she pulled out without looking. All we saw coming at us were glaring headlights, a blaring horn and screeching brakes. She gunned it, and pulled our tail out of the collision by about 3 feet.

Steve Gibbs teaches at Benicia High School and has written a column for The Herald since 1985.

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