Keith,

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I'll be following the ACA TransAm route to get to Gillette.  It is well-enough traveled that I know it should be do-able, and the people along the route are accustomed to seeing (and helping) bike travelers.  Not so once I depart from ACA routes.  I'll be on my own for a couple weeks, so I'm trying to ensure that I don't put myself in a position where I find myself by the side of the road, exhausted and hungry and thirsty, with no food or water to be had.
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You have way too much faith in the ACA and way too little trust in the people of Nebraska!

ACA route maps were, in my experience, often out of date and not always correct. I tried long tours using them twice - Northern tier and Atlantic coast - and gave up on following them midway - Rugby, ND and Washington, DC - in both cases. 
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I didn't mean to imply that I feel the need to carry a four-day supply of water.  After all, there are people who live out there; they must get water from somewhere.  But if their sources are private wells to which I have limited or no access (yes I would knock on a door- if I could find one- at need) then I must plan for alternatives.

Suppose I end up stealth camping (or "dispersed" camping, in USFS parlance) somewhere, at the end of a long, hot, hard day.  I would likely have consumed much of whatever water I had started with or acquired during the day and would need more that evening (and night) and the next day.  The next morning, I'd be starting with a significantly depleted supply, and miles to go before a resupply opportunity.  What then?
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Since you carry camping equipment and realize that you may need to camp, it would make a lot of sense to always carry enough food and water for one nights camping. That only weighs a few pounds. I've done that on all my tours. I usually have two water bottles to drink out of and a two liter bottle on my rear rack. In August you may need to carry more water and carry some Gatorade or equiv.
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I have been warned, both explicitly and implicitly, that very small towns may have nothing available for my needs.  The businesses may have failed, leaving empty buildings.  The church may be closed; there may be no fire department or law enforcement or much of anything else.  And they are far, far apart.
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Look carefully at a map of Nebraska. The towns are usually about 30 miles apart. of course not all of them have motels and places to eat.
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Arriving at a boarded-up town after traversing many miles of open country, possibly fighting a strong wind and being broiled under an August sun the entire time, with no water left, only to find that there's nothing there for me and the next place is another many miles farther on would be something between disappointing and disastrous.
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It would only be disastrous if you hadn't prepared for it. Although I suppose there might be a totally abandoned town somewhere in Nebraska, I think that is VERY unlikely. I've certainly never seen one and I have toured a LOT, including one tour during the pandemic. Towns in a farm/ranch state support farms and ranches so they have a very distributed economic base and they can't be too far apart. Since I always carry food and water for a night's wild camping, even an abandoned town wouldn't be disastrous for me. 
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It is encouraging to learn you've had better outcomes.  But I note from your journal that it was pre-pandemic.  Some of the towns you passed through, and resources you had available, may now be gone.  I simply don't know, and the not knowing gives me concern.  Still, you have been there and done it; thanks for sharing your journal

I'm targeting days of 50 to 65 miles at most; anything beyond that will be due to unusual circumstances.  There are a few such in my itinerary but, where I can make choices, I'm opting for lesser distances.
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Based on my experience, if you are able to wild camp - and finding stealthy sites can be more difficult in plains states,  and to ride 60 mile days, but sensible enough to avoid riding on bad wind days - you should be fine riding across Nebraska while mostly staying in motels. I'd worry more about Wyoming because the winds there can be really strong, and the distance between towns is longer.

Mark

As I said, I think my "plan" for Nebraska will be to draw an arrow from Gillette in the general direction of Olathe and label it "thataway", then set out and see what the days bring me.

I think you're being way too pessimistic and over-analyzing possible problems. Hardly any paved route in the lower 48 has more than a day's ride between water sources. If people live there, you can get water. The only paved routes I know of with water difficulty are in the Mojave desert in southern California and US 6 in southern Nevada. Of course there are plenty of unpaved routes where you can go days without water sources.

I have routing problems in remote areas because I don't carry camping gear. My route options are genuinely limited due to availability of motels. You don't have that problem if you carry camping gear.

Thanks Wayne, you're right.  The conversation has spiraled quite a bit from the original point that John Egan made: a ride through the Sand Hills might be a viable (and more pleasant) alternative to dealing with the chaos around Sturgis at rally time (when I would be passing through).  From that premise plus a couple well-meaning remarks about the need to plan, things kinda got out of control as I basically "thought out loud".

I have tamped down my "planning" for the time being: I believe I will take things day-by-day and see what develops.  Since I have no fixed timetable (I'm riding to my home and will get there when I get there; there's no airline ticket or visa expiration dictating that I must arrive by any particular date) I have the luxury of doing as Mark Boyd did, and spending a day "in place" should the winds or weather prove unfavorable to the point of posing a risk of not getting where I intend.