Spent: $620.17 (food) + $766.19 (lodging) + $265.81 (tires, tubes, laundry, rain suit, admission fees, donations, batteries, trail permit) = $1652.17 total for trip.

To keep cost calculations comparable between this trip and my previous tours, I kept the on-bike touring expenses separate from those connected with driving to Lincoln and back. Here are those costs:

• Gas: 933 miles, 53.5 gallons, 17.5 mpg, $2.46 average price per gallon = $131.55.
• Food: $2.68 (Gatorade Aug 4) + $11.75 plus $2.50 (breakfast Aug 5) + $9.37 plus $2 (lunch Sept 2) = $28.30.
• Parking for 27 days: $168 minus $35 (coupon) = $133.
• Lodging: $6 (camping Aug 4) + $65.17 plus $5 (motel Sept 1) = $76.17.

Total spent getting there and back: $369.02.

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The drive home on Labor Day gave me plenty of time to think back on this trip. I was smiling a lot. My wife and I went out for supper after I was home, and that was fun too.

Before I started this trip, I came across what's copied below. It's by Charles Kuralt, who was a news journalist of my parents' generation, but I remember seeing some of his TV reports. Though this quote is Mr. Kuralt's reflection on just Nebraska Highway 2, it expresses so much better than I can the feelings I have for my whole Nebraska trip. Now I can say, "I've been somewhere!"

From: Sandhills Journey Scenic Byway Corridor Management Plan

Charles Kuralt of CBS television program "On the Road":

"From the first time I ever drove along it, I've been in love with Highway 2. It's not so much that there's a special something to see along Nebraska's Highway 2. There's a special nothing to see. From Grand Island to Alliance, Highway 2 takes you through the Nebraska Sandhills, the largest area of sand dunes in the western hemisphere. Writers inevitably use a metaphor of the sea to describe the hundreds of thousands of acres of grass - and hundreds of thousands of acres of sky. Like the sea the emptiness of the Sandhills gives the travelers a strange sense of comfort, there's a feeling that as long as these two things are in order, the earth and the sky, all the rest can be forgotten until tomorrow. Highway 2 is not just another highway that goes somewhere, Highway 2 is somewhere."