Mother Nature’s Art

Art can be found in the strangest of places.

I spent my weekend working the annual Omaha Boat and Sport show at the Qwest center. Most of the huge Qwest arena was full of $100,000 motor homes, campers, Ski Doos, huge boats and four-wheelers. In the center, the travel industry hocked the outdoors to the thousands of people who paid a few bucks to gain entry and fill bags with brochures and other swag. I scored two new water bottles and a lip gloss.

For four days, we answered questions about our state’s best rivers for canoeing, told people about the sandhill crane migration, encouraged them to visit the Nebraska panhandle and to get the hell off Interstate 80. I like my day job.

I also spent a fair amount of time walking around the arena, staring at lots and lots of banners of Mother Nature’s art. Our Nebraska Tourism banners feature some pretty great photographs from around the state, and vendors throughout the Midwest showed off the best of the best when it comes to the outdoors in their states. It made me long for spring.

From top: Sandhill cranes, central Nebraska sunset and Courthouse and Jail rocks. Photos courtesy Nebraska Tourism.