The commission wouldn’t be giving drinkers free rein, though: It would still ban alcohol in swimming areas, roads and parking lots; bringing kegs into state parks; and drinking during quiet hours — 10 p.m.-6 a.m.

The Legislature has made efforts to end the ban over the past 15 years, but those attempts have failed. And judging from the comments by Commissioner Rex Amack to the Journal Star, the commission has been looking at repealing it for a while. (They’ll be holding a public hearing on the issue on May 28 in Gering.)

This is a decision that could have a significant financial impact on Central Nebraska’s state parks and recreation areas — but what kind depends on where you see the issue. The pro-alcohol financial argument is probably easy to deduce: People might be more likely to visit a state park or rec area if they know they’re able to pop open a cold one there.

But supporters of the ban might argue that it keeps the parks safer and makes them more family-friendly, ultimately attracting more visitors.

I can understand both sides on this one. On the one hand, a perfect weekend day spent outside includes a beer for a lot of people, and that’s entirely legitimate. Those people would be doing nothing to hurt the state parks they’re spending time in, and the fact that they can’t include alcohol as part of their recreation could be a significant deterrent for them.

On the other hand, I grew up in southern Nebraska, where several of the top weekend party spots for many of my classmates were Kansas state parks because alcohol was illegal in Nebraska’s. (Kansas’ rules have changed since then.) That’s the kind of business that a lot of state park rangers probably aren’t too happy to have — in most cases, it probably means safety concerns, more cleanup, enforcement headaches and possibly an offputting environment for other park visitors. (These types of problems at Lake McConaughy are what led the state to enact the ban in the first place.)

So either alternative carries some costs, but both have the potential to attract different types of visitors as well. Do you see alcohol in state parks as a net positive for rural Nebraska, or should the state stay as-is?

Last year’s Hidden Treasures and Fading Places are detailed at Heritage Nebraska’s blogs, but I thought I’d highlight the ones in Central Nebraska:

Hidden Treasures:

Hamilton Avenue Church, Hastings
Prairie Loft Center for Outdoor Agricultural Learning, Hastings

Fading Places:

Archeological sites statewide
Aurora Apothecary/Knights of Pythias Hall, Aurora (which was partially rebuilt last year)
Hastings Junior High School and endangered schools statewide (Hastings’ school was bought last year with plans for renovation)
Naval Ammunition Depot, Adams and Clay counties
Oregon Trail statewide
Rural schools statewide

A couple of friends asked me yesterday what nifty small-town sites were worth visiting in Central Nebraska, which got me thinking about my own list of Central Nebraska hidden treasures* (as you can tell, I’m a bit of an outdoorsy type):

*You’ll notice there’s several very cool, outdoorsy spots in Central Nebraska I didn’t include, like Calamus and Sherman reservoirs, the Nebraska Nature & Visitor Center, Rowe Sanctuary and so on. I didn’t include them because while they may be treasures, they’re not very hidden.

Olson Nature Preserve, Albion: I visited last March and was amazed at the juxtaposition of so many ecosystems in such close proximity — a spring-fed river, forest, wetlands and even the eastern edge of the Sandhills. Worth a stop if you’re headed north on Highway 14.

Happy Jack Chalk Mine, Scotia: I’ve only checked out the mine while it was set up for Haunted Hollow, which was pretty cool (and scary) in its own right. But Happy Jack is more than scary: It’s the only underground diatomic mine in the U.S. that’s open to the public.

Central Nebraska’s vineyards and wineries: I’ve only visited Miletta Vista near St. Paul and Cedar Hills near Ravenna, and both have sensational views and a wonderfully relaxed ambience. I know George Spencer Vineyard near Gibbon (which is apparently temporarily closed?) and Prairie Creek Vineyards near Central City have been popular, too.

Fort Hartsuff, Elyria: In the last year, Fort Hartsuff has gotten a lot of support from surrounding towns and beyond, which is a great thing — it’s one of the country’s few remaining Plains and Indian Wars forts, and it’s in great shape. The wide open-ness of the Valley County hills give it as ”Old West” of a feel as anything else in Central Nebraska.

Broken Arrow Wilderness, Fullerton: This former church camp, now owned by Doug and Darla Russell, includes a beautiful bluff along the Loup River that also boasts some cool history (it was the site of the first Independence Day celebration in Nebraska, in 1844). Great place for a getaway.

That’s my short list of Central Nebraska’s hidden treasures: What would you nominate? I’d love to hear your picks.

You can check out the whole study here, and one table on page 21 stood out to me: It details where the visitors to four of Central Nebraska’s main crane viewing sites came from. Here are the percentages:

Central Nebraska     12%
Other Nebraska        39%
Iowa                             11%
Colorado                     9%
Missouri                      3%
Kansas                         4%
Other states               20%
Other countries       1%

That’s only one out of eight crane center visitors who come from our area (they defined it as a 12-county area, but I can’t find out which counties). Almost as many come from Iowa alone. Almost exactly half come from outside Nebraska.

I’m surprised that the number of visitors from Central Nebraska is so low — particular in a year with a weak economy, when many people might be more inclined to take shorter trips, closer to home. Now, I’d imagine that many crane-watchers from the area are more inclined to view them from other places outside the main crane-watching sites; many of them may have a favorite out-of-the way spot or a friend’s piece of land that might work perfect. Still, this means that out of the 27,000 people who, the researchers estimate, visit one of these four sites each spring, just more than 3,000 are from Central Nebraska.

According to many migration and aviary experts, the crane migration in Central Nebraska is virtually unique — one of the Plains’ signature natural events. It’s also, with the possible exception of Nebraska’s Junk Jaunt, our area’s single biggest tourist attraction by number of visitors. It draws observers from around the country and the world, yet relatively few from our own area.

Why? I suspect it’s mostly because the phenomenon is so old-hat to native Nebraskans — we’ve been around it for so long that we don’t realize it’s special, or if we did, we don’t care much anymore. Renee Seifert, executive director of the Grand Island/Hall County Convention and Visitors Bureau, put it well: “Those birds have been coming here as long as people have been here, and so for them it’s just another normal, natural occurrence. I think people don’t understand that this particular phenomenon doesn’t occur anywhere else other than the central Platte River valley.”

So what do you think? Do we Central Nebraskans just not get it, or is there another reason so few of us visit the crane-watching centers in our own backyard?

Harriett retired on Halloween, and this week, she was The Independent’s Extraordinary Person. For 23 years, her restaurant — in a converted house and telephone switchboard office, with no phone, no reservations and no menu — helped define Dannebrog as Nebraska’s Danish capital and one of its most homey and charming small towns.

Most small towns in Central Nebraska have a place like Harriett’s (well, maybe not quite like Harriett’s) — a place that, more than anything else, is what outsiders think of when they think of that town. It’s usually been around for quite a while and attracts a mixture of local regulars and out-of-towners coming on a friend’s recommendation. I thought I’d start off with a partial list of places like that in the area, and if I’ve missed your favorite place (since I probably have), please add it in the comments.

Dannebrog
The Danish Baker — Fortunately for Dannebrog, the cupboard isn’t empty without Harriett. Tom Schroeder’s Danish Baker, just a block away, has become even more widely known in recent years for his Thursday night pizza, a tradition he started in 1992. Tom pops out of the kitchen occasionally to sing and play guitar, serenading you while you enjoy his deep-dish creations.

Boelus
The Gold Nugget — This restaurant, opened in 1961, endured two shootings, a closing and a fire during the 1990s and early 2000s, but it’s going strong once again with a reputation as one of the best steakhouses in the area. I haven’t been there yet, but its reputation is, well, solid gold. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)

Broken Bow
The Tumbleweed Cafe — I haven’t been there for a while, but when I’ve been on assignments in Broken Bow, our photographers and I have often made sure to stop in, even if it wasn’t at a traditional mealtime. It’s your classic fatty but delicious kind of restaurant where everything tastes like home cooking.

Chapman
Prime Time Steakhouse — The place looks like a hole in the wall along Highway 30, but once you start eating — whoa. Just imagining their steak filled with mushrooms, cheese and all sorts of goodies is making me hungry right now. That, and it’s almost lunchtime anyway.

Ord
Calamity Jane’s — I ate lunch at Jane’s for an interview earlier this year, and the vibe — even before noon, just after opening — was classic small-town steakhouse all the way. The owner, Jane John, is a pleasure to talk to, too — she keeps it lively but friendly.

I could go on, but I want to give you a shot to show off what your town has, too. Where should I stop for a meal sometime? Where do you love to get some good cookin’? Let me know.

Last year’s Junk Jaunt drew 450 vendors in 31 communities, with an estimated 20,000 shoppers from 32 states stopping in along and around Nebraska highways 11, 91 and 2 north and west of Grand Island. There aren’t many events in this area that draw 20,000 people, which makes the Junk Jaunt one of Central Nebraska’s rather unheralded tourism success stories.

The secret to the Junk Jaunt’s success (besides the relentless work put in by organizers like Peggy Haskell) is that it links up dozens of mostly tiny towns to create something with a critical mass of value. In other words, the whole of Junk Jaunt is more than the sum of its parts.

That’s the beauty of an event like the Junk Jaunt: To participate, each community essentially only has to produce a community-wide garage sale — with a little more top-down coordination, of course. If that town were to produce a community-wide garage sale by itself, it would probably draw a good crowd from inside its own city limits, but few people outside of the area and certainly not thousands of people in general. But if it does the same thing as part of the Junk Jaunt, it gets to draw from a crowd of tens of thousands coming through its area specifically to shop and spend money. It’s a case where the coordinating work by the Byways Committee can turn a bunch of small community garage sales into a major regional tourism draw.

Whenever I talk with tourism experts from around the state, they tout the importance of thinking regionally to attract visitors. On their own, those experts say, small towns simply don’t have enough to make visitors’ time there worth the time it takes to get there and back. But when they organize and market together regionally, they can reach that critical mass of tourism attractions that could be enough to lure visitors.

For example, one town might have a beautiful little cafe that would be perfect for lunch, but it wouldn’t be enough to draw a group of friends out from Lincoln just to eat. But when those friends know they could stop before lunch at a huge antique store in the next town over and visit a state historical park in yet another nearby town, that’s much more worthy of a day out.

And that’s what the Junk Jaunt does well — it harnesses the energy of dozens of small towns working together (many of them largely doing something they would have done at some point during the year anyway) to create new value for the area’s tourism business. It appears to be a model others would do well to follow. 

I spend a lot of my time in the summer writing about these festivals, and I think they’re an underrated source of summer fun, especially for people who don’t mind their summer events off the beaten path or outside the box. I haven’t been to as many as I’d like, but here are a few aspects that make each of these festivals notable in their own way:

Free food:
Kool-Aid Days, Hastings: One of the area’s largest festivals, and certainly one of its most colorful, too. Kool-Aid Days was held last weekend, and they reported that 32,000 showed up, many of whom drank all the Kool-Aid they could drink for free (with purchase of a mug) at the World’s Largest Kool-Aid Stand. Fourteen flavors of goodness were there, with only one downside: For the first time ever, the stand ran out of Kool-Aid this year.

Popcorn Days, North Loup: Coming up next weekend, it’s all the popcorn you can eat for free. The festival in the 324-person Valley County town is also the area’s longest continuously running festival, at 108 years this year. That’s more popcorn than I can comprehend.

History:
Grover Cleveland Alexander Days, St. Paul: Named for the most famous athlete in Central Nebraska history, baseball Hall of Famer (and Elba native) Grover Cleveland “Ol’ Pete” Alexander, GCA Days is a trip through Nebraska baseball history every year. The event’s parade always has a former Nebraska major leaguer as grand marshal, and the Museum of Nebraska Major League Baseball uses the weekend each July as an opportunity to unveil its newest exhibits.

Annevar, Ravenna: The annual Annevar (I’ll save you the time–it’s Ravenna spelled backward) festival in June includes a focus on history from the Historical Society of Ravenna. I especially enjoyed this year’s feature on John Pesek, who might give Tom Rathman a run for his money as Central Nebraska’s most famous professional athlete (non-baseball division, of course).

Sheer lunacy:
Nebraska’s Big Rodeo, Burwell: The people who choose to ride those bulls and broncos may be nuts, but it’s certainly not lunacy to attend. The name isn’t lying — this event is among Nebraska’s biggest rodeos, if not its biggest, with some 15,000 people attending the last week of July. It’s the event Burwell hangs its wide-brimmed hat on.

Polar Bear Dip, Cedar Rapids: If you want to participate in lunacy yourself, head to the icy Cedar River in southwest Boone County during February for Cedar Rapids’ Polar Bear Dip, an annual tradition since 2005. Why would anyone subject themselves to this, you ask? Well, it’s free to dip, but you have to pay to watch. It’s an exercise in frugality, see — and there’s a nice, warm chili feed afterwards to warm you back up.