You cannot totally appreciate the Platte River unless your feet are in it, or your eyes are above it. In either case it’s pretty much how the Sandhill Cranes experience it. This is an incredibly shallow river. Of course there are channels and pockets of depth, but in dry years it exposes a lot of sandbars. I can’t say I’ve seen those as much in recent years, but from above you can tell, they are often not far below the water’s surface. The pioneers of the 1800’s I suspect found it annoyingly crooked, meaning they had to cross paths with it often. But it was wonderfully refreshing and a constant source of much needed hydration…making it a lifeline to the people going west. It remains the same today for the largest passage of cranes in the world, heading north.