We live in rural Kansas, and one can see the milky way quiet nicely from our front yard. There is a observatory less then 30 miles from our house if you want the big telescopes. It is dark out here in the prairie.
Yes, it is. I have seen it there too. My parents were from Nebraska.
I used to take pheasant hunting trips to Logan, KS. The farm house we stayed in offered the clearest dark sky at night that I had ever witnessed.......
That was a magnificent, peaceful part of the country (flat as hell tho) and the total opposite of what I have to live in here in Michigan......