The day began early in order to catch an 8:00 am (7:00 am MDT) session at the Winter Quarters Temple. The temple is very nice. It has stained glass windows throughout. And to make the windows even more cool, there are circular windows inside the stained glass windows with sketches of different pioneer scenes.
I returned to the hotel, made a quick change and we hit the road at about 10:15 am (9:15 am MDT) in search of a gas station that also sold diesel. What up Nebraska?! After driving down the freeway until my nerves were on edge, we finally found an exit with fueling stations. On top of being impossible to locate the road to the different stations, none of them had diesel. I had to go to a truck stop and use the truckers messy, leaky pumps.
We decided that Omaha is on another planet. The other places we visited were each different, but they were all in America. Not Omaha. The only time it felt normal was when we were at the temple. This perception was certainly perpetuated by the petroleum procurement problems. All of Nebraska was strange, but Omaha was not on this planet.
As I mentioned in yesterday's blog, the batteries in the camera died; no pictures today.
Nebraska is FLAT!
We stopped in Kearney, Nebraska to grab some lunch and check out our first Cabella's store. I hope that the other stores are more impressive than the one in Kearney. Two-thirds of the store was clothes and two thirds of those were either camouflage or hunter orange. I did get a hiking pole from the clearance rack for Philmont and the kids got Life is Good caps. I wanted to see more camping gear. I did hear a lot of twang; a hunting store in Nebraska.
At one point we passed a feed lot and Jen was asking some questions. I cracked a dumb joke about the cows and we started to giggle. It quickly escalated into hilarious, uproarious laughter. I was trying to drive with tears coming out of my eyes and filling up my glasses. This lasted for 5 miles. Then we chuckled for another couple of miles. Later on we were in cruising I-76 close to Denver and Jen brought it up again, started chuckling, and got me started again. Next thing I knew, we were laughing again. I guess we just needed a good laugh after hours of driving.
We finally arrived home at 8:00 pm MDT (8:00 pm local time). The trip was absolutely wonderful. We want to do it again. The kids travelled very well. My only complaint on that front is that, because Heber is recently potty-trained, we have to stop whenever he says he needs to go. (On a side note, this also means that we passed many semi's three or four times) The kids were excited with many of the sites and behaved themselves very well for the most part. But it is sooo good to be home.
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Welcome back!
ReplyDeleteGarry and I laughed at your Omaha perception. We went to a career presentation at BYU where 5% of the presentation was about the job/company and 95% was about why it would be OK to relocate to Omaha. We took that to be a bad sign...
What a wonderful trip! We will have to follow in your footsteps and try this one out. It sounds like an experience the kids will treasure, as will you and Jen!
ReplyDeleteI hear ya about Nebraska - you would not believe how many times we have had to drive through there (WY too) wishing we were some where else and wondering how people can live there. Seriously, it's worse in the summer. When you open the car door or roll down the window at least 10 flies fly in and the humidity, ugh! Kearney, really is the best city along that stretch of I-80 and it's not that great. Oh well. I'm glad you had a great trip. It's definitely worth doing, that's for sure. To tell you truth I actually miss living by Nauvoo - there's a great spirit there. Glad to be away from the bitter cold, humidity, and flies, no scenery but cornfields and cows, and all the other funny little things about that country though. Really I don't know how the pioneers did it.
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