We left July 11th a little late. Was suppose to be on the road at 12:30 but we didn't get Conner picked up until about 1:15 but we made really good time and stopped for supper at Cracker Barrel in Lincoln. I hadn't found a map of Nebraska and thought I had a map of Iowa in the car but did not. Dan does not like Nigel so was trying to watch carefully all the road signs. We may have had a couple of small detours but I did pretty well. I found a good map of Western Nebraska at the archway. It had all the towns and all the sights but no mileage :(. But we got there and home all in one piece. Then on to Kearney for the night at a Hampton Inn. The kids were too tired to swim so we just laid around and watched Mountain Man and some other equally stupid show. Up in the morning to view Kearney Our first stop was the Great Platte River Road Archway
They had real people in period costumes who greeted you and showed you around. Every one got ear phones that told the story. You rode an escalator up and it looked like you were going to get into a covered wagon.
It was pretty cool.
Dan is helping push the wagon up the hill. He's so nice.
The whole museum told the story of the westward expansion from the gold rush to the Mormons.
It then got more current with the trains and stage coaches. Here is a camping venue with the first motels.
On to the drive in movies.
And the road side diner. It was very interesting and the museum goes across the 4 lane interstate highway. They also have an outside area with several exhibits.
First you cross a 1914 bridge and the fish were so hungry. Dan ran back to the museum for some fish food and we spent a long time watching them scramble for the food. It was a real feeding frenzy.
We finally ran out of food and moved on. There was a pow wow arena and a Pawnee garden ( which looked pretty good for as dry as it was out there). Then on to the earth lodge. there was and intern there to answer questions and it was pretty cool inside, and cool temperature wise too.
On up the hill to the corn garden and dos house. We found lots of sod houses in Nebraska.
I wanted to snatch the quilt off the bed but wasn't sure how to get it away with out some one noticing. The souse was really small and I can't imagine a family living there. We went back inside to get some souvenirs and cool off a little. then headed out to the Trail Blaze Maze
You got a passport and had to punch a time clock to start your time. As you can guess I was left in the dust. The idea was to go to each of the four corners to the tower and there was a paper punch there that you punched your passport with and then moved on to the next one. As you can see from the picture it was pretty big. I made it to the first tower and got my card punched and headed to the next. Got to it and punched my card and from there it went down hill. I could not get to the next tower!! I walked round and round in circles for what seamed like a long time. In reality it was only about ten minutes but there was no breeze in the maze and I was getting tired. Conner was the winner at 9 minutes with Dan close behind at 10 minutes and Katlin shortly after that. Dan took pity on me and came and led me out. I think because I had the car keys but not sure. Everyone but me thought it was great fun.
From there we went to Morris Cookbook store. They were supposed to have over printed cookbooks at at a cheep price and you were suppose to get a free cook book but the free cook book was a 4 page pamphlet and the prices although reasonable were higher than they were advertised to be. Katlin and I found a few things and paid and tried to get Conner and Dan's attention but they were deep in a
discussion about buying a roll of paper for a dollar. I guess we interrupted there negotiations and we never heard the end of it the rest of the trip.
