Category: Nebraska
Our 2021 Travels

Our 2021 Travels

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Hey Guys! It’s December 31…the last day of 2021…and I thought it would be fun to do a review of our travels for this year!

With everything that was going on this year, not only in our country, but worldwide…we weren’t sure how much traveling we would be able to get in. But, you know I had a plan and had us reserved just incase we could travel. Well, not only did things workout…we ended up spending time in sixteen states this year! We added twenty-nine new National Park Units to our overall NP count and managed to visit a new-to-us unit of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park in Oak Ridge…so 30 NPs all together for us this year. That puts our total National Park count at 189 of the official 423 National Park Units. So…we still have plenty to get to!!

While we spent most of the year traveling, we still got in several weeks of mooch-docking with family in Missouri so we could spend time with some of our favorite humans and get some projects done on our home-on-wheels. It’s always good to go home and see family. It’s always hard to say goodbye when we leave. Some goodbyes are harder than others…

We also had some celebrations during 2021! The boys are now 21, 18 and 17…and we had two high school graduations this year! Two! That means that we are officially done with homeschooling. I’m not sure how I feel about it…it is bittersweet.

We went through all of our 2021 travels and picked out our top ten favorite places we explored this year…so let’s get into it.

The first place we’re going to revisit on our top ten is Wall Drugs in South Dakota. Wall Drugs is in our number 10 spot. I know what you’re thinking…Jennie, Wall Drugs? Really?

Guys…Really. This place was unreal. We’ve explored quite a few places and have been to many many stores during our almost seven years of this crazy #nomadlife and we’ve never seen a store like Wall Drugs. We stayed about a block from it while we were in the area…so we got to see the crowds that came every…single…day. All Day. People would start lining up before they even opened, just to get their famous maple donuts or pecan sticky buns. Because we were staying so close for two weeks, we spent quite a lot of time in Wall Drugs perusing all it has to offer. If you ever need or want a souvenir for South Dakota…this is definitely your place. If you need a break from driving and some foodies…this is definitely your place. If you’re into quirky roadside attractions that have interesting history…this is definitely your place. If you’re anywhere near Wall, SD at all…Wall Drugs is SO worth a stop.

In the number 9 spot is Pipestone National Monument in Minnesota.

When we started this nomad life way back in 2015, we wanted to show our boys the Country they live in. We didn’t want to show them just the shiny pretty places, we also wanted to teach/show them our Nation’s history. Places like Pipestone National Monument, which preserves over 3,000 years of history, is a prime example of why we chose to live a nomad life in order to travel. We’ve learned so much history that we would have never even known about over the last almost seven years. There’s so much out there they don’t teach us in public schools. The historical National Parks like Pipestone NM are some of our absolute favorite National Park Units.

Keeping with our love of history lessons…it won’t surprise you that Scotts Bluff National Monument in Nebraska made it to the number 8 spot on our top ten for 2021.

Scotts Bluff NM has both amazing views and a rich history. We thoroughly enjoyed our visit to Scotts Bluff NM. It was late Spring/early Summer when we went so the flowers were still in full bloom and the heat was ramping up. The day we went, we saw temps in the 90s so we didn’t spend as much time hiking as we’d’ve liked, but we hiked some and spent time in the visitor center museum learning. I never thought of this kind of landscape when I thought of Nebraska…we were pleasantly surprised not only with this park, but with this area.

Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site in Pennsylvania sits in the number 7 spot on our 2021 list.

When I asked the boys to name their favorite places we explored this year…it surprised me when more than one of them mentioned Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site. This is one of the smaller parks we visited but it’s absolutely crammed with not only history…but also engineering. So, it probably shouldn’t have surprised me that my little nerds liked this NP unit so much. We learned about railroad engineering and the way railroads changed life along their routes.

Sitting in the number 6 spot is Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming.

Devils Tower NM is steeped in local Native American history and lore. We loved learning not only about the science of it, but also the lore woven around it. We visited this park on two separate days and it was insanely busy both days. If you go, make sure to pack your patience and since there’s not a lot of educational info available (no museum), which really surprised us, make sure to grab a Ranger and ask about the science and lore of the “tower”.

With our love of battlefields and history…it won’t surprise you to see Stones River National Battlefield in Tennessee sitting at the number 5 spot of our 2021 list.

If you’ve been following along at all, you’ll know battlefields are our jam. So much so, that earlier this year we did a battlefield tour of Tennessee. And while all battlefields have certain things in common…the cannons…the war…the death… there are also the stories of life and perseverance and love…and those are what draw us in. You can learn so much from the stories that surround the battlefields. Stones River was one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. The stories we read…especially one about two brothers…really touched the boys and made a lasting impact on their views of life. This is what National Parks will do…they’ll change you for the better.

There are only three places that made it to our top ten that aren’t National Park units. The number 4 spot is one of those with James Island County Park in South Carolina.

Guys…this park is awesome! It’s not only on our top ten of 2021 list…it’s on our top places to stay list. I would go back to this area just to stay at this park. When I booked this place…it was a last resort. There aren’t a ton of places to stay in the Charleston area and when the place we usually stay wasn’t taking reservations because of the whole CV thing…and then the other places I tried were either closed or refusing to take reservations that far out…I ended up taking a chance on James Island County Park. It was the best decision. We love everything about this park. From the walking trails to the fishing pier (sunset pics) to the paddle boats (watch out for the gators) this park is the best one we’ve found in a long time.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee has the number 3 spot on our 2021 list.

There are 423 National Park Units. Great Smoky Mountains is the most visited National Park unit in the United States. While the park was crowded every single time we went, we were still able to find a few quiet places. There is an underrated beauty to this park that is refreshing. We’ve found that while the “old man mountains” of the Smokies aren’t big and flashy…you won’t find the dramatic views like you’ll find in the Rocky Mountains or the Sierra Nevadas…there is a quiet calm and a beauty to the Smokies. Tranquil is the word that comes to mind…even with the crowds.

Custer State Park in South Dakota is firmly in the number 2 spot of our 2021 list.

Custer SP should definitely be a National Park. We stayed just outside it for two weeks and good grief…the whole area is amazingly gorgeous. This park has it all! Views, hikes, wildlife… We look forward to going back someday. Hopefully, without the tornado that went through while we were there.

As soon as we started making a list of our favorite places of 2021, Badlands National Park was the first place we thought of. And, while we might have disagreed about which numbers the other places on the list fell…we all agreed that the number 1 slot definitely belongs to Badlands National Park in South Dakota.

Guys, this park blew us away! Badlands NP isn’t just on our favorites list for this year, it’s made its way onto our overall favorite list as well. We saw so much wildlife at this park…and the colors were just…amazing. We went in the Spring while everything was still green and the bison were starting to shed their winter coats and all of the baby animals were bouncing around. Badlands NP has got to be one of the most underrated NPs in the NPS system. We spent two weeks going in and out of Badlands and completely loved it.

And….with a year of travel comes a year of foodies. We started listing the places that were fabulous…the places we wanted to include…and well, you can imagine that the list kept growing. So, I’ll leave this collection of foodie pictures here and tell you that we had a very very good foodie year. So good, we all gained a few extra pounds. Ha!!

We’ve been living this crazy nomad life while we’ve been on our #grandadventure for almost seven years now. In those seven years we’ve seen so so many amazing places and made countless memories. We’ve learned more than I ever thought we would, traveled farther than I ever thought we would and did things I never thought we would have the chance to do together as a family. We’ve grown… in more than one way…some of us are quite a bit taller now than when we started this amazing journey all those years ago…and with that growth, comes a need for a change. We’ve decided that 2021 will be the last year we live the nomad life. It’s time we get a more permanent basecamp where the boys can learn how to adult “normally” and go to college and get jobs and start planning adventures of their own.

So…this is the end of our Grand Adventure as a #digitalnomadfamily and as fulltime RVers. When we started planning this whole crazy thing way back in 2014, we never thought it would become our life for almost seven years, take us to 49 states and shape us in the way that only traveling can. And, as with every end, there is the magic and promise of a new beginning. As 2021 ends and 2022 begins we look forward to the promise of adventures…of a new kind.

We hope y’all have a wonderful New Year filled with all of the amazing adventures your heart desires.

Thank you for coming along on this crazy nomadic ride with us…we’ve loved having you be apart of the journey!

Much Love,

Jerl, Jennie, Charles, Alex and Nicholas

#theend
The Plains

The Plains

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Hey Guys! We’ve spent six years criss-crossing all over our Country, but we haven’t really spent much time in the plains area. Why?

Storms.

The plains are known for their huge storms that pop up and roll through. When you live in an RV…storms are a pretty big deal. The plains section of our Country has always made me nervous so I haven’t had us spend much time there over the last six years. We’ve always just hopped through on our way one way or the other. But this year… this year we spent two weeks in Scottsbluff, NE. We were on our way back to Missouri from our South Dakota loop and we’d already had some nerve-wracking weather. The tornado that almost hit us while we were in Custer and the wind storm that blew over us in Sundance…I was pretty nervous about staying out in the middle of nowhere Nebraska where the plains are so vast and the storms can rage through. We did have some storms while we were in Scottsbluff, but thankfully, they were just regular old summer storms. Not a ton of wind and no hail.

We used Scottsbluff as our basecamp to explore three National Park Units. The first one we went to was Fort Laramie National Historic Site up in Wyoming. Fort Laramie was originally named Fort William and was opened as a trading post in 1834. In the 1840s it was sold to the American Fur Company. Improvements were made and the name was changed from Fort William to Fort John. In 1849, the US Army purchased Fort John to use as a post of protection at the crossroads of America for those traveling on the Oregon Trail, California Trail, and the Mormon Trail. Over time the name gradually changed from Fort John to Fort Laramie as travelers shortened the phrase “Fort John at the Laramie River”.

One of our favorite things about visiting National Historic Sites is the glimpse into the lives of the past. The National Park Service does such a great job at staging rooms and giving us a little look into how people lived in the past.

The day we were at Fort Laramie, there was a Living Historian there to show and explain what the inside of a tipi most likely looked like. We’ve seen tipis before, but hadn’t seen one set up like this. The historian talked to us about what life was like on the plains as a woman in a tribe. It was really interesting!

Other important trails that went through Fort Laramie were the Bozeman Trail, Pony Express, Transcontinental telegraph route, and the Deadwood & Cheyenne Stage Route. Fort Laramie National Historic Site preserves one of the most important locations of the westward expansion.

Not far from Fort Laramie, we found a place where we could stand on the ruts made from the thousands of wagons on the Oregon Trial. The wheels of the heavy wagons actually cut right through the rock and made a permanent path. We also found a place called Register Cliff. We’ve seen a few of these during our travels…there’s one in Utah and one in New Mexico that are both part of the NPS and are great! We always enjoy looking at all of the names carved into the rock by passing emigrants. There were quite a few newer names that had been carved into this particular Register Cliff.

Scotts Bluff National Monument protects about 3,000 acres and consists of towering bluffs, badlands, mixed-grass prairie (watch out for those rattle snakes) and a rich riparian area. Rising 800 feet above the North Platte River, Scotts Bluff has been an important landmark to emigrants traveling along the Oregon Trail, Mormon Trail, Pony Express and the California Trail.

We enjoyed driving up to the top of the bluff and doing both of the hikes available. The views were spectacular! We spent quite a bit of time in the little museum at this park. It has a surprising amount of information. We started to walk the Oregon Trail path outside of the visitor center, but the day we went to this park, the temps were triple digits and we decided against doing the whole trail. I found this painting of a woman holding her toddler while watching a line of wagons in front of Scotts Bluff in the visitor center…Guys, I can’t imagine how hard life was for the trail blazers who made their way west. They were truly made of tougher stuff than we are now. This was a great little park and totally worth the time to visit!

Agate Fossil Beds National Monument was the last place we explored during our week in Scottsbluff. The day we went…it stormed. We still managed to explore the visitor center and get in one hike…but check out those dark clouds. Those dark clouds came with a decent amount of wind and some really cold rain along with some hail too.

Originally, this area was a working cattle ranch called Agate Springs Ranch owned by Capt. James Cook. Then, in the early 1900s some paleontologists found a treasure trove of complete skeletons belonging to extinct Miocene mammals. When I first saw these skeletons…I thought they looked like little t-rex dinos but then I looked at the info sign and found out that they were huge pig like creatures that stood over six feet tall. Wow! That’s a lot of bacon! ;-P Seriously though…I would not want to run into something like that out on the trail.

Around the same time, a friendship between James Cook and Chief Red Cloud of the Lakota began. The museum in the visitor center has a wonderful collection of artifacts given to James Cook by his friends in the Lakota Tribe. I thoroughly enjoyed looking at all of the beautiful bead work in the museum. There was also a peace pipe made with red pipestone…from the Pipestone National Monument we went to earlier this year! If you missed that post, you can find it here. It was really something to see one of the pipes out and know where it came from and the history behind it. We’ve learned so much during this Grand Adventure/crazy nomad life of ours!

A big storm went over while we were in the visitor center. It got windy and hailed and poured rain. The lights flickered and I rushed to make our souvenir purchase just incase the electric totally went out. These tipis are right outside the visitor center…I braved the elements to grab the shot above so I could show you what one of those great big plains storms looks like. It was an impressive storm. I’m glad we weren’t out on a trail hiking when it hit.

Once the storm blew through (it was moving pretty darn fast), we headed out to one of the shorter hiking trails. The one we did was about two miles and super easy, but it had some breathtaking views of the plains! And…we got to see some of the actual fossils that make this park important. It looks like a corkscrew and it took paleontologists a while to figure out what exactly it is. It’s the fossilized burrow of an ancient prairie dog type animal. No joke. We can’t seem to get away from prairie dogs this year! LOL!! It was really neat to see and our nerd family learned so much.

You know all of those warning signs about danger noodles on the trails…well, they aren’t lying! We found this big snake skin on the trail on the way back to our car. So…this big ol’ nope rope was somewhere close by. I don’t handle snakes very well. I think I just about flew to the car after that.

I love sunsets…I love sunsets even more when they’re mixed with amazing cloud formations! Jerl and I were out walking in the RV park when we spotted this amazing cloud! We walked around then sat outside and watched it turn colors as the sun sank behind Scotts Bluff over at the National Monument.

We also had some electrical issues while we were at this park. They weren’t our issue…it was with the town…but the temps outside were close to triple digits. I don’t know if you know this…but when you live in an easy bake oven, it gets hot real quick when there’s no AC. It ended up getting to 93* in the RV. We were struggling to stay cool! Our AC units had already been struggling, but I think that when the eclectic blipped on and off and then went out, it did something to our AC units. They never seemed to get quite as cold or keep up with the heat after that. Guess we’ll need to look into replacing those sooner rather than later.

Guys…there were so many pretties blooming! It took me twice as long (maybe longer) than usual to hike because I kept stopping to snap pictures of all of the different flowers. Love them!!

We found a really great burger place called Goonies! We were going to go back, but we didn’t have time since we were only there for a week. We also made it to a Mexican food place and somehow ended up getting all of the dips. I’m a dip person…are you?

Well Guys, we crammed all of that into one week! It was an incredibly busy week and to be honest, we were all ready for a vacation from our crazy nomad life after the South Dakota loop!

See Y’all down the road!

#NationalParkTour
An Unexpected Trip Home and Some Updates

An Unexpected Trip Home and Some Updates

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Hey Guys! Well, in true 2020 style…something went wrong.

We had three weeks left of the 2020 travel loop and Jerl’s right retina started to detach.

We were in the middle of exploring Yellowstone National Park when he started to notice some light tracers…which are the first signs that something isn’t right. Fortunately (I guess) this wasn’t his first experience with a detaching retina, so we knew what to expect and what needed to happen.

We ended up cutting our Yellowstone adventures short by a couple of days and start the long 1300 mile journey back to Missouri. Which…wasn’t our first experience with that either. During the last week of 2017 we were in Phoenix, AZ and had to make a similar trek. You can read about that adventure here if you missed it.

Before I get into the drive back to Missouri…let’s talk foodies from the West Yellowstone area. We found a couple of tasty spots! One was a food truck called Taqueria Malverde…it was really good Mexican food. Big portions, great food and nice people. The other place we found was The Buffalo Bar. We had some great burgers! We highly recommend both of these places if you’re ever in the West Yellowstone area.

There are a few different ways we could have left West Yellowstone and made our way back to Missouri. We decided to head south in Yellowstone National Park to the John D Rockerfeller Jr Memorial Parkway. The day we left was really smoky from all of the wildfires raging in the west.

This route let us drive through Grand Teton National Park one more time…and Guys, we saw eight grizzly bears! Eight!! The first three were hanging out on the road. We think they were juvenile males…possibly siblings. They were so goofy and unimpressed with all of the cars.

Right around the corner we ran into Mama Bear 399 with her four murder minions. Y’all know I wanted to see these bears sooo bad that while we were in Grand Teton earlier in the year, we’d gotten up at 4am to try and get a glimpse of these famous danger floofs. We never saw them during that trip, but Guys!!! We finally saw them! It kind of took some of the sting out of our situation.

To give you an idea of how smoky it was…the picture on the left is what the Tetons looked like when we were there back in early July of this year. I took the picture on the right as we were driving through Grand Teton NP in September this year.

Between the smoke from all of the California and Montana fires and then the smoke blowing up from the many Colorado fires, we saw really smoky skies for the first two days we were driving.

We made it to Missouri late that third day. While it was good to see family, it was still disappointing to miss several National Park Units and anxiety about upcoming eye surgeries was starting to set in.

We got back to Missouri on a Sunday and Jerl had eye surgery that Thursday. Everything went well. He had to lay face down for three weeks while his eye was trying to heal. It wasn’t his first eye surgery experience…and this one seemed to go smoother for him with less pain.

But now what?

We had to cancel the rest of our travel loop for 2020 and figure out what we wanted to do for the winter. With the whole virus thing still an issue plus all of the civil unrest/violence plaguing the country and the upcoming elections…we decided it might be a good idea to stick close to family this winter. Which means…we’re mooch-docking in my (Jennie’s) parent’s driveway until we head out again. We’re not sure when that will be. Like the rest of the world, we’re waiting to see how the whole virus thing plays out and how this coming election ends. By the time this post goes live, we will hopefully know who the next President will be and will have a better idea of what the heck we’re going to do with our 2021. Do we travel more? Do we buy a house and settle down?

You just never know with us.

See y’all down the road!

Eclipse 2017

Eclipse 2017

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Hey Guys!! We’re interrupting our regularly scheduled blog post lineup to bring to you a special post about our #eclipse2017 experience! If I added this post to the end of the post que y’all wouldn’t see it until October sometime. I thought y’all might like it sooner rather than later.

I’m not going to get all scientific on you and explain what an eclipse is and what happens and all that jazz. No science class today. If you don’t know and want to…there are tons of places you can research it! ;-} This is just a recounting of our eclipse day experience for anyone who’s curious!

We traveled to the Omaha, NE area to visit with some friends so we were very near the path of totality.

Our day started at an extremely early 5am. For those of you who know us or have followed along for awhile…y’all know just how early this is for us. So, so…early!! And it was raining. Rain is not how I had envisioned our eclipse day starting off, but I remained steadfastly hopeful that the clouds would clear at the right time.

National Parks are kind of our thing. We can’t get enough of them. So, we thought it was fitting that we watch the eclipse at a National Park that happened to be in the path of totality! We ended up at the Homestead National Monument of America in Nebraska with about ten-thousand of our closest friends. We arrived super early and actually got a parking spot about 3/4 of a mile from the park on a dirt road in between fields of corn. The city of Beatrice, NE and the National Park did a fantastic job of organizing the chaos. We arrived at the NP right after 8am and the parking was already turning into a nightmare.

We weren’t the first ones there, but we were early enough to have a decent choice of spots. We wanted to be close enough to the stage to have some entertainment, close enough to the food trucks in case we got hungry, and Porta Potty Lane wasn’t so close we could smell it but it was close enough if we needed it.

We claimed our real estate for the day, the boys got started on their Junior Rangering, and we checked out our eclipse glasses to make sure they worked. The NPS created a special booklet, patch, and badge for the eclipse! What?!? Our little Junior Rangers were so stoked until we found out the Park had run out of the booklets the day before. What?! But! They gave them the regular Junior Ranger booklet for the Park and told them they’d still get all of the eclipse goodies on top of the usual badges. Score!

The boys finished in record time. We were a little nervous the NP would run out of the specialty patch and badge. The boys are officially Eclipse Explorer Junior Rangers now!

Our little area of the NP was starting to fill in. It was still pretty early here. Close to 10am. We decided to grab some food so we would miss some of the later lines and so we wouldn’t be fumbling with food when the show started at 11:37am.

See the three orange shirts in the photo above? They were with a school. They staked out a huge section of real estate near us for one of the schools. They spent a good hour shooing people out of their space. It was kind of funny to watch. They got all kinds of reactions. Everything from total acceptance to out right irritation.

Around 10:30am the Color Guard came out and the National Anthem was sung.

Aaannnnd…then the clouds rolled in. We were so bummed and really starting to worry we wouldn’t be able to see the show.

I’m guessing it was one of the news stations getting video for the evening news in the helicopter. I didn’t have my good camera out yet because of the clouds. I was afraid we’d have a downpour and even though my camera is weather resistant, I didn’t want it all set up if we had to make a mad dash to some shelter.

Speaking of my camera…Guys, I totally procrastinated with eclipse prep. I realized too late that I don’t have a good lens for taking up-close shots of the sun…and…I couldn’t find a solar lens to save my life. After all of the searching (we searched everywhere and anywhere that might have something) and dead ends, we found the stuff to MacGyver together something that would allow me to take photos of the eclipse without ruining my sensor or my eyes. I’ll admit…it looks a little trashy. But I couldn’t care less…just wait until you see the pics it got me.

We could see the rain coming. We hoped it would just skirt around us. It was close to the start of the show when the rain caught up with us but, we’d come prepared. We’re like the Boy Scouts…always prepared.

We rigged up some solar filters for the boys’ phones too. Again, I know it doesn’t look the best but Guys, it worked and we spent very little on something we would use once. We knew they’d want to take pictures and videos of the eclipse, but we weren’t sure if it would ruin the sensor in the camera. We got a batch of the bad solar eclipse glasses (the ones that were recalled) and figured they’d probably be good enough for a phone so I cut the eye pieces out and used electrical tape to fasten them to the cases. When the boys wanted to take shots of totality they just slipped the cases off.

I’d downloaded the Solar Eclipse Timer app a few days before. It worked great! It would talk to me and let me know before each stage of the eclipse happened so we could try and watch for it when the sun wasn’t covered by clouds. You can see in the photo above that first contact was at 11:37 for us.

We missed first contact by a few minutes, but the clouds parted enough for us to see what was happening. It’s hard to tell that there was still some very thin cloud covering in this picture.

The handy dandy app let me know it was almost time for totality. It really was a great help in keeping track of time and stages of the eclipse!

Bill Nye the Science Guy came out right before totality to share in the moment with everyone. We had no idea he was going to be there.

Confession:  I took the “solar filter” off of my lens before it was officially safe. With the cloud cover that we had…I kind of figured it’d be ok. I still didn’t look directly into the sun while snapping the pic. I was struggling to keep my lens in focus. Remember, I didn’t have the right lens or the right filter for the eclipse.

I was starting to panic that we’d miss it because the cloud cover was getting worse right over the sun. The crowd…all 10,000 of us…groaned when the sun got covered by the clouds.

I still had my “solar filter” off messing with my camera when the clouds parted and we caught sight of totality. Guys…when the clouds parted the whole park burst into cheers. It was amazing! I think this will be one of the memories we talk about for years. We could have found some small out of the way spot to experience this eclipse but we wanted to do it at a National Park. And, I’ll admit…I was super bothered by the sheer number of people that kept showing up. We’re not into crowds. It’s not our thing. But Guys, the crowd…all 10,000…the collective groans and then cheering when the clouds parted…it all really added to the overall experience.

I’d just gotten my camera back into focus and aimed at the right spot. I didn’t get any good shots of the crowd during the show. I was too busy trying to get a decent shot of totality. I did get some video with my phone though…so I’ll add that at the end of this post!

Totality was over and most people started to immediately leave. We didn’t mind the mass exodus. We stuck around trying to get a few more shots of the rest of the eclipse, but the clouds were being difficult.

Eclipse 2017 was pretty much done here. You can make out a very thin smidge of the moon in the lower left edge of sun in the photo above.

We packed up our stuff and headed over to the Education Center on the other side of the NP to catch a special lecture from a NASA scientist. And to find a bathroom that didn’t have 200 people waiting in line for it. I’d guess 3/4 of the people at the park had left or were trying to leave by this point, but there were still a few thousand milling around. The lecture was very cool. It was about our planet…not just about the eclipse. The huge globe was interactive and was in constant motion. Our little science nerds loved it! They were in since nerd heaven. Ha!

After the Education Center we were done! We started the trek to the car only to run into these guys. It was close to 4pm by this time and the eclipse had been over for about two hours. All of the people you see in the photo above were standing in lines to catch the shuttle buses back to wherever they’d parked. That 3/4 mile hike back to our car suddenly didn’t look so bad.

We stopped at Hickory Road BBQ & Catering Co for a celebratory meal of smoked meat. We enjoyed everything we got! So good! If you’re ever in Lincoln, NE it’s definitely worth a stop!

We ended up with some pretty cool loot to go along with all of our memories of the eclipse.

The National Park Service even had a special cancellation stamp made for the event! We collect cancellation stamps at every National Park we visit. Sorry the photo is a bit blurry…

We ended our day with some friends. Ben & Jerry. All in all…I’d say our #eclipse2017 day was a success! We’re already planning for the next eclipse! Who wants to meet us and have a big eclipse party?!

You will now be returned to your regularly scheduled blog post.

#eclipse2017

p.s. It took me six different states to finally find the Keep Caramel and Cookie On flavor of Ben & Jerry’s.

p.p.s. I bought all of the pints they had.

p.p.p.s. I’m not sharing.

Pizza Roundup- Pizza Ranch

Pizza Roundup- Pizza Ranch

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For my fellow pizza lovers, I give Pizza Ranch a 5- star review. IMG_0431

The Pizza Ranch has good food, the restaurant is very clean, the desserts are fabulous, and it has a nice, clean and tasty buffet.

My favorite pizza there is the Chicken Bacon Ranch pizza IMG_0420 and my favorite dessert pizza is the cherry dessert pizza. IMG_0426

 The buffet also had fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, homemade chips, mac-n-cheese, BBQ chicken, and all the usual salad fixings.

The decorations were western themed and very cool.IMG_0425

See you on pizza street!!

Nebraska!!

Nebraska!!

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Hey Y’all!!! I’m so behind on updating the blog with our adventures. I’ve been without cellular data for a week now and it’s totally throwing a wrench in my social media plans!! I’m writing this post on my phone again, so excuse any weird typos or spacing.

This post will be about our time in Nebraska. We had a great time in Nebraska visiting the zoo! For me, the best part was this gorilla (you can see his picture below) and the way he loved to scare unsuspecting victims! He would watch a group of people as they walked into his area and then he would rush up and slap the glass right next to them! Screaming would follow and he would walk away with (in my opinion) a very satisfied look on his face. I thought it was really funny until I realized there was a pain of glass boarded up from his earlier antics. Yikes!! So, we promptly left the enclosure.

We also went to visit the State Capitol Building which means we got to add another sticker to our state map! We are keeping a list of the State Capitols we visit and rank them in order of our most favorite to our least favorite. For Charles, Nebraska is on the top of the list as of right now!

My favorite thing was the hike though! It was amazingly muddy and I walked away with a few ticks and a new appreciation for aerobic exercising! Steep muddy hills are an amazing workout!!

  See that little path? Yeah, that little muddy path is on a ridge…so don’t fall off because it’s a long way down!! The views were so worth it all though!!

My good friend, Kristi, who is from Nebraska suggested we eat at Runza. Y’all know we’re foodies and always up for new food experiences so we found the closest one and gave it a try!! It was really good!!! The staff were all very nice and we ended up getting a discount on our food (all five of us ate for under $40) and we got free dessert!! Score!! We’re looking forward to eating at a Runza during our next visit to Nebraska!! They have the Runza Magic Dipping Sauce!! It is good on everything!!!

We really enjoyed our short time in Nebraska! From there we headed to South Dakota!!

See y’all down the road!!