Omaha Nebraska to Douglas Wyoming

I have started travel journals several times over the years only to stop writing about half way through the trip. It's been fun blogging about our trip and Facebooking along the way! Thanks for all the comments on the blog, emails and Facebook wall postings about our trip. I never knew so many of the people I know have family and friends in the area we traveled! Special shout out to Vince, Bill, James, Midge, Mom and Dad, Hollie, Jennifer, Mary, Mike, Venys, Kim, Sean, Diana, Ramona and Marcy. I've either heard from you by email, comments on my blog or Facebook as we traveled. I know there have been a higher number of visits to the blog which is nice. A lot of people have asked about our route home. I have been intentionally vague about our itinerary since although we had an idea of our eastern limits we did not know how far we would travel and when we would head home. We don't have to be back to work until Monday but we decided to arrive home by Friday evening so we have all weekend at home before returning to work.

We started the day in Omaha which is on the eastern border of Nebraska. We drove across the entire state of Nebraska which is 430 miles across and then another 100 or so miles into Wyoming before stopping for the evening. We camped for the last time this trip. Now in the spirit of full disclosure I will confess that we only camped because the Courtyard in Casper was full. I am dangerously close to officially hating camping! I knew once we stayed in a hotel it would be difficult to return to camping. For the most part we have had a great time camping and the campgrounds progressively improved - until last night! We stayed at a KOA (first mistake) which was loud and the sites were close enough for me to hear the guy in the next camp snore all night. I got up early and went for a run only to find a nicer campground 3 miles away right along the Platte river with a paved running/biking trail on site!

We have already made up our minds that we will stay in a hotel on our last night on the road. Who knows where we will end up tonight! There are multiple options depending on the route we take. I've made several hotel reservations depending on where we might end up and will cancel the rest! Don't want to make the same mistake and find them all full!

We really liked eastern Nebraska - specifically Omaha and Lincoln. Our friend Bill once lived in Omaha and we have already decided that it would be a great long weekend trip with him when we have more time. It looks like they have spent a lot of time on redevelopment of the downtown. The picture below is a night shot of downtown Omaha.




From Omaha we headed to Lincoln to visit our 4th state capital this trip. Very cool building and campus. I was talking to one of the tour guides and asked about the House and Senate chambers and learned that Nebraska's legislature has met as the nation's only Unicameral,( no separate House and Senate) since 1937. I thought that was interesting - it was a vote of the people.




We've been through Lincoln before on another trip but did not take the time to go inside the state Capitol building. Well worth a visit. From there were visited the campus of the University of Nebraska - home of the Corn Huskers! We went to the football stadium and the bookstore. I could not resist getting a picture decked out as a Corn Husker! This just goes to prove that a sports fan will wear anything to support their team!






Lincoln seemed like the kind of place we would like to spend more time as well. I hope that the Huskies play them in Nebraska in the next several years - we would definitely attend!

As we continued west we stopped at Chimney Rock National Historic Site. The site is located along the Oregon Trail and reference to it can be found in the journals of hundreds of pioneers headed west.






From there we went to Scotts Bluff National Monument.






We took a short hike before continuing on our journey. I took several pictures that I thought I would share since I could not choose just one!









I hope you enjoy!

Later -

Jim

Posted on the run from my iPhone.