Nebraska & Kansas

There was one last thing I missed in my last blog. In our travels across Iowa and into Nebraska we stopped at a rest station to fill up on gas and to use the restrooms. As I said when I first started blogging, these rest stops would become frequent in our road trips across long states. This however was the weirdest thing yet at one. I walked into the restroom stall, to notice this very odd thing for a toilet, I walked out thinking it was a handicapped stall. I proceeded to the next door, to see the same thing. Hmm. I didn't care anymore, I had to pee. I shut the door and turned to drop my pants and I noticed on the door a sign that says (seats heated for your convenience). WHAT THE?! That's just nasty.

Let me just rant for one second before I get into my travels in Nebraska and Kansas. THAT IS JUST GROSS! It's bad enough you have no idea who the heck has sat on that seat, or what they were doing while sitting on it. It's bad enough us ladies have to squat and hover like a damn UFO when we have to pee, but seriously, a heated toilet seat. Let me just express this- the LAST thing I want to do is sit down on a WARM toilet seat, heated electronically or not!

I get that some people may enjoy it, but the toilet literally had all kind of buttons like as if you were sitting in the chair at the nail salon getting a pedicure and you get to give yourself back massages by the seats remote. EWW. Why would anyone want to touch that remote while taking a dump? Probably TMI right now, but I get grossed out just by having to touch the door handles in a public restroom and always use the paper towels when they have them to leave after I wash my hands. So as you can tell- it was not a pleasurably experience for me.

Here is what it looked like.

 

 

Okay, on to Nebraska. We finally arrived in town and were in search of our welcome sign. We never managed to find one, but we made do with what other photos we got. The first stop was Cabella's. I had never been into one and Becca figured why not take me to the largest one around. It was really fun and it was massive! Then we finally got to our hotel and sat back and relaxed for the evening.

 

The next day we had some time to kill before our presentation and decided to take a stroll in downtown Omaha. This was actually really fun. Again, this was a place neither one of us knew what the heck we would be doing while there because we figured there just wasn't much to offer, but as usual we asked locals and found plenty of things to do.

We parked our car at a 2 hour parking spot and started walking around. We stopped into a visitor center and asked them where we could possibly find the Welcoming sign into the state. With no luck on that, we got some other great info. We started to walk over to the National Park monument of the Lewis and Clark Trail.  In our walk over we found this massive slide in a park. Of course we had to take turns sliding down it. As well as some really awesome art work throughout the parks. We walked passed beautiful fountains and gardens. It was a smoking hot morning to say the least as temps were nearing 90. We eventually made it to the walking path bridge that crosses over the Mississippi River and over into Iowa.

 

As we walked over the bridge we noticed on the ground, the state line! Here is where we made our Official Nebraska Photo! It made do. What was even cooler was that we got to do all kinds of funny pictures while being in 2 states at the same time and standing above a river. Pretty cool in my book.

After we were done doing that, we had back towards the car to put some more money in and shop around. We search for a local brewing company and we fond one! We stopped in to grab some beers and water. It felt so good to enjoy an ice cold beer while sitting outside enjoying the sunshine! Once our local beer had hydrated us from the sunshine we kept moving. We came across some really fun and cool shops. And then before we new it we came across 2 police officers on their horses. The Omaha Mounted Patrol. They allowed us to take some photos with their horses and then we all chatted for a few minutes. As always letting them know what we did for work and well you know, where we were going and where we had been.

One of the officers handed us a couple police patches and gave us his info and asked if we would wanted to stop by the stables the next morning before leaving town to meet all of the horses. We thanked them and kept moving.

Our afternoon of fun had ended a little to quickly and I would have liked to enjoy a little more time exploring but we had to be at our big event. This event was the LARGEST one we had ever had. It was well thought out, and the guests were all by invitation. So we had a pretty good idea how big this event was going to be. 140 ladies big. WOW.  We set up all of our stuff and then had some time to kill. We were both getting pretty hungry actually more like hangry. So we broke out the Mountain House and had some dinner just outside of the retail shop. As we watched a massive thunderstorm getting ready to roll over us. This was  the first time since the first presentation I felt incredibly nervous and under pressure. We put on our presentation, and had a lot of fun. We got to help some of the ladies with their shopping needs and fitting for packs after it was over. I ended up enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would.


The next morning we awoke and did the normal routine as we had been doing when staying in hotels. We packed up the car after organizing it, AGAIN and hit the road. There was one pit stop we had to make before leaving town. It was to get my cupcake! I found a place on Google and we stopped there for an early morning cupcake. It was delicious! Then we stopped at the Omaha Mounted Parole Stables to check it out. I have to say it was pretty cool. They had quite a few horses, we got to here the history behind it and meet a few others who worked there. Including the goat and cat. After chatting for quite a bit with one of the officers from the day before he asked us to pull our vehicle into the stables to get a photo. It was quite impressive! This car has such a story behind it for the next person who drives it after us!

Nebraska went quickly and we were now moving on to another new state and another presentation. Kansas here we come.

Cupcake A la Mode

Kansas was only going to be a 2 night stay. We arrived late afternoon to our hotel. We were both hungry. We eventually found a place to get a cupcake, right off the bat. So of course we stopped. For dinner we were in search of the best BBQ in town. I mean we were kind of in the south. We ended up finding that too. I had probably the best pulled pork sand which I have ever had in my life.

The next morning we had the entire day to kill before our event. Becca had a friend who had just moved back to Kansas City, MO so we did some touristy walking around in the early morning. We ended up visiting the Hallmark Visitor Center (free, and yes Hallmark as in the cards). A mall across the street which had a Crayola Crayon Restaurant. We then found a World War II memorial park that we went to go and hang out in the sun and enjoy lunch at. Of course we made Mountain House and enjoyed it in the park.

Hallmark Visitor Center

After a few hours of roaming, we finally met up with Becca's friend at the Boulevard Brewing Co. We all ordered flights while waiting for the next tour to start. It was a lot of fun. This was probably one of the coolest free brewery tours I had ever been on. We ended up scoring another free drink after the tour was over, which of course neither of us passed up.

This may have been the first time I went to give a presentation, slightly buzzed. WOOPS. But it was worth it. We had a great time. As much fun as we were having in both Nebraska and Kansas we were more excited to get through the days quickly because we were headed straight to Rocky Mountain National Park for 5 days afterwards.

Early to bed it was, for an early rise and long, long drive ahead of us the next morning.