Today CC is flying home again, but before he goes we are going to sightsee a little since he has a late afternoon flight. So we cross back over to Iowa to the Western Historic Trails Center. This is an Iowa Visitor Center that has a movie and a lot of displays on everything that has happened in Iowa in history. The displays were very unique; they were all made of metal sculpture and were vignettes. The movie was very funny. It was the story of the pioneers be it Indians, Plains peoples, or Mormons. But it was overlaid with a 1970’s family traveling in their VW van across the country. I’ll just say you do need to stop here to see it. It was very worth it.
After that stop we traveled on to the Lewis and Clark Monument above the bluffs on the Missouri River. This is the place where L& C counciled with the local Indian tribes by the order of President Jefferson before journeying on. It is also how it got the name Council Bluffs. There is a monument wall here no statues though. There is a great view of the river and nearby airport. You can also see downtown Omaha very clearly.
Our last stop was supposed to be the Mormon Historic Trail Center. This is a smaller version of what PTCC and I saw in SLC. CC wasn’t with us then so he didn’t get to experience it. We were greeted when we entered by Sister Bertrand, who was from Washington State and doing her 18 months of missionary work. We were not allowed to tour by ourselves but were asked to see a movie of the history of the travels of the Mormon people to get to SLC and Zion. Most of it was cut from the longer movie PTCC and I had seen before. The original version was over an hour this one was only 15 minutes. Then Sister Bretrand was our tour guide as we walked around the small museum that told the story of their journey. It was a shame they don’t let you tour by yourself because a lot of it didn’t make as large an impact on us since we weren’t allowed to see it in our own way. She skipped quite a few displays that looked interesting to us. And we were being evangelized in almost every breath. This was after telling her several times we were quite happy in our faith. We only had 45 minutes for this stop so we brought it to an end and left.
Then we had spied a small pocket park around the corner so we stopped to have lunch and figure out if we wanted to do anything else. I voted for President Ford’s boyhood home but CC wanted to see a naval museum. As we were leaving in the car an animal that was quite large and cinnamon colored ran in front of us and up the hill into the woods. PTCC and I found out later it was a badger.
As we were driving to the naval museum we passed the airport and it is small. No problem getting lost here. We turn down the road to get to the museum and see a sign that says Welcome Back to Nebraska It seems like every time you drive a mile you keep changing states here.
We arrive at the museum and find out it is a park with many large aircraft and ships, subs, anchors, chains, and propellers displayed. It really looked like someone collected these at a surplus sale and gave them to the city and they had to display them somewhere. It is the first time I have seen a full size destroyer and a submarine up on land. Usually they are cut outs since they are so large. We walked among all the equipment and then left to take CC to the airport. It was an easy drop off but a long trip home since it is about 30 miles from where we are staying and you have to drive through downtown Omaha on the I-80.
We got back and rested for awhile and then PTCC wanted to do an Animal Tracks seminar at the craft center. This was very interesting as I did not know they had such an array of animals in Nebraska. Hopefully soon we will go to the Wildlife Safari Park that is next door and see them up close. The instructor’s name was Matt and he told the kids about tomorrow’s class which is reptiles. The great thing about that he said was that it will be feeding day and they eat weird things that the kids get to feed to them. So PTCC is all in for that. After the kids made rubber stamp tracks we climbed the observatory tower and looked all around the area. It is about 80 ft tall and was very windy up there.
We came back to the RV and decided we wanted a fire tonight so we walked over to the marina to get firewood and ice creams, taking pictures of the baby Canada Geese while there. PTCC wanted to prove how strong she was so she carried the bundle of wood back to the RV almost all the way. Now I can’t say she is a weakling.