June 5, 2010 by LadyCC.

We were woken up at 2:30 am with a severe thunderstorm warning from our weather radio. They said there could be winds in excess of 60 mph and large hail until 2:45 pm. I certainly hoped not after our ordeal in AZ with those winds. I don’t want to be in an RV with high winds like that again.

The thunderstorm warning was extended to 11 am but we get going at 10:15 am to south of Lincoln. We are going to Homestead National Monument. We stopped at the Heritage center first. PTCC got her Jr Ranger book and started working on it and I watched the movie. They had 2 floors of displays of the story of people moving onto the plains areas and working the land and raising their families. The center was about homesteading in general as well. There was a man who homesteaded in Alaska in the 1970’s that they have on film. 2 years after he staked his claim the statues ran out and there was no more homesteading. After we checked out the displays PTCC was finished with her book and received her badge and we walked outside to the Freeman cabin and grave sites. The cabin was moved here from ¼ mile away and set up like it was back when it was being lived in by 15 family members for over 12 years. When you looked back at the visitors center, if you were outside, they designed it to look like a plow that tills the earth like the homesteaders used.

After we ate our lunch on the back porch we went down the road to the education center which had displays of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific RR meeting in Promontory. It also had spring wagons and carts the settlers used to get here. Lots of farm implements were here as well. Then we moved on to the third site which was the Freeman School. This schoolhouse was used from 1872 until 1967. They have rolls of all the children that attended. Some years there were only 10 kids and some up to 42 children enrolled. It is a one room school house with 2 outhouses in the yard. The last class in 1967 consisted of 5 kids of various ages.

After leaving we stopped at the Walmart in Beatrice (said like BEE-AT-Trice) to get PTCC some shorts as she had only packed 1 pair (after being told by LCC to pack for all kinds of weather).It has finally gotten hot here and I think she will need them more now. She bought 2 more pair and we traveled on to Lincoln to see the NE State Capitol building.

We arrive in Lincoln and find parking right on the street in front of the capitol. It helps to come on a Saturday as well as when they are not in session. There was a tour going on when we got there so we joined up with them to find out more about the building. NE is a unichamberial state, which means they do not have a senate and a house just one chamber because they only have one party. They used to have 2 but dissolved the other in the early 1930’s. They are the only state like this now. The more I learned about it the more I thought we should go back to this system. The members can only serve 2 terms of a total of 8 years (If they are re-elected after 4 years), there are no republicans, democrats, independents, etc. On odd years they serve from Jan-June for 5 months, and in even years Jan-Apr for a 90 day term. They are only paid $12,000 a year because it is supposed to be a part time job. They must have other jobs to support themselves the rest of the year.

This is our 5^th capitol city and the third one we have toured. SO far FL is losing in the beautiful capitol buildings category. So far we have the ugliest one built in the 1970’s and it looks it. Just like a federal penitentiary.

We are getting tired and it is nearly 4:30 now so we head home to have some dinner and to see if the mi-fi works yet. Either we have used it up again or it is broken. If it is we will trek up to the lodge and used their wi-fi there.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

June 5, 2010 by LadyCC.

It rained all night so when we get up there is a huge puddle that is under our RV again. I get up early and eat PTCC’s donuts that we bought yesterday at Walmart. Then I get myself ready and drive down to the administration building to pay for horse trail rides ($15 each). I sign up for the 10 am ride hoping it won’t be too hot by then. Then I head back to make sure PTCC is up and having breakfast. She wants to go to the reptile encounter at 9 am so she needs to be awake. When I get back she is and we are on time for the seminar. It is held at the conservatory which has a butterfly garden outside and a koi pond and a stream inside with a lot of plants. The reptiles are in a small foyer area. They are not supposed to be an attraction here. People find them and give them to the rangers so they are housing them hoping to put them back in the wild. The first set we look at are bearded dragons, a male and female, that were given to the park. PTCC and the other kids get to feed them their mealworms today. Then we move on to the snapping turtle, who gets to eat shrimp. Then a box turtle who ate some soy stuff. Then the highlight, a bull snake, who eats live mice. The ranger fed her one and we got to see what happens. First she constricts it and then swallows it whole. Then we moved on to 2 bull frogs, who ate live crickets. Then finally the koi, who ate some kind of pellets.

After that excitement we walk across the road to the stables for our trail ride. This was different from Yosemite because today is hot. I’m sure our hands won’t freeze. Also, unlike Yosemite, we aren’t getting a private ride. There are 10 others going with us as well as 4 helpers. This ride was basically going up a slope behind the barn and turning a circle and walking back to the barn. Each horse had its nose in the tail of the other. Not very exciting and no landmarks or other animals to see either. So I won’t recommend this activity.

After that we got dressed in our swimsuits and headed to the pool only to find out that it doesn’t open until 12 pm. So we went back to the RV and had lunch and tried again. The pool area is pretty basic here. 2 twisty high slides, 1 slide that lets you fall about 4 feet above the water, a diving board, a wave pool, and a kids water play area. You can rent tubes for the wave pool if you want. Our original plan was to stay until 3 pm but PTCC liked it enough to stay until 4 pm. It was plenty hot enough today so it was very refreshing. I chose the quieter side to sit and finish a book I was reading. Whenever the lifeguards needed a break they would shut down the wave pool and PTCC would come and get me and we would ride the slides.

After 4 hours of hot sun we were done in and went and got showers because tonight we are also doing the dinner and a show. At 5:30 pm we went to the lodge for dinner, tonight specialties were BBQ ribs and shrimp. We had a nice view in the dining room of the park and river.

After dinner we came back to the RV where PTCC got on her computer to talk to her buds and I went to take a walk in the Little Creek campground area. I’m glad we aren’t leaving on Sunday because there will be a mad exodus from all the check out slips I saw with 6-6 on them. I think only 1 group was staying until 6-8 in that campground. In ours we had a couple of tenters show up today that will be here through the week but I think that’s it. It will be a ghost town during the week.

We are going to see a melodrama called The Villain’s Secret. During the summer a theater company puts on 4 shows rotating through them during the week. While we are here they are doing 3 different ones. If tonight’s is good we will see the others as well.

Well we went to see the Villain’s Secret. Just like most theater companies this one seems to have time management problems. The show started about 10 minutes late but in the end was decent. At first the audience didn’t understand how a melodrama works. It needs audience participation so the stage manager at the beginning had told us what to do when the villain, the hero, and the heroine came on stage. They even encouraged the throwing of popcorn at him. So the audience was slow to get into it but once they did it was fun. Some of the actors had a hard time not laughing and sometimes they failed and forgot their lines. It just made it funnier when they did that. I asked PTCC if she wanted to see more and she did, so I guess we’ll be going back.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »