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Iowa state capitolMileage: 240 miles
Des Moines, IA – Lincoln NE
Last night’s hotel (Hyatt Place) was using Claire’s Hyatt points. Another free hotel.
Susan had a rough night sleeping, she slept in the black hole bed. It sunk into the middle from all directions and she said it was like sleeping in a hammock and Pam noticed that the fitted sheets had also come up off her bed. I’m glad Susan didn’t pass thru the event horizon. Susan and Claire also had really weird dreams. After we got up, Pam had to primp. She did her nails and ironed her shorts. Susan and Claire told her no one would care. We couldn’t take our suitcases down before breakfast (remember we had to valet last night). At breakfast, Pam tried to get hot water and it had coffee grinds in it. Seems they must have mixed up the coffee and hot water containers.
After breakfast we made the pack mule run. Yes, we carried everything down that we normally take on the cart or in 2 loads if we carry it. I’m sure we were a sight to see. Pam started driving and tried to turn one street too
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very small statue of liberty early. We said “no”, so she proceeded straight. Well the road was no longer one-way so she was driving left of the yellow line. Luckily there were no cars on the road that morning.
Claire had Dorothy set for the directions and the sisters were talking. Suddenly Dorothy states “I’m not sure how to help you with ‘THE’ “. We all said, “what?”. We drove to the Iowa State Capital building. It was very ornate but there was construction going on. A couple was having their engagement pictures taken out front. Pam stated “what lovely pictures, notice that there is a port-a-potty on the scaffolding around the dome”. The capital also had a replica Statue of Liberty that we wanted to see. It was so small ; it was hardly taller than we were, we sure expected more. Our next stop was the Glass Bottom Bridge or the Women of Achievement Bridge. Well, this was another - we expected more. It had some glass in it but the glass was mostly metal so it looked like you were looking thru a tight mesh. Our last Des Moines stop was the Papa John’s sculpture park. Well this too was another
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glass bridge well, glass ,mesh bridge disappointment. The park itself was nice, the art???? They spent 40 million on this stuff and there was really only 1 interesting piece. It was also really really windy there. Oh yea, they have signs in front of all the art. The signs had braille writing on them too. Funny thing though, the signs stated, “you can’t touch the art”. So if you’re blind???
We left Des Moines and headed towards Nebraska. On the way we tried to figure out if we had been on all the 10’s interstates. I10, I20, I30,….. None of us could figure out where I50 and I60 were located. Well, guess what, they don’t exist. It seems you can’t have a US highway and an interstate with the same number in the same state. Well, Interstates numbers get higher going North and US highway numbers get higher going south so there is not an I50 or and I60 since they would overlap the numbers in the states.
Convoy!!! Yes we pass a convoy and they even had a sign on the back vehicle to tell us. This was and army convoy. Of course we had to sing the Convoy song from the 70s.
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side view of the bridge We turned off the road to try to find the covered bridges of Madison County but then realized that they were too far off our path. By the time we got back on the road, we weren’t near the convoy anymore. The interstate in this section of Iowa is really noisy. We didn’t like it. Claire found some odd things to do so we left the road and headed to Dexter. It seems Bonnie and Clyde were in a shoot-out near this town. As we headed into Dexter we saw the sign “Dexter the original one horse town”. The road into Dexter was called the “white pole road”. You see all the telephone poles beside the road were painted white on the bottom 3
rd. Why??? We don’t know but they were like this for miles. We didn’t see anything about Bonnie and Clyde here so we headed on further down the road to Stuart. Here we saw the location of one of the banks that they robbed. We continued on the back road to Menlo, “a town of few and friend to all”, where we saw the Neon gas man. He was really not neon looking (at least during the
day) but we took a picture anyway.
Of course we were bored so it was song time – sing it to jingle bells.
White pole road, white pole road
Through the one horse town we go
Dexter is the place
Bonnie and Clyde had a shoot-out show
White pole road, white pole road
Now to Stuart we head
That is where they robbed a bank
But still didn’t end up dead.
Shortly after white pole road changed to silver pole road and then to alternating white and silver poles. Near Casey we saw a bunch of windmills and we stopped at a rest area what had a windmill blade stuck in the ground. Boy it was big. The next item we looked for was the smiley face water tower. Another disappointment as it had a tiny face. Our lunch was beside a 76 foot corn stalk. Well, let’s call it a 76 foot metal mesh with cows on it too. Another disappointment. We drove across the street for a bathroom break. The
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the one piece we all liked wind was horrid and Pam almost killed the car beside us as the wind caught her door and slung it open. It missed hitting the car by a just a few millimeters.
Council Bluff was our next stop where we saw the giant golden spike. This is where the east and western railroad lines met. Shortly after that we crossed into Nebraska and entered into Omaha. We stopped at the giant fork. What is it about giant forks around this area? Then we passed by the tall man which wasn’t very impressive. We then went to the old market. It was our understanding that there would be a lot of shops - restaurants yes, shops and other interesting things no. Oh well. Onward we go.
The most exciting thing in Omaha was the Spirit of Nebraska Wilderness monument. It was 6 blocks long and we walked the whole thing. Part of the monument goes thru buildings (and I mean latterly thru them). Before leaving town, we stopped by Joslyn Castle to take a few pictures and also saw 2 weird signs. The first sign stated that the road was one way to the right during certain hours and
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our shadow picture one way to the left at other hours. Now that would be confusing, especially around the switch over time. The other sign was for emergency snow evacuation. What from an avalanche, here????
Next thing you know we were on a dirt road. There was a glass church we wanted to see so we followed Dorothy’s directions. We had to go about 5 miles on a dirt road. Suddenly we got to the top of a hill and whoa - Road construction!! We could see the church but we weren’t going to get to it because the road had washed away and there were roadblocks. We turned around and headed to Hwy 6. Traveling down the road we ran across a lighthouse, yes a real lighthouse in the middle of Nebraska. The write-up said it had been a working lighthouse. For what??? The small lake beside it, (about the size of Broyhill walking park)??? Maybe these Nebraskans are scared of water. We continued on Hwy 6 into Lincoln Nebraska.
Lincoln Nebraska had a lot of neighborhoods and they were named on the street poles. We thought that was a good idea. We passed thru the Haymarket District and like
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we did think this art could be the 3 sisters but I still wouldn't have paid much for it the market in Omaha, this one wasn’t what we thought it was going to be. Lincoln is the capital of Nebraska so we went to get pictures. The capitol doesn’t look like a typical capitol building. It is tall with offices in it and wasn’t very pretty. Our next stop was to go see some chrome bugs – again, nothing too exciting. Our final stop was to the Sunken Garden. Another disappointment. It was pretty, pretty small. We walked around it. There was a rose garden on the other side of the road but you couldn’t cross the road. So we drove over to it. The parking lot was closed but we could park in the “to be completed in 2019 zoo” parking lot. This too was a small garden but it was also pretty.
Claire found a restaurant that looked good and trip advisor said it was open. It was not. It seemed most of Lincoln’s good restaurants were closed on Sunday. We drove back to the HayMarket District since there were a lot of restaurants there. Yes, there are a lot of restaurants, just not a lot of parking places. After driving around a while and not
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corn - flat land finding anything we headed to the hotel to check in. Susan and Pam wouldn’t unload the car until Claire came back out. They thought she was at the wrong place again. She wasn’t. We unloaded and headed upstairs and Susan finally found a place to eat. We hopped back into the car and followed Dorothy’s directions. Oh no, she was taking us back to the HayMarket district but we didn’t realize this until shortly before getting there. We drove in and low and behold, right as we got near the restuarnt, someone pulled out of a place, right in front of the restaurant. We scored. Dinner was at an Italian Restaurant and was good. We then headed back to the hotel. Claire had to ask Susan what floor we were on. She went to push the 5 (from last night) but there wasn’t a 5
th floor. Ha, ha. We’ve stayed in so many different rooms, this does happen.
The hotel for the night was the Holiday Inn Express at the Airport in Lincoln. It was one of the IHG point’s breaks hotels. Every 3 months IHG publishes a list of hotels with reduced # of points. We scored one.
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