nebraska

Nebraska Discoveries 17: Ashfall Fossil Beds & "Fossil Vacations"

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A couple weeks ago, Jacob and I (Timmy was in NY visiting Grammy and Grampy) headed out with our friends and neighbors, Shannon, Brandon, Connor and Dean to the Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historic Park, which is near the small town of Royal, Nebraska.

From 2010 07 30 Ashfall Fossil Beds

We had learned about it from our visits to Morrill Hall State Museum in Lincoln, there’s a room dedicated to the skeletons assembled from Ashfall, along with an advertisement for the facility.

Ashfall isn’t close. About 180 miles from Bellevue, and well over 3 hours worth of driving each way. So Shannon and I aimed for a 7am departure time, and headed out.


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Nebraska Discoveries 16: The Mormon Trail Center

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Yeah, it’s been a while…

We’re in the middle of a crazy summer here — with the family currently scattered to the 4 winds! Well, the 3 winds anyway. Jacob’s in NY enjoying a visit with Grammy and Grampy Vollmer, I’m currently on my 2-week AF Reserve tour, and Dave and Timmy are holding down the home front in Nebraska.

On June 13, my sister’s family came for a visit on their way home from a 2-week cross country drive between their house in NC and Las Vegas. They spent a full day with us, and in typical “Major Mom” fashion, I crammed a bunch of activities into that one day.

I presented my sister with a variety of options of what we could visit, and the Mormon Trail Winter Quarters Visitor’s Center caught her fancy. Jacob had been here as part of a Bellevue Schools summer camp program in 2009, but didn’t really seem to have an opinion about it. He didn’t even remember making the trip until we pulled into the parking lot and said “Hey, I’ve been here!”.

I had seen some reviews of this attraction on Trip Advisor, and prepared myself for some, uh…Mormon education? Some of the more brash reviewers spoke pretty rudely of the “preaching” that the center seemed to emphasize. I will say up front that I learned a lot…only a couple times did our guide ask some pointed questions about whether we might think that we’d be interested in the Mormon message.

The kids enjoyed the statue in front:

From 2010 06 14 Baba Visit to Omaha

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The Cat’s Out of the Bag!*

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Picture by MAYNARD PAUL Lovely picture, isn’t it?  Where could that be?  It’s so pretty there…boy…I wish I could live there…. So…those who follow me on Facebook or Twitter already know this, and if you aren’t on either of those websites, you could probably just glance to the right on this blog and see the … Read more

Nebraska Discoveries 13: Historic Fort Crook & SAC Chapel, Offutt AFB

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Today I’m sharing some of the history on Offutt AFB.  Unfortunately, everyone can’t just get onto Offutt.  You need to have a military ID card to get onto the base freely, or make a friend with a military member who can sign you in as a guest.

As mentioned before, I started using this software to track my runs. The software doesn’t seem very stable on my iPhone (probably because I downloaded the free version and they want my money before it works the way I want it to…). So this isn’t the most accurate thing out there, but it’s fun to give it a go.

So here’s a map of the most recent run I performed:

If you choose “view full” in the lower left, then select the satellite map (or Hybrid), you can see that I’m running the perimeter of a large field. This is the parade field of what was formerly Fort Crook, which was the original military installation that is now the home of Offutt AFB. Fort Crook was established in 1888, and was completed in 1894.  Today, many of the buildings surrounding the parade field are from their original mid-1890s construction, including the buildings of “General’s Row” which are seen in the background here from the late 1890s:

And here are the same houses today, the same ones as on the left side of the above photo:

Nebraska Discoveries 12: Lauritzen Gardens…Omaha’s Botanical Center

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Since I won’t be in the Omaha area forever, I realized recently that my time is running out for visiting the many attractions in the area.  Thanks to my boys’ field trips, Cub Scouting and birthday party invitations, they’ve already been to several area attractions.  But I’ve set a new goal for myself and the family: to visit every attraction on the Omaha Convention and Visitors Bureau’s “Pin Map”.

You probably can’t see it that well, but just click on the “Pin Map” link above and you can see the original PDF.   It’s called the “Pin Map” because in front of each of these attractions is an enormous mock up of a blue-tipped pin.  I’ll get a picture of one as soon as I can…
So…my goal is to visit each of the 15 attractions on the “Pin Map” before I leave the area.  So far, I’ve covered 7 of the 15 attractions (numbers 3, 5, 7, 8, 11, 12, and 13)…and we have this summer to make our way through the rest.  Maybe I’ll blog about these “pins” as we visit them…I hope to, but I won’t make any guarantees.
Today I’ll share with you my first visit to #8 on the list: Lauritzen Gardens.
Timmy’s preschool class took a trip here on Monday.  I can’t believe I’ve lived here nearly 2 years and hadn’t been here till this week!  I guess it goes with living in a house full of boys, right?
This is a beautiful place, full of pretty flowers (of course) but I also really enjoyed the gardens “repurposing” sconces, corbels and other ornamentals from throughout Omaha…the pieces were rescued and help decorate the gardens.  The kids really enjoyed the flowers but the weather wasn’t very good and the walking was pretty tough on that group of 4 and 5 year olds.
So here are some pictures of the lovely visit.  I won’t include everything, just some of the more summary-type pics.  I STILL can’t believe I left our camera sitting on the counter as we headed out the door…so these pictures are with my iPhone camera.

This piece was repurposed from a downtown Omaha building:

Garden Season!

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Hooray! The weather has finally warmed up well here, and the birds have returned! The grass is returning to a lovely green color, and the kids would rather be outside playing then cooped up in the house. With the warmer weather comes one of my favorite things, starting our family’s garden! It’s been very exciting … Read more