To Omaha

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Clay was up first this morning around 6:30am. I got up and showered and we went to breakfast. We both had cereal and some toasted English muffins. They had waffles (plain or blueberry) and scrambled eggs and link sausage. We checked out and were on the road to Omaha by 8:30am.

About 9:30am we arrived at Wildlife Safari Park at Ashland. We spent about 2 hours there. It was hot so we didn't spend much time out of the car. It is primarily drive-through anyway. It was a cool thing to break up the drive to Omaha. At the same exit, there is a big Strategic Air Command Museum but we skipped it.

Clay's trip instructions for lunch were, Eat Frenchees at Don & Millie's. We got in a big line to order at 12:05pm. Popular place at a popular time. It turned out that a single sandwich was 4 triangles which looked equal to 2 sandwiches to us. I ate all of mine but Clay ordered his as a combo with skinny fries and a soda and couldn't eat half. If we'd known, we'd only have ordered 1 combo and shared it. They had some western sauce you could self-dispense and we enjoyed the Frenchees more dipped in it. They were good but messy.

After lunch, we went to the amazing Old Union Station which is now the Durham Museum. The museum is eclectic with a focus on history but the star of the show is the Art Deco building. After touring we went to their soda fountain which is still serving root beer and phosphates and floats since 1931!

We drove the short distance across a corner of Iowa! to get close to the airport and our Sleep Inn for the night. It is our most expensive room of the trip and the smallest. From the floor plan with the rounded shower out in the center of the room, I'd say this used to be a Super 8. There is no fridge. There is an iron in the closet but there is no ironing board, so I'm baffled. It is 2 stories and there is no elevator! Thankfully we got here early enough to get assigned a 1st floor room. I was in the lobby an hour later trying to print our AA boarding passes and there was a constant long line. It was 108 F when we arrived and 113 F after dinner. People were miserable. The printer was on and out of paper. When I finally got to the solo front desk, the guy told me the printer didn't work. He offered me his email address and he printed them on the desk printer. Clay decided he wanted to return the Avis car after dinner instead of driving ourselves to the airport tomorrow morning because Sleep Inn has a free airport shuttle. We got put on the schedule for 7:45 am tomorrow. He told us to call from the terminal when we were ready to come back from dropping the car tonight. Of course, no one ever answered the phone when we called from the terminal. With some difficulty we finally found a taxi line and got taken for an unmetered ride! So, not a great finish for our trip. Fingers crossed there will be a shuttle in the morning. That brings me to American Air. We booked round trip first class assigned seats back in June. All was fine coming over here. When I checked in online today, there was a problem. The last segment home we had been assigned 4E & F, but as I paged through the process and got to that segment Clay had 2E and I had no seat! There were not 2 seats left together. I took 3F and we'll hope whoever is on the aisle beside me will be willing to switch with Clay.

Final dinner of the trip was our splurge meal. It being Omaha we went to Gorat's Steakhouse. It was very good. It turned out to be only the 3rd place we ate all week that had waitstaff to take orders at the table (The other 2 were Jimmie's Diner and Hammett House.) We were surprised at the number of places that were counter order this week.

So, this is the end of this trip. I guess I have established that this trip did not fill the center hole of missing US states for us. At some point, we'll have to come back this way to check off Arkansas and North Dakota. That will be an inconvenient trip! Unless something noteworthy happens tomorrow, I will not be back reporting about the flights home. Next trip is Eastern Europe.

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