Carhenge and a different route to Wyoming…

In the 27 years that Al and I have been married, we’ve made probably 60 trips between Iowa and Wyoming. That adds up to 120 twelve hour drives….. 1,440 hours……. 60 24-hour days of my life has been spent sitting in a car driving between Iowa and Wyoming.

We used to go through Des Moines then take I-80 then up through Scottsbluff.  It’s an ok trip, but I get tired of Interstate driving all the time. Going that way we do get to stop at the cemetery where my dad is in Guernsey, which I enjoy because I don’t get there often.

Since they upped the speed limits, we now usually take Highway 20 all the way. It’s mostly two lane, but 100 miles shorter at only 730 miles. You can make pretty good time, and do the trip in 12 hours or so depending on your stops (and how fast you drive….have had a couple tickets over the years I do have to say).

But Nebraska is boooooring. We have already seen pretty much anything of interest to see across Nebraska along I-80 and Highway 20 over the years, so we just drive to get where we are going.  Then I found a website earlier this summer that made me rethink our trip this year and plan a different route:

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/ 

This is a fun site that lists “Offbeat Tourist Attractions”. As my husband would say, I’m a little offbeat anyway, so this was right up my alley! I searched in Iowa, Nebraska and Wyoming to see if there was anything that we could stop at quickly to break the boredom of the trip.  You can get a map of each state to show the attractions along your route.

We could have stopped to see the Largest Crater in the US, or the Castles of Ida Grove, or maybe the Johnny Carson Display or better yet the Hotel Room Damaged by Michael Landon (seriously?).  We wanted to see the Two Headed Calf at the Gage County Museum in Burwell, NE, but they are only open on Sunday, and wouldn’t return our calls.

So we settled for Carhenge in Alliance, Nebraska.

What? You haven’t been to Carhenge? If you’ve ever driven across Western Nebraska, I know you have seen the signs, but have you been there?

It’s a collection of old junk cars that are setup to look like Stonehenge.  It was built as a memorial to Jim Reinder’s father, who once lived on the property, by 35 family members. It’s now owned by a local group that maintains it. They even have a gift shop where you can buy among other things a flattened penny with an engraving of Carhenge.  If you really really want more information here you go: http://www.carhenge.com/

They even used a Gremlin, like I used to drive.

Just up the road from Carhenge, is a “quaint” little rest stop that is also on the Roadside America website:

It’s pretty corny, but makes for a fun photo!

It’s safe to say that we won’t do this route again. It was almost as many miles as I-80 (820 mi) but took much longer. It was a nice change of pace to see some new country through the sandhills, though. I can check Carhenge off my list of things to see (not that it was on there to begin with, but I can check it off anyway, right?).

I also found another website http://www.roadtripamerica.com that has lots of day/weekend trip ideas around the US. I have one marked in Missouri that I would like to do sometime in the next few months, and will keep it bookmarked to see if there is anything that we should see on any other trips as well.  

Check these sites out on your next road trip. Maybe you will find something new and interesting!

(we did get to see the World’s Largest Popcorn Ball through a window in Sac City, but by that time we were ready to get home and didn’t stop).

Happy Birthday Mom!

My mom turned 70 this year. She requested that all of her kids and grandkids be in Wyoming to help her celebrate.  Her birthday was actually in July, but we couldn’t get everyone coordinated until last week.  It’s the first time that all of us have been together at once for a couple years. We were only missing an uncle and one cousin.

We brought Iowa pork, and 50 ears of yummy Iowa corn.

And lots of cousins and aunts and everyone else to help us celebrate.

And everyone got to meet Trevor for the first time.

The big and little kids had to go check out the playground.  Joe had to see if he could still fit in the barrel that he played in when he was little.

It was a very quick trip, but I’m glad we could all get together. It was a great day!

Test

The Girls and The Snake

Ava has a friend, Ryleigh. She is Matt’s girlfriend Erin’s 19 month old daughter.

They are getting to the age that they play together MOST of the time pretty good, being only a few months apart.  Of course, they do get into the “mine” fight every now and then, but most of the time it’s pretty good.

Ava usually takes charge, and loves to hold hands with her. although it’s usually Ava holding onto to Ryleigh’s wrist.  But Ryleigh goes right along with it.

When they are together they do everything together.

Al found a garter snake and put it in a bucket to show the girls.

Of course they were separated by glass, so at first it wasn’t so bad.  They just watched it, and Ava tried to touch it when it put it’s head out of the bucket.

But then it came almost completely out of the bucket, and Ryleigh got scared (I would have been, too Ryleigh!). But it looked like Ava was saying “It’s ok, he won’t hurt you”. Then gave her a hug to make her feel better.

Then Ryleigh gave her a hug back, almost as if to say “thank you, Ava, I was so scared!”.

It was very cute. And always so interesting to wonder what is going on in their little minds.