September 26, 2015

We started our day yesterday in Emporia, Kansas. We had plans to get to Nebraska and spend the afternoon in Omaha.   We had spent a couple long days on the road so we thought a couple afternoon activities would be fun as we go across the “flat” states.   We looked online at the things to do in Omaha and there seems to be a zoo, a flower garden, a large flea market and some parks along the river. After discussing those options with the kids we decided to go to the large flea market, as they like to look at all the shops filled with treasures. We drove to the western side of Omaha with anticipation as our treasure search was about to begin and I heard the girls referring to the show “Flea Market Flip” where people find something on a flea market and repurpose it and bring it back to sell. It’s actually a pretty cool show. Upon arriving at the flea market we quickly realized it was indoors and not outdoors. We thought, “okay, it’s Omaha … hot and mosquito filled in the summer and cool and rainy in the spring and fall… just like Minnesota.”   After about 5 minutes in the place we realized that it was smaller than the annual Lake Community Rummage Sale and although the vendors were nice, we only found one treasure – a used movie for $1.50.

After leaving the Flea Market (called the Omaha Mega Market) we thought we’d go down by the river and have lunch. I saw a place called “Freedom Park” on the Internet that had military ships and airplanes and was located along the banks of the Missouri River. Unfortunately, GPS lead us astray as we ended up on a very narrow, somewhat muddy and soft, one-way, dead-end closed road with a 35 ft RV. This took us some time to maneuver and escape.   After successfully getting turned around and pointed in the right direction and our day in Omaha doing not as planned we decided to stop and make lunch. After lunch we decided that we didn’t want to pursue finding the park anymore and we went on a quest for key chains (the girls as collecting one in every state). As we left on our quest, we realized while having lunch we were sitting 100 ft from the “Welcome to Iowa” sign the whole time. So with the day going the way it had gone, we decided we had to find a way to get a picture by the sign. We put on our flashers and parked where we were clearly not supposed to park amidst two lanes of traffic and a bike trail. We jumped out and got our Iowa Sign picture!

We thought getting key chains would be 20 minutes and we would head out of town, however this proved to be more difficult as people in Nebraska either don’t have a need for key chains or don’t want their states name on them. After trying four convenience store/truck stops and calling a few stores to see if they carried a collection of souvenirs, we ended up driving 20 miles east of Omaha to a Flying J to finally have success.

So in a nutshell, we spent 5 hours in Omaha to get 3 key chains, a used movie and a bit frustrated as I guess not every day on the road is full of success.   Today we are in Iowa and we hope it goes better.   Life is an adventure.

Ryan