Friday: Race and Dean had one more day of freedom and made the most of it. We spent the night next to the Heartland Military Museum and got up to the sight of Bradley fighting vehicles, Sherman tanks and numerous other armored vehicles parked on thegrass between our hotel and the freeway. We spent a few hours touring the museum and even got to get into some of the fighting vehicles. We then hit the road and found our next stop, The Arch Bridge in Eastern Nebraska. This is a set of towers with a bridge stretching across the freeway. We stopped and bought some fish food and fed catfish in the Platte river, toured a newly built Pawnee Hogan (awesome), and then went for a tour of the Arch. It's actually and enclosed pedestrian bridge with two levels of interactive museum. You wear a headset and tour exhibits starting with the early settlers and ending with the creation of the Interstate system. We had lunch at the Arch buffet and headed to Omaha.
Well Race and Dean's free roaming travels have come to a screeching halt. Elizabeth has joined the expedition. We picked her up in Omaha, Nebraska after
finishing our jaunt across the state. We got a move on early the next morning since we had to make it across Iowa and into Wisconsin in one day. We had a
whirlwind trip through Iowa and finally came to a stop late in the evening. Sunday morning we got up and went to the Jelly Belly Factory. Yes there are two Jelly Belly Factory's in the world and the
Cofer's have been to both of them. This is the one thing Race really wanted to do on the trip. The tour wasn't as exciting as in California, you ride a train around the warehouse and watch a series of videos on wall monitors, but the train was fun and free samples of Jelly
Belly's are always welcome. We hit to the road to Oshkosh and arrived there in the early afternoon. we were immediately thrilled by the variety of aircraft overhead, both
warbird and civilian aircraft made a constant drone over us. Unfortunately, our sleeping quarters for the night weren't ready. Grandpa and Pete had been rained out of the campground, along with hundreds of other
RV's, and we had no place to pitch our tent. They were content to sleep along the side of an access road. We tried to get out into the field and find a place to camp, but we ended up stuck int eh mud and had to
enlist the help of some good Samaritans to push us back on to dry land. Elizabeth and her cell phone came to our rescue and she found a hotel in
Ripon, only 20 miles away. We spent a pleasant night there and the hotel manager even helped find us a room at another
Ripon hotel for the next night.
Oshkosh, Monday and Tuesday:
OMG, if you like aircraft this is the greatest place in the whole world. We are particularly found of WWII
warbirds and Oshkosh had the most amazing gathering we have ever seen. There was a B-17 doing flybys almost all day long, we saw 30+, WWII training aircraft doing formation flying, P-51 Mustangs complete with
wingman doing high speed passes, 21 DC-3's coming over in formation and peeling off one by one to land...amazing. This leaves out the incredible variety of stunt, civilian,
ultralight, experimental,
rotorcraft and everything else you can imaging making it's way overhead. Dean counted over 40
warbirds in the air and in sight of the airport at one point. We took Grandpa Don to dinner every night, Pete doesn't eat dinner, and went to a
Sonex reception with him one evening. We had a great time, but with the rain
threatening to return we decided to head out Tuesday night and see some
more country.
Tuesday: We headed out of northwest out of Oshkosh to see shat we could see. Holy navigation errors, batman. We shouldn't have have headed due west. We ended up driving into the
worst thunderstorms we have ever experienced. The radio said we were in the heart of
supercells and was
broadcasting dire warnings of flooding and
tornado's. It was actually raining so hard that we pulled onto an
off-ramp and just sat with a number of other vehicles until the rain slackened off to a level that he wipers could handle. We finally made it into Chippewa Falls and found a hotel.
Wednesday: We headed back southwest the next morning with Sioux Falls as our goal. We actually drove through an army base past signs that ominously warned, "Caution: Live artillery firing over road." Well that's not something you see every day. We made it to Sioux Falls, found a hotel and did some overdue laundry. Race and Dean were out of underwear. Then the first real disaster of the trip struck, the truck would not start. We got the hotel shuttle to pick us up and resolved to deal with the truck in the morning.
Thursday: Elizabeth was the first one up and snuck out to get AAA to tow the truck to Sioux Falls Ford. The tow truck driver gave her a ride back to the truck and, dang/yeah, it started, she drove it over to Ford and they went to work. In the rental Toyota she picked up, we went to the USS South Dakota memorial and museum, the Butterfly house (Race is scared of Butterfly's) and toured downtown and the falls (beautiful). The truck was done in time to check out of the hotel
and get out of town before lunch. It turned out to be a faulty wire leading to the fuel pump and we got out of it for less than $300. thank you Sioux Falls Ford. We headed out of Sioux Falls on our way to Rapid City. We made it to Rapid City after a long day of driving that included a driving tour of the badlands, a stop at the famous Wall Drug Store in Wall, SD, and a trip through 1880's town where we saw a bawdy floor in the local saloon and found out that Race is deathly afraid of grasshoppers.
Friday: Dean got up to post t
o the blog and everyone else is asleep, so, more adventures to follow.
