Road Trip - Days 6 and 7 (The End!)

Day 6 and 7 were both a lot of driving with not too much to see, which is why they are combined here into one post. We spent the night in Valentine, Nebraska, which was such a fun little town. As you can imagine, there were hearts everywhere. Hearts on the street signs, hearts on the sidewalk, hearts on the flags around town, and hearts on all the shop windows. They were really everywhere, but with a city named Valentine, what can you expect? We read in our hotel room that on Valentine's Day you can get a heart shaped steak at the local steakhouse. How funny!

We really did have a long day of driving ahead with not much to see, so we wanted to be sure to check out anything that there actually WAS to see. One thing we saw advertised in a book in our hotel room was the Wildlife Refuge Park - that was really all there was to see in Valentine. So, on our way out of town we checked it out. The lady that greeted us at the visitor's center was so excited to see us - I think it had been a long time since anybody had visited the refuge. She said there were a few buffalo that you could see and seemed super excited that one of the workers this morning had seen two of them. This was our first clue that maybe the wildlife refuge wasn't all that exciting. We drove through though, on the path she told us to go on, and didn't see a single buffalo. The only exciting thing was a few prairie dogs, a horse, and a waterfall that we could take a small walk down to. Kind of disappointing, especially after all of the cool things we'd seen in South Dakota.

See the prairie dogs?? They were so cute.

And the waterfall was really pretty.

After the refuge, we left and drove on to a city called Broken Bow. We stopped here at a little smoothie shop we saw, and had the best smoothies and cinnamon rolls any of us have ever had. It was SO delicious!! On the table we were eating at was a directory of all the places to eat in town. One of the places advertised was a cookie lady. We love cookies, so naturally we were curious. We asked the worker there if she had heard of this cookie lady and if hers were any good. She said they were really good and that she'd had them at her daughter's piano recital a few days ago. She told us to go ahead and give the lady a call, that she'd love to have us stop by, especially since we were out of town. It was just so fun to hear the small town-ness in the conversation. Broken Bow was definitely a small town where everybody knew everybody. Anyway, we did try to call the cookie lady but she didn't answer and we couldn't find her house, so we drove on.

On our way to Hastings, Nebraska (our stop for the night) we passed through town after town with boarded up shops and windows, and it really was kinda sad to see all of these cute little businesses that were probably thriving at one point, shut down and out of business. One thing that every small town did have though, was a post office, and it was always open and running. That was fun to see.

We made it to Hastings right around dinner time, and were excited to have a few hours in the evening where we could just hang out in our hotel room and play games and watch movies and relax a bit without feeling guilty about not seeing things because there was literally nothing cool to see. We ate dinner at an Italian buffet place, and then retired to our room for the evening to play games and relax.

We kept seeing these Kool-Aid signs all over Hastings. We finally stopped to read what they said and they all said "The Official Birthplace of Kool-Aid". The entire town was covered in Kool-Aid signs and flags. I guess the town was doing their best to showcase what cool things they had to share, but we just thought it was so funny that the best thing this town had going for it was that it was the birthplace of Kool-Aid. We saw a flyer at our hotel advertising Kool-Aid days - a week of Kool-Aid related events that the whole town comes out for. We missed it by a week.

We saw a cookie place in Hastings, and had to stop because we felt so sad we didn't ever find the cookie lady in Broken Bow. We got some pretty fun cookies there. See what I mean about the Kool-Aid though?? It was all over town!

The next day was our last day of driving, and the only thing we were really planning on seeing today was the geographic center of the United States, which is in Lebanon, Kansas. We had planned our whole trip around driving through here, because when in the world would we ever be driving through Kansas again?? Probably never. So it was kind of out of the way, but we really wanted to say we'd been to the exact center of the US. 

We really wanted to get a jumping picture in front of this sign. This is harder than it looks when you have to use the timer on a tripod and you don't know exactly when it's going to take. We probably took 15 pictures total before we found one where we were all in the air at the same time. Here are just a few to show how hard it was to get it right!

Finally!!

We made it to the geographic center pretty quickly from Hastings, and it was quiet, secluded, and tiny. There was a cute little chapel, for what purpose we're still not sure, a little picnic area, a sign and a flag. That's about it. It was really small, but pretty cute. We tried so hard to find a geocache here for my Dad, but we didn't have a GPS and it was really hard to find. We tried and tried and tried, but finally had to give up after we couldn't find it. This was such a fun place to visit because who else can say they've been to the exact center of the United States? No one that I know of, for sure, and probably not very many people.

I think this is the funniest video of the trip. I was laughing so so so hard. My mom got this spontaneous burst of zeal, and she let us capture it on video.

Again with the jumping pictures. It didn't take quite as many as the Nebraska sign, but close.

So we had read on the sign that Lebanon had souvenirs, and we wanted to see if we could get something to say that we'd been to the center of the U.S. So, we drove into town and boy did we get more than we bargained for in Lebanon. We found the store (there was only one in the entire town), so we figured that was the place that had souvenirs. Imagine an incredibly old, disgusting, run down building. This is where the store was. I'm still kicking myself that I forgot to take a picture of the place. I was just so absorbed in taking the place all in, that I totally forgot. This place was the everything store too - the grocery store, the restaurant, the craft store, the hardware store - everything. We walked in and right away saw our souvenirs. There were mugs, pencils, and 6 t-shirts. That's it. Total. They all looked like they were at least 10 years old, and they had at least that many years of dust on them. They were disgusting, but we all bought a t-shirt just to say we have something from the exact middle of our country (don't worry - I washed the shirt twice before I put it in my closet).

We wandered around the store for a bit just because we were so taken in by the old-fashioned-ness of it. The place was at least 25 years behind the times. We walked through the aisles of the grocery store, and saw layers of dust on all the cans of food. As we walked around to the restaurant side of the store, we walked past the kitchen (which was just a corner of the building with a single stove that looked like it was from the 50's, a microwave and dirty dishes piled as high as you could see). There was a shopping cart with a yucky old towel in it that had piles of dirty dishes in it. There was a lady in the kitchen sitting on a chair with thick, coke bottle glasses peeling cucumbers while watching a Spanish soap opera on a 30 year old tv with English subtitles. She looked up as we walked past and asked, "Are you eatin' or lookin'?" We weren't at all hungry, especially after seeing that kitchen. We told her we were just looking and went on our way. We walked up to the restaurant side of the building and saw that the menu item for the day was cucumbers in hominy sauce - weirdest menu item I've ever heard of. We actually did find a few more things to buy though, believe it or not. They had a really cute Christmas decoration, which I bought, and they had some orange bias tape that mom bought. Mom and I are in the process of sewing some aprons and we need bias tape to finish them, and we couldn't find orange bias tape ANYWHERE in Utah or online. I never thought I'd find it at that store, but we did. We were making our way to the register when a local man stopped to talk to us for a minute. He was a very large man, with thick coke bottle glasses and overalls and a few missing teeth. He looked at what we were buying and said, "Well that's cute! Santee Claus (referring to my Christmas decoration). It'll be even cuter this afternoon when it gets up to 100 degrees!" We kind of smiled and kept on our way. At the register, they of course didn't take credit cards, so luckily mom had enough cash on hand to pay for everything. After we left, I seriously felt like I had entered the Twilight Zone. That place was 25 years behind the times and had no idea about it. It was one of the most memorable parts of the trip, experiencing the way that people in that town lived.

Lebanon was really the last thing that we saw on our trip. The rest of it was spent driving to Aurora, Colorado - our final stop before getting on the plane the next morning. The most exciting thing that we saw was at the rest area where we stopped to stretch our legs and use the bathroom. There was a sign on the bathroom door that said, "This area is patrolled by local police". As if on cue, right after we read that, a policeman drove by and waved at us. I guess the policeman in that area have nothing better to do than patrol the rest stop bathrooms. Are you starting to see what I mean when I say we drove through sleepy town after sleepy town?? The roads were SOOO straight with nothing to see but corn on either side. I think I saw enough corn to last a lifetime. 

We made it to Aurora with enough time to eat dinner and relax again in our room for awhile, which we loved. We ate at a yummy yummy Chinese place, drove past the movie theater where the scary Batman shooting was, and then just relaxed in our room. The only thing different about relaxing in our room this time was that our routine was different. Every other time we'd gotten back to the hotel room after being out all day, everyone had their own routine: Stephanie would immediately get on her computer and log on to Facebook, I would immediately get into my pajamas and take my contacts out, and Mom would immediately pull out the map and start planning our path for the next day. I guess you can see where all of our priorities were, right?? :) Well, we didn't have any more paths to plan, so mom's routine was off a little bit. I still got in my jammies and Steph still logged onto Facebook though. :) We spent the evening playing games and watching The Proposal. 

The next morning we got up and made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare. I'm sure the rental car people were not too thrilled with all of the bugs that were on the car when we brought it in, or all of the miles that we had put on the car.

See all of those bugs? We washed the windshield 4 or 5 times too, and it was still that bad. Gross!!

Our road trip was awesome. It was so much fun to spend that time with my mom and my sister before this baby of mine comes. It was fun that we could take our time and see things leisurely. We made so many fun memories together that we will always remember. I didn't think the trip was going to be as fun as it was either. I knew that I could have fun with mom and Steph, but I had no idea that all of the things we saw would be so cool. I thought that pretty much all we would see is Mt. Rushmore, but I was wrong. We saw so many amazing things, and I want to take a road trip back there again with my own family someday. It would be way fun to do as a family. 

We drove through 5 states in 7 days and saw things that some people never get a chance to see. Totally cool! Thanks to Mom and Steph for such a fun trip (and Dad for working hard to fund the whole thing)!! Let's do another one again sometime! :)