Day 3: Monday, August 6, 2012

Before we headed out of Cheyenne for the day, we stopped at Midas to get the flat tire fixed so we wouldn’t have to be driving on the spare tire for the rest of the trip.  We also got gas in Cheyenne for $3.25/gal, which was the cheapest we had filled up with so far. We got to Nebraska and then stopped for lunch in Gothenburg, which was home to the fanciest Pizza Hut we had ever seen, the World’s Largest Plow, and also a Sod Museum.  The museum was so interesting! It was so full of history and lots of old artifacts.  For the most part, I knew that Nebraska was going to be flat but Matthew and I were both stunned by the complete and utter lack of any type of landscape other than miles upon miles of corn fields.  

The start of many corn fields in Nebraska

Nebraska scenery

With the World's Largest Plow in Gothenburg, Nebraska

In Gothenburg, Nebraska

The Sod Museum in Gothenburg, Nebraska

Nebraska scenery

We also made it to Omaha that day, where we tried to stop in Boys Town, which I had heard, was home to the World’s Largest Ball of Stamps.  Unfortunately, the gift shop for the stamps had already closed for the day.  However, we did take time to explore around Boys Town anyway.  When we first got there, we thought it was a large religious campus of some sort but after finding a sign, we discovered that Boys Town was actually a campus that housed abused and abandoned boys.  Another fun discovery about Boys Town was what we initially thought was an extremely loud alarm system but it turned out to be thousands of cicadas!  Matthew and I were so confused.  We had never heard sounds like that coming from Southern California and we couldn’t see anything to indicate what the sound was.  Just another one of the things that we learned along the journey!

Boys Town, Nebraska

Boys Town

After getting lost in Omaha and tired from a long day of driving, we finally got dinner at a place called Ingredient in the college part of Omaha.  After that we kept driving to Iowa, but unfortunately, the state line sign was above us on a bridge and I couldn’t get my camera out in enough time to snap a good picture.  As we were making our way to Des Moines, it suddenly occurred to me that we were a day ahead of schedule! Oops!  We were supposed to stay with my family in Illinois in two more days but it ended up that we were going to get there in just one day.  After getting all the kinks worked out about the rest of the trip, my family was so kind and gracious and was so willing to let us land on them a day early.  We eventually made it to Des Moines where we stayed the night at a Days Inn.  Since the Olympics were happening at the time, I had read that Olympic gymnasts, Shawn Johnson and Jordan Weiber had trained in Des Moines and we thought it was so exciting to be in the same city where they trained! 

Another tidbit that Matthew and I noticed was that hardly any of the public restrooms we had used in the Midwest had toilet seat protectors!  I thought it was so silly and such a cultural difference for us.