Showing posts with label Council Bluffs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Council Bluffs. Show all posts

Saturday, June 21, 2008

What a day

Wow, two states, many sights, and two capitols in the same state.


Now that I got your attention, lets review day 6 of "The Trip". We got a late start and didn't wake up until 10:30. I woke up with a small migrane headache as did Mom. We both took some pain reliever for the headaches. We started out for the Iowa Lincoln memorial on one of the many hill sides here in Council Bluffs (CB). The Picture below is the view of Omaha, NE from the Lincoln memorial.

From the Lincoln Memorial we went over to the Lewis & Clark Memorial. Lewis & Clark made thier first meeting with the Indians of the region here in CB. I have a video of the view from the memorial for your viewing pleasure on myspace.

From there, we went to the spot that the US Government will tell you that nothing happened, but in reality it is where the Golden Spike that really connects East and West Coast. This is were the Union Pacific began their trek to the West Coast.

From there we came back to the Hotel for me to change from sandals to shoes. We then made our way to the location in Nebraska that many many years ago where the Oregon and California trails converged. After that we went to the Teritorial Capitol of Nebraska in Omaha. From there we crossed town to see the birthplace of 38th President of the USA (Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr.).

After a quick stop to get drinks, we headed off for the current capitol of the state of Nebraska, Lincoln. It was about an hour drive from Omaha. Everything went quietly today as far as Mom & Dad were concerned. Once in Lincoln we went to the Capitol (known in these parts as "The tower of the plains"). After that we traveled cross-town to see what on 8 times a year is the 3rd largest city in the state of Nebraska, Memorial Stadium. Which is home to the Nebraska Cornhuskers football team (again, I have pictures and a video over at myspace). We came back to the hotel to get directions to this steak house with a non-steak house name (Pizza King). Real old-school flavored steak house with an Italian twist, from what the front desk here at the hotel was saying pretty much all of the non-chain steak houses here in "the metro" (CB & Omaha) have an Italian twist who knew there was such an Italian base here? We went over to Pizza King and had dinner, Dad had Prime Rib (HUGE portion), Mom ordered Steak (she asked for it to be Well, it came back Medium, she wasn't happy) and shrimp and I ordered a Steak Tips and Rice. It was kinda on the expensive side, but it was overall good.

We came back to the hotel after dinner and watched the rest of the UNC/Fresno State game from 4.7 miles away (UNC won, final game on Sunday to decides who plays on Monday when we go). We got directions printed out and went over to see where the riverboat that we are going to be on in the morning is so that we know where to go. On the way over we found this really sweet looking Union Pacific Railroad memorial, unfortanatly the pictures really didn't come out. We asked a few people (include a cop) where the sign that says Omaha that ESPN always shows during the coverage of the CWS was and really no one knew where it was we got a couple of guesses, and one of them got it right, the picture is on myspace, but I'm going to go back and get another one during the day.

Tomorrow, we are supposed to go on a riverboat cruise, and then down to Nebraska City to checkout the outlet stores down there (50 or so miles South of Omaha), then for dinner we are going to the Buffet that I prommised my Dad that we would go to. As of now, it looks like on Monday we might go 30 Miles or so into Nebraska to see a Strategic Air Meuseum that we saw signs for on the way to Lincoln. Later.