Here are the two stuffies we got at the Arsenal gift shop: a black-footed ferret and the softest rabbit ever.
Here is some more DuoLingo bragging:
Now that I have finished the French course, I have been doing Music, but unlike French, it didn't test my knowledge level, so I'm learning things like where Middle C is. It's very piano-oriented, probably because they want to sell you a special DuoLingo keyboard. I do have to say that a lot of my mistakes are because the system doesn't register my answer, which maybe the keyboard would fix, but I'm still not buying one.
Then we met my relatives at a brunch place called Snooze right near our hotel. Travalon and I got there first, and they said there was a 45-minute wait and we'd have to wait in our car. We went to the Caribou Coffee right next door and had just gotten our coffees when they texted me to say our table was ready. Fortunately they were cool about us bringing the outside coffee into the restaurant. I mean, it's not like I didn't have a green juice and half a lavender pea flower lemonade to drink, and a Monte Cristo to eat, so it's not like I gave them no business. I mostly chatted with my cousins because of where I was sitting, and once we finished, one cousin said we should continue the conversation somewhere else. What a sweet sentiment! But Travalon and I had to hit the road.
This morning Travalon and I walked on the trail behind our hotel. We saw prairie dogs again.
The trail is called the Big Dry Creek Trail, and there was a tunnel that went under the road. On the other side was a (not dry) creek and some murals.
It was a VERY windy day today, with all sorts of wind advisories, and signs along the highway saying small and tall vehicles should take particular care. Of course this meant that lots of tumbleweeds blew in front of us, and a guy in front of us hit one, and it kind of exploded. Travalon couldn't avoid one, and he split it in half. I'm not sure why I found this so funny, but the wind was blowing from the north, and wherever there was a fence on the south side of the highway, you could see tons of tumbleweeds trapped against it. They are an invasive plant, I believe a Russian thistle, and the "tumbleweed" phase is their very clever method of distributing their seeds far and wide, so I wonder if in the spring those fences will have tons of thistles growing under them?
We spent a lot of time driving today, especially since we lost an hour coming back east, and one thing we did was go to a lot of Sinclair stations. The metal water bottles we had brought with us got skunky and we don't know why, so we had to buy water, and of course we had to recycle the water, and Travalon was always looking for Dino the Sinclair Dinosaur paraphernalia. Finally we hit the motherlode, and he got a Dino activity book, a mini Dino, a Dino thermos, a Dino keychain, a Dino koozie, and a super cute Christmas 2024 stuffed Dino. Here are photos of all the Dinos all over the gas stations.
We had passed a car partially covered with stickers some way down the road from where we pulled into one Sinclair station, and then I saw he had parked next to us, so I took some photos.
The guy came out and got in the car, but he didn't leave. When Travalon got back, we took some time before leaving, like we ate bananas that we had picked up at a previous Sinclair station, and the guy didn't leave until we were leaving, and then he pulled out in front of us and went ahead onto the highway. That seemed kind of weird, but just like when we had seen him before, he was driving too slowly, so Travalon passed him, and we didn't see him again.
We did see some clouds that looked like mountains ahead of us.
Then just a few minutes later we noticed a cloud to the north that looked like clouds you see in the distance that are raining so hard it looks like they have a waterfall beneath them, only this waterfall was white. Since that would seem to mean snow, and since the wind was blowing from the north, we were afraid whatever it was would come straight for us, but it never hit us.
Eventually it was time to eat dinner, and we wanted to go to Runza, a Nebraska chain that serves runzas, which are kind of like Cornish pasties except the crust is more of a bun. They are full of Nebraska beef (they are very proud of their beef) and shredded cabbage, so a tiny bit healthier than your usual fast food fare. However, the first Runza we went to was out of runzas so they wanted people to order burgers. Out of runzas?? How does this make sense? The product is right in their name! We left and headed down the road, and the next Runza we found was quiet and had runzas. Here is a photo Travalon took of his.
His is a Swiss mushroom runza, so Jilly Moose, if you see unmentionables, that's why. Mine was the classic with just beef and cabbage. Our timing was amazing, because we had just gotten our food when a high school sports team bus pulled up, and tons of teenagers and chaperones and at least one very small child all piled into the restaurant. I'm so relieved we didn't arrive right after they did!
After that the weather got really dicy, with snow flurries, but we made it to Grand Island safely, and I took a photo of the Christmas Dino.
Isn't he adorable? The fact that he is labeled 2024 implies that there is a different Christmas Dino every year, unless this is a new thing they are starting. Travalon is not aware of any 2023 Christmas Dino, but since we don't have Sinclair stations in our area, he might have missed it. Could be time for an internet search...
This hotel has a lovely, large pool that would be perfect for swimming laps, but the heater broke, and it was too cold even for me. We just hung out in the hot tub for a bit. I tried a couple of times to brave the pool, but I don't think even moving vigorously would have helped. It was frigid.
Famous Hat
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