Last Post of 2024: Holy Family Shrine and Des Moines

 

This morning Travalon and I woke up at 8:30, since we were still on Mountain Time. We drove and drove, passing by the water tower in York that looks like a hot air balloon.

We stopped at a rest stop somewhere west of Lincoln with a bridge over the Big Blue River. (Yes, we did cross it.)

West of Omaha we had runzas at a Runza, then we went to the Holy Family Shrine. This is inside the visitor center.

This is inside the shrine.

I loved their Stations of the Cross.

Here is the outside of the shrine.

I bought a couple of rosaries - photos soon! 

You can see we are back in winter weather.

And we also saw this truck that seemed to have stolen its logo from Harley Davidson and added a palm tree.

Now we are in Des Moines, and we took a walk to enjoy the Christmas lights.

We passed a Lebanese restaurant called Open Sesame, where I had an amazing date and rose drink and a vegetarian sampler plate with hummus, baba ghanouj, falafel, and grape leaves. Travalon said his gyro meat was the best he'd ever had. They had a beautiful bar and ceiling.

We are hoping to go to a swanky party in our swanky hotel, so I'll let everyone know how that went tomorrow. I will also post more photos from today that Travalon took - no time tonight before the party. So something to look forward to in 2025.

Famous Hat

Tumbleweeds and Dinosaurs

 

Here are the two stuffies we got at the Arsenal gift shop: a black-footed ferret and the softest rabbit ever.

And this is the way the housekeeper arranged my stuffies when she made up my bed yesterday.

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.

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.

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.

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.

How would you like a Dino Cappuccino? For me that rhymes, but not for Travalon.

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

NOOL and Arsenal

 

This morning Travalon and I took a quick walk on the trails behind our hotel, which run next to a prairie dog village. A magpie screamed at us, but it was too quick for Travalon to take a photo. At first we didn't see any prairie dogs, but just about the time we needed to turn around, I heard one bark, and then I saw it. And then we saw tons of prairie dogs! Travalon took photos.

And these are the mountains you can see from our hotel.

We went to a church called Nativity of Our Lord for 9:30 Mass, and can I just say how much I love that their website was NOOL.org? It was a huge, ugly, modern church, but the hymns were all traditional Christmas carols, and the ordinary was all Latin chant, which to me was a fascinating juxtaposition. I think the priest was Vietnamese. Getting out of the parking lot was a bit of a challenge...

We went with my aunt, uncle, and cousins to a brewery for brunch, but neither of us can remember the name. We do remember how good the shrimp and grits were, and our drinks were so pretty.

Then my aunt and uncle took us to Arsenal, which is a huge nature preserve just ten miles from downtown Denver that used to be an arsenal. (When they kept talking about Arsenal, I kept thinking of the English Premier League team. Travalon was so happy because his Wolves tied with the Tottenham Hotspurs today.) From the Visitors' Center (where we bought stuffies and hoodies), you could see Long Peak, which is in Rocky Mountain National Park, way over by Estes Park. 

And lots of other snowy peaks.

Arsenal is renowned for its wildlife, including endangered black-footed ferrets, which are nocturnal so we didn't see any, elk, mule deer, and especially bison. Check out the sign.

My aunt and uncle said sometimes you don't see bison, and I said we get it, every time we bring people to Horicon Marsh, all we see are Canada geese and a few mallards. But then... we saw bison! Right by the road! There were tons of cars, so we had to wait our turn to get a good view.

They are majestic animals, but very dangerous, and people weren't supposed to get out of their cars, but some did anyway. However, nothing tragic happened. One bison did cross the road, but the others behind it changed their minds and didn't. There were so many! We saw tons in the distance too. Then we saw these deer that look nothing like deer back home.

Maybe those were the mule deer, because we also saw some deer that looked a lot more like the white-tailed deer back home. We didn't see any elk.

This one was mooning us.

When we went back to the Visitors' Center, Travalon took more snowy peak photos.

This is Long Peak again.

We went back to the hotel to pick up my mandolin, and there was a glorious sunset.

Then we went back to my aunt and uncle's house, and my uncle, Travalon, and I took a walk in the growing darkness on the path behind their house. There were a lot of Christmas lights back there; this tree looks kind of like a person.

After that, my uncle and I jammed while my cousin went to pick up dinner. We did our three songs and some others, including "Ripple" by the Grateful Dead which went particularly well. We tried "All of Me" by Willie Nelson, but while it's in G, I couldn't get all the chords because it was a bit more complicated than a 1,4,5 song. We jammed for an hour and then were so tired! My aunt made sweet potatoes and asparagus for us, and my cousin brought us Raising Cane chicken tenders. I also had two Christmas cookies, and they sent us home with a bunch more. 

We called it a night early enough to go swimming, or I should say I swam in the cold pool, while Travalon hung out in the hot tub. 

We were charmed to see such a loving household of four people and three cats, and he said maybe it's time we get another dog, so we may revisit this question once we are back home.

Famous Hat