The Road Goes On…

Category: Nebraska

  • Ashland, NE to Portage, IN

    After an 11 hour sleep, we departed for Des Moines, Iowa to visit Famous Dave’s for a rib lunch. We had visited this restaurant last year on our trip home and were looking forward to the best ribs anywhere.

    As soon as we walked in the door, the manager, Kevin, exclaimed “Hey, our Canadian friends are back!” and we knew we were in the right place. We had a three hour lunch with spare ribs and back ribs and lots of conversation.

    20140813-hwy2-3045 20140813-hwy2-3057 20140813-hwy2-3046

    We felt very welcome and took home some Famous Dave’s seasoning and received some Rich and Sassy BBQ sauce from Kevin. Around 3PM we departed and had a long way to go to make our 700-800km goal.

    Needless to say we were tired when we stopped at a Flying J truck stop in Gary, Indiana for the night.  This is a very large truck stop with 200-300 trucks and two parking spots for RVs. We got one of them next to the store. A speaker constantly announced “Shower customer number 201, your shower is now ready. Please proceed to shower number 6.”

    20140813-hwy2-3068 20140813-hwy2-3070

    There was no way we could sleep through this all night so we finished our last night of the trip as we began our first, at a Walmart parking lot. By now it was almost midnight.

  • Cheyenne, WY to Ashland, NE

     

     

     

    Today was a long highway driving day on I-80 which put even the dog to sleep.

    20140812-hwy2-3043

    We had a late lunch at Applebee’s where we each had a caesar salad, 7 oz steak with mashed potatoes and vegetables for a total of $25, including tip. Even at these prices, a table next to us was haggling for half-priced appetizers and drinks.

    We stopped at the lovely Mahoney State Park in Nebraska which has a water park, horseback riding, and convention centre amongst its facilities. There is an air and space museum next door as well. After a day of driving we were tired so we didn’t get to see any of these. We have a lakefront campsite.

  • Lincoln, NE to Bourbonnais, IL

    It was supposed to be a pure driving day again today, but as usual it didn’t turn out this way. Despite the fact that the highway driving was a bit labour intense due to high winds and lots of trucks we made good progress – 848kms. One good thing about the mid-west states is that there are no mountains and everything goes a bit faster.

    Iowa, as we found out, has great ribs. In Des Moines at Famous Dave’s we were looked after really well by wonderful future globetrotter Chelsie (aka Brittany if the service is bad) who explained the different kinds of ribs and sauce options to us in detail. We tried quite a number of them and they were all really good. We let Kevin, the manager, who came by our table know that Famous Dave’s is now our favourite rib place.

    20130620-untitled shoot-0080-9

    20130620-untitled shoot-0080-5

    After chatting inside and outside for two hours we were back on route to try and still make it to the Polk-A-Dot Drive-In for another of the great strawberry milkshakes we had had at the beginning of our Route 66 adventure. We made it there at 8PM, the posted closing time, but the restaurant was still in full swing and the large milkshake dinner was at least as good as it had been 3 weeks ago.

    20130620-untitled shoot-0080-14

    20130620-untitled shoot-0080-12

    No RV park was open by the time were were done, so Walmart parking lot is was, yet again.

  • Edwards, CO to Lincoln, NE

    We left at 6:45 in the morning after a quick coffee to make it as far as possible towards home today since we received already a couple of mails that expressed concerns that we would not make it home in time. We did 967km today despite the fact that we had to climb Colorado mountains with our 4 ton truck, had quite a few construction sites, and a so-so lunch in Nebraksa. We did not take one single photo for lack of time and after leaving Colorado really lack of opportunity. We found a very nice RV Park in Lincoln, Nebraska where we got the very last auxiliary spot on the ground. After a Pizza dinner, a nice swim in the outdoor pool made the evening quite nice.