Nebraska City

June 26, 2011

Today is a catch your breath and prepare for the coming week kind of day.  Many thanks to all of my friends who let me know about the article in the paper.  I was able to read it online.

I arrived in Lincoln last night about 8:30 pm.  I spent Saturday as a volunteer at Lake Iowa County Park where Laura is the county naturalist.  Spending the day with thirteen third graders made me once again realize that while eighth graders have their quirks, I would much rather work with them instead of third graders.  Laura had a full day planned for the Brownie troop and I was her able assistant.  My job was to start the charcoal for the Dutch oven cooking event.  Of course it started raining at the same time that I was starting the fire.  I fought the rain and I won!!  With only a little help from the park ranger and a blow torch I was able to get the fire started.

After the day at the park, we both headed out on our five hour drive to Lincoln.  We took separate vehicles.  I will be starting my class at the University of Nebraska tomorrow and Laura will be meeting with early childhood education people at the Uof N regarding a nature explore classroom.  Laura applied for and received a grant to build a nature explore classroom at her park.  Now she is doing the fun part—investigating and planning.  She will stay with me for a couple of days while she studies the various nature explore classrooms in the greater Lincoln-Omaha area.  She is also meeting with people from Creighton University.  (I’m really proud of what she has accomplished in a year at the park.) We are both excited about the timing of her visit—quite an unexpected treat.

Today we went to Nebraska City and visited the Arbor Day Farm.  They have an ultra-cool nature explore classroom.  We played in the nature explore classroom(see her above playing the marimba), took a hike, visited the greenhouse area, and received our free trees.  We received tiny white pine trees (see photo above).  Laura will plant our trees near the new bird blind at the nature center. I fully expected to see a statue of Paul Beckwith planting a tree.  I love doing nature activities with Laura.  She answers all of my questions.  While we were in Nebraska City, we ate a classic “Runza”, which is some type of meat pie with unidentifiable ingredients.  I would call it a loose meat slider.  It will never be my favorite.  I enjoyed it more once I picked most of the meat out of it.  Cherries are in season here so we stopped at a local orchard and decided to pick our own—we figured it was better for us than just buying fudge.  The cherries were yummy!!

Our last stop for the day was at a downtown quilt store which was a little odd.  Laura and I play a game when we go fabric shopping.  We usually critique the restroom facilities and also discuss what we would do differently if we owned the store.  This store was a little eerie and almost creepy.  We both found some fabric that we wanted.  Laura asked to use the restroom (quilt stores almost always have cool bathrooms) and the lady said that she couldn’t let her use the restroom because she doesn’t have any hot water.  Then we wondered about her cutting our fabric, eating her lunch, etc. without properly washing her hands and we both chuckled at the possibilities.  We ended up creating a story about the rotary cutter slasher and the perfect crime that was committed in the cherry orchard on the outskirts of a small Nebraska prairie town.