Flag Day

It's Flag Day and I have the day off today. Not because it's flag day, but because we finished up a job yesterday and needed to line-up some work for the next week. I went to Wal-Mart this morning in search of a flag to hang up, but go figure, they were all sold out. So I picked up some soil and planted a few more plants this morning, along with unpacking from the trip and cleaning up the house.

I would have blogged the trip to Nebraska sooner, but I am currently fighting a battle with an ailing hard drive which has been giving me a fit. The hard drive is going bad and I have been backing up all my info, pictures, and songs before it totally dies. I think I have everything taken care of and soon I will just remove it from the computer so I don't have to deal with the problems it has been causing.

As far as the trip goes, we were on the road too much but we had a good time. We left Missoula on Thursday morning at 4:15 a.m. and we were on the interstate around 4:30 and on our way. As usual, we had to travel some new highways to highlight our map and we were in 5 new counties as well. We went through Jackson, Wyoming and enjoyed falling snow on the mountain pass. In fact, there was snow for most of the drive through Wyoming. We arrived in Cheyenne around 7:00 p.m. on Thursday evening and enjoyed a few hours of relaxing before some much needed rest.

Friday morning we spent some time geocaching around Cheyenne before we went to Warren Air Force Base with Laura's dad. Warren AFB is the base in Cheyenne - if you are ever in the area and see all the military planes flying around then you know what I am talking about. We went to see the antelope fawns captured on the base, they are transported to Mexico to attempt to reestablish the population there. After we grabbed some lunch we hit the road for Nebraska.

We made a detour on our way to Kearney and stayed the night in Mullen at my grandparents house, where my parents were staying as well because it was alumni weekend for dad. Grandma and Grandpa took Laura and I out for some hamburgers and we spent the evening chatting until mom and dad arrived back at the house. We made it to bed around midnight and we were up around 7:00 for breakfast before hitting the road for Kearney around 8:00. We stopped in Broken Bow, Nebraska to see the fire damage that occured last month. The fire took out an entire block of the downtown district! It was really amazing to see the damage that a fire can do to brick buildings, but at the same time it was sad to see historic buildings removed from the town in such a violent way.

We made it to Kearney around noon and got ready for the wedding at 1:30. The wedding and reception were quick and by 4:30 we were on our way back to the house to find some more comfortable clothes for the evening.

The evening was the most time we had to relax the entire trip. We went to the heritage day celebration in Kearney and listened to the live music and watched the fireworks at dark. I was glad we went and watched them, the fireworks are always a great show! We even bumped into a few friends and family at the event and it was good to catch up with everyone. We sat around talking until midnight once again before making it to bed, and we woke up around 7:00 and decided we needed to go for a run.

I took Laura on one of my favorite routes I used to run in high school - a 7 mile route to the swimming pond at Cottonmill Park, just outside of town. After the run, my sister cut our hair and we spent the afternoon running around town and seeing all the construction and work being done on the university campus. Before heading to Cheyenne on Sunday evening, we ate supper with my family. Mom always makes more food than I can eat - well actually she makes so many different types of good food that I can't find enough room for all of it - so our ride to Cheyenne was also our time to recover from stuffing ourselves. We made it to Cheyenne around 10:30 p.m. and went straight to bed. We were up Monday morning around 7:00 and we were on the road at 8:30 and headed for Missoula. It took us about 13 hours to make it back on Monday and we were both ready to be out of the truck and have some time to sit without being in the truck. We covered 2,511 miles in our 5 day adventure, and we were happy to be home for a few weeks before we do it all over again at the beginning of July!Here's the travel map once again. As usual, the yellow counties are the ones we have been to and the green ones are the newest counties we added - 3 in Idaho, and 1 each in Wyoming and Nebraska.

That about does it for me today. I've been lucky to get this much said without the hard drive making any problems so I should quit while I am ahead. Until again

-=Nolan=-