Nebraska State Fair 2016

Hastings Museum

When I was growing up in Grand Island, Nebraska, every Saturday morning I would wake up and beg my mom to take me to the Hastings Museum. I thought it was the greatest place ever. We have a similar natural history museum here (a bunch of "preserved" animals, rocks, etc.) called Morrill Hall. My kids like it, and we go often, but it doesn't even compare to the reaction that they had to the Hastings Museum when we visited yesterday. We were there for three hours and they were not even close to ready to leave. I was so happy that they loved it as much as I loved it as a child. They have added a lot to it, but some things were just the same as when I was little. They still have the snake in a box where you push the button and the tail rattles. As a person with a snake phobia, this has always been both terrifying and totally enthralling. Adam and I were impressed with the fact that next to all of the birds on display, they had an example that bird's egg. They now have a nature center where you can touch things and look through a microscope, and they have added the Kool Aid museum and a public library branch into the building. Hastings is the place where Kool Aid was created. If you live in Nebraska or are driving through, it is totally worth a stop. And I am now motivated to actually purchase this book that has been in my Amazon cart for a while...

Camping 2016 (part three)

This should wrap up the camping photos for this year. The last part of the trip was focused on fishing, a visit to the Strategic Air Command & Aerospace Museum, some hiking, and a drive through what we call, appropriately enough, "the drive through zoo". Thanks for looking through all of my photos, and this year I really am going to print some books out for our family and for Grandma Kathy. We are so happy that Grandma gets to join us on this trip, and I am happy that we didn't let one particularly bad year stop us from continuing our camping tradition. Time to reserve the cabin for next year...