Road Trip 2011

Friday, August 26: the road trip begins.

First stop: Lincoln, Nebraska. After a quick visit to the tourist office in the Haymarket area, we located our roller blading path for a bit of leg stretching 8.5 hours into the drive. Starting at the Sunken Gardens we bladed out away from town for about ½ an hour. The trip seemed a little like going back in time – kids on bikes yelled “call you later,” as they headed opposite directions home from school.

Second stop: Kearney (pronounced Carney), Nebraska. Kearney has a surprisingly vibrant downtown by the railroad tracks where trains whiz by at speeds I’ve never seen – a little scary frankly. By the tracks, we stopped in at one of the local breweries, Thunderhead, and had dinner and two good beers: their Scottish ale and the chocolate orange porter (really, you could barely detect hints of chocolate or orange). After dinner, our walk around downtown took us by Fort Dentistry (in neon at night), Daylight Donuts (a stop for Saturday AM), and the local coffee house, Tru Coffee, where they clued me into the local farmer’s market in the Kmart parking lot on Saturdays at 8am.

Saturday morning started with a visit to Daylight Donuts (it was packed!) and then to the large and plentiful farmer’s market where I loaded up on fresh local produce to take us through our first few days in Colorado before the Thursday market in Estes Park.