Weekend in Review - Omaha Weekend Part 1

We are going to break down this past weekend into two post... here's part 1

My mom decided that she wanted to do something special for Lindsey's 21st birthday as well.  This past summer Lindsey was an intern at the St. Louis Zoo in their Great Apes area.  Lindsey has wanted to work with apes for a long time and is majoring in biology to hopefully become a zoo keeper someday.  It was a great experience for her to work at the St. Louis Zoo (you could just tell how much she loved it).  Since she's had the behind the scenes look at zoos she wanted to see what other ape exhibits at other zoos looked like.  My mom researched some zoos in the area and realized that the Omaha Zoo has a wonderful ape exhibit (as well as being one of the best zoos in the country).  Since Omaha is not that far away (7 hours) and we could stop by a national park she decided that's where they would go.  Then I'm lucky because I got to tag along on this wonderful trip.

Side Note:  Not to disappoint you at the beginning of this post but we won't get to any of the zoo stuff until Part 2.

We left on Friday afternoon and drove all the way to Seneca, KS.  We got dinner at a local place in town - The Windmill and went back to the hotel room for the night - nothing very exciting happened on Friday.

On Saturday we ate breakfast at the hotel and then headed to Beatrice, NE to visit Homestead National Monument of America. 

This National Park site talks about the Homestead Act of 1862 which allowed people 160 acres of land for free if they moved to the land, built a house, and worked the land (farmed).  This place was chosen for the park site as it was where the very first Homestead property was located.  What I found very interesting about this site was how long the Homestead Act lasted... it was finished in the lower 48 states in 1978 and finished in Alaska in 1985!  That mean my parents could have been Homesteaders in they so wished.

Outside the visitor's center was a wall of states.  The open square in the center showed how much of the state was Homesteaded - here is Lindsey next to Missouri.

This house was not originally on the property (moved from about 12 miles away) but was a Homesteader's house.  Believe it or not 12 people lived in this house.

While we were there we got our National Park Passports stamps.  This marks my 13th stamp in my book.  Overall I've been to 39 National Parks... doesn't really compare to my mom who has been to about 100 more than that...

Holla!

Then we headed up to Omaha.  We first checked out where our hotel was and then went down to Old Market area of Omaha.  We walked around a bit and checked out some of the shops. 

We then went back to the hotel room to kill some time before dinner.  We decided to go to Crescent Moon Ale House.  It was super yummy and had a TON of stuff on the menu to choose from.  We ended up getting an appetizer that seemed different from the norm...

Fried Green Pepper Rings

I got some good chili and salad for my meal as well.

We then went over to the movie theater to see Thor 2.  It ended up being one of those dine-in theaters... so had we known we would have just eaten there... but instead we got dessert there - funnel cake sticks with caramel and chocolate dipping sauces - super yummy.

The movie was in 3D and I enjoyed it more than I though... I mean Thor... he's one good looking guy... you can't go too wrong - amiright??