Home again -- and a fire

Well, this was going to be a lovely post about our lovely vacation -- and it still will be, in part. But I also need to write about what's going on right now. A fire. Yesterday afternoon, around  2 or 3 pm, a fire started up in Bear Canyon, near the headwaters of Bear Creek (which runs through our park and past the kids' old elementary school). It looks like everything is going to be OK -- it's terribly dry, but the winds aren't super high. But we were actually told to evacuate yesterday. This is what I could see from my backyard.

In the process, I learned something about myself. Apparently, I am one of those people who ignores evacuation orders, who makes excuses, who "does their own research," who, bottom line, is a problem for emergency personnel. 

I did not think I was that kind of person. It's a big surprise to find out that I am.

Now, I've got to say, it was confusing. For hours they were posting conflicting maps of the evacuation area and saying conflicting things. That's another thing I learned yesterday: in the midst of a crisis, information coming in may be somewhat screwed up, and you do have to rely in part on your own judgement. And around 11 pm they posted this nice map, which shows that we are in the "All Clear."

Still. 

I did get out the cat carriers and the suitcases and I packed everyone's clothes and whatnot. I made several interesting decisions about what to take. I pulled a photo of Rocket Boy's parents off the wall and stuck it in my bag, thinking as I did so that he probably has no electronic copies of any of his family's pictures and no one else in his family would have much of anything. I spent several minutes thinking about which books to take. I concluded that most were replaceable (not sure that's true), so I just packed some library books and recent acquisitions that I haven't read yet. 

I pulled out our wedding album and my trip-around-the-world album, but I left the other photo albums in the bookcase. I probably should think about that a little more. There are a lot of irreplaceable photos in those. 

I didn't pack the glass stein that belonged to the twins' great-grandfather. But I did include the small book of important documents from Rocket Boy's family, including his father's false papers from when he was a spy for the U.S. Army after the war.

I packed all my little earrings, but none of my animal pin collection. I probably would have regretted that later. I simply forgot about them.

I'm writing as though the danger is over, and I hope it is, but we don't know for sure.

So, instead of just sitting around being nervous, let's remember our nice trip to Nebraska. We left on Tuesday morning, around 10:30 am, and took Highway 52 east to Highway 76, which merges with I-80 just across the Nebraska border. We ate lunch at the Home Plate restaurant in Fort Morgan, where we had eaten once before, when we went to that town to visit Philip K. Dick's grave. I recommend that restaurant -- not expensive, just down-home good cooking. You can tell all the locals go there.

We reached our first hotel, in Kearney, around 6:45 pm. It was a Ramada by Wyndham, and I was a little doubtful about it. The reviews on TripAdvisor were pretty bad. But it had a two queen suite with sofabed, and that's what we need these days to stay in a room with the twins. Unfortunately, when we checked in, they told us they had no more rooms of that type. Instead, they gave us a king bed suite and added a rollaway bed "for no extra charge." I'm pretty sure they did charge us extra, but oh well.

The hotel was amazingly terrible, so much so that I'm sure we'll never forget it. First of all, there was almost no one there. I don't see how they could possibly have run out of queen bed suites, unless they only have one or two. More likely, those rooms were dirty or full of bugs (as shown in some of the TripAdvisor reviews). We wandered around the hotel as if it was ours alone. I'm sure it wasn't safe -- the back door remained unlocked through the night, and the doors to some rooms were ajar. We could have spread out into multiple rooms and no one would ever have known. We swam in this lovely pool, but it was quite cold and very dirty, both inside and out. The hot tub, when we finally found it the next day, had been closed due to a health violation. That fancy structure next to the pool is the Elephant Eye bar, but it was closed too.

The king bed, at least, was comfortable and I slept well (the kids did less well on the sofa and rollaway bed). Before we went to bed we watched a show we found called "Pure Nebraska," on the MeTV channel. On Pure Nebraska's Facebook page it says, "We celebrate rural life and the state's number one industry: agriculture." After that we watched the news, and then at 11:30 pm, "The Twilight Zone" came on, so of course we couldn't miss that. Teen B, however, fell asleep after the opening credits, and snored sweetly all through it. 

The next morning we went down to breakfast, but the room was dark and there was no one around. It wasn't even 9 am yet, so we couldn't have missed it. We asked the maid and she said she would ask someone, but no one ever showed up to ask. We finally found coffee, milk, and cold cereal, and had that -- it's all I would have wanted anyway, but the kids were disappointed, so we stopped at a Starbucks later.

As we drove away from the hotel, we saw two police cars in the parking lot. The officers were talking to some women who looked like hotel guests. They seemed very upset. Who knows what that was about.

Our goal that day, Wednesday, was to see some sandhill cranes. I had a brochure which listed some viewing spots. I hadn't arranged an early-morning tour like we did with my mother 19 years ago because I knew the twins wouldn't appreciate it. So we just drove along rural roads, looking at the cranes in the field. Oh, but I'm forgetting something! First we went to Fort Kearny, thinking there might be something interesting there, but it was closed. On the way there I realized we were almost out of gas. Rocket Boy's car is a hybrid, but it doesn't go forever. So I nervously drove back into town, to a gas station. There, Rocket Boy couldn't find his wallet! So he called the Starbucks to see if he'd left it there, and we drove back there to check it out for ourselves. I was horrified: if he'd lost his wallet, he couldn't get back to St. Louis, because he couldn't pay for gas or a hotel room. I wondered at what point I should call our credit union to report his card missing.

Then, as we were just about ready to give up, Rocket Boy noticed that his sunglasses were on the car's dashboard. Then what was in his shirt pocket? Oh, the wallet!

So, that took some time. But eventually we returned to the rural roads and the cranes. I really enjoyed seeing them in the fields, as did Rocket Boy. The twins were less interested, but who cares about them. We eventually made our way to the Iain Nicolson Audubon Center at Rowe Sanctuary, where to our great surprise we were required to wear masks! It was like suddenly stepping into California. I had brought a package of masks with me on the trip, but Teen B was unhappy that he hadn't brought his own favorite mask from home. Teen A stayed in the car. Teen B and I explored the gift shop happily, and eventually bought him a crane t-shirt and me some postcards, which I later forgot to mail.

After the Audubon Center, we went back to Kearney and had a late lunch at a Culver's -- I'm sure there was some local place that we should have eaten at, but oh well. Then we drove to Wood River and explored the small cemetery there, looking for my great-grandparents. I should note that we had terrible weather that day -- very cold and with a dreadful north wind. I walked up and down the rows -- it's a small rural cemetery, but still, that was a lot of walking. There is a directory in the center of the cemetery, but it took a while to make sense of it. Finally I figured out roughly where the graves had to be, walked over there -- and there they were. My grandfather, his first wife, his second wife (her sister), and two of their children. A bleak headstone, a bleak graveyard, that cold north wind blowing. It was memorable.

Then we drove on to Grand Island and checked in to our next hotel, a Best Western Plus. It was as boring a hotel as I've ever seen, but it was clean and well-run. After the Ramada in Kearney, we were glad to embrace boredom. We lay down on our beds for a short rest and then drove back to Wood River to have dinner with the relatives -- my father's cousin's widow Virginia and her younger son (who is a farmer) and his wife. My mother and Rocket Boy and I had eaten with them 19 years ago, and I remembered how they prepared an enormous meal for us, like a Thanksgiving dinner. 

This time it was much simpler (Virginia is now 95!) and yet still very lovely -- three kinds of pizza, sliced strawberries, and a vegetable plate, water to drink, and ice cream for dessert. Just perfect. We made the twins leave their stupid phones in the car, which I think was the right thing to do, but it made them fidgety and generally badly behaved. Teen A pulled all the pepperoni off his pizza (he likes plain cheese best), then put his leftovers on my plate, and then started putting napkins on my water glass and other nonsense, while I tried to ignore him. I was having such a good time chatting with the relatives that I wanted to wave a wand and have the twins disappear. At one point, Rocket Boy took them outside to run around, and I used the time to explain about the ADHD and dyslexia and all that, so they understood. It's OK. Five years ago, if we'd come for a visit then, the twins would have been crawling under the table, hitting each other, and screaming. 

Back at the hotel, we swam for a long time in the fabulous pool -- just the right temperature -- with breaks to enjoy the fabulous hot tub. And then we ran upstairs to catch the last of "Pure Nebraska," the news, and of course "The Twilight Zone." Once again, Teen B fell asleep and missed it, and the rest of us fell asleep to the sound of his gentle snores.

Thursday morning we had a very nice breakfast at the hotel, checked out, and headed for the Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer. I couldn't remember whether I'd been there before. The weather was supposed to be better that day, but it wasn't really. The wind had died down quite a bit, so that helped, but it was still cold and gloomy (Teen B was slightly sorry he'd decided to wear shorts and flip flops, but only slightly). I remembered that when I went to Nebraska with my mother for Spring Break back in 1977 it was so hot I thought I would die from the humidity, and it also snowed. This time we had cold and wind. All those things can happen in Colorado during Spring Break, too, of course, except the humidity.

We didn't have time to do the Stuhr Museum justice, only went to two buildings, but I did really enjoy the exhibit of crane art in the main building. Apparently every year they ask a different Nebraska artist to make art relating to the sandhill cranes. My favorite was the picture of the cranes flying, on the right. I thought about buying it, but it was over $1000, and anyway, we have nowhere to put a new picture. Still, I liked it a lot.

Rocket Boy was scheduled to have a conference call for work at 1 pm, and it was close to 12 when we left the museum, so we decided to stop somewhere along the way to Lincoln to have lunch. We ended up in York, Nebraska, where my parents eloped back in 1943. I wanted to look for the church where they were married, but couldn't find it online and in the end, we didn't have time. We ate at an Applebee's inside a hotel, Rocket Boy's call was cancelled at the last minute but he did talk to a colleague for a while during lunch, and by 1:30 or so we were back on the road, headed for Lincoln.

I had been texting my cousin Kathy, who lives in Lincoln, to let her know our progress. When we finally got to Lincoln, we drove first to my father's parents' house, which is really the heart of Lincoln for me. That's where we always stayed when we went to visit. The neighborhood has gone downhill over the years, but the house looked better on this visit than it did the last time I saw it -- 30+ years ago? Someone's looking after it. 

There was a Starbucks a few blocks away, so we went there next, and I texted Kathy. She met us there in about 15 minutes and it was so wonderful to see her. We chatted for a while and then drove over to the cemetery to look at our grandparents' graves. Her dad is buried there too. After quite a bit of walking we found the graves. Then she left to go back to work, and Rocket Boy and I spent a lot more time looking for my other grandparents' graves, finally locating them. Then we headed for our hotel, another Best Western Plus, identical to Wednesday's hotel. We relaxed for a little bit and then drove to a Cracker Barrel nearby where we had arranged to meet Kathy and her husband for dinner.

Before the trip, I had reminded Rocket Boy and the twins not to talk politics while we were in Nebraska (or for that matter, eastern Colorado). I really didn't know what my relatives' political leanings were, but Nebraska is a pretty red state, so better safe than sorry. I wanted to interact with them outside of politics. In Wood River we managed this successfully and had a wonderful time. With the Lincoln relatives, what a relief to discover that they were pro-mask and pro-vaccine. We spent some time around the table at the Cracker Barrel talking about anti-vaxxers and how stupid and destructive they are.

We didn't bring up Trump, though -- not there, not anywhere. The waitress might have been a Trumper. You can't be too careful.

After dinner we went back to the hotel and had one more glorious swim, one more viewing of "Pure Nebraska," and one more "Twilight Zone." This time, Teen B stayed awake for it. In fact, we were all still awake at midnight, so we all did the new Wordle, even Teen A, who always says that's a stupid game for Boomers. We were all laughing and having a wonderful time. 

I should note that this was a fantastic family vacation. I don't think the kids got that much out of the official "activities": cranes, museums, cemeteries, family visits. They did seem mildly interested -- though puzzled -- to meet a lot of relatives they'd never heard of and see the houses of people long dead (at one point Teen B asked me, "Do my grandparents have houses?" I said, "Yes, we live in one of them!"). Mostly they just complained. But the evenings! The swimming, the funny Nebraska television shows, doing Wordle together. We all got along so well and had so much fun. I kept thinking, this might be as good as it gets. Next year or the year after they may turn into obnoxious teenagers who won't even speak to their parents. Treasure this time, I kept telling myself. I don't think I got mad at anyone the whole trip, I was so focused on appreciating every moment.

The next morning, Friday, we had another good hotel breakfast, checked out one more time, and then drove to south Lincoln to see my other grandparents' old house. It was a pretty crummy house when my mother lived there as a child, but it must have been upgraded through the years. It looked great and well-loved. It even had a St. Patrick's Day-themed cover on the mailbox (the inhabitants must switch it out for different holidays). There was a welcome sign on the door. The maple tree my mother planted around 1928 is still hanging in there almost 100 years later. She always wished it would grow tall enough to cover the lawn with leaves. I'll bet it does that now.

You can see from the photo that the sun finally came out that day, and it was a little warmer. After 55th Street, I decided we should go to Morrill Hall, the University of Nebraska natural history museum, since I have good memories of that. I vividly remembered a model I saw there in 1977, of a giant prehistoric rhinoceros called a baluchithere, but sadly it was gone. I asked the person at the front desk about it, and she said she'd seen pictures of it, but didn't know what had happened to it. I later discovered online that it had been removed back in 1992 because it was from Asia and the museum had decided to focus more on fossils from Nebraska. I had a postcard of the baluchithere on the wall of my dorm room in college. I probably still have it somewhere.

Morrill Hall was as delightful as ever, even without the baluchithere, and we spent an hour or so viewing the four floors of exhibits. Finally, around 12, we left. We stopped at a Scooter's coffee shop for a snack and then drove on to the Omaha airport, where Rocket Boy left us off. The boys and I had a bit more lunch while waiting for our plane, and then flew back to Denver. The plane was full and we were in the very last row on the right. Unfortunately, the plane was about 20 minutes late, so we ended up missing the bus back to Boulder and had to wait another hour for the next one. But it all worked out, we got home, and the cats were happy to see us. 

And the next day there was a fire. But I just heard the latest press briefing on it, and it is now 35% contained and did not grow at all today. We have one more day of fire weather and then it will snow. They said we'll be seeing (and smelling, breathing) smoke probably all this coming week. I can live with that. But I'm going to wait until Tuesday to unpack our suitcases.