No Kool Aid, but canned pasta

Today we toured Lincoln. It’s a small city with an almost rural feel.  We went into their “historic” area - now restaurants and shops.  Roamed gallery space and Independent book store.  It was nice to see the space, but nothing particularly exciting.  It does make me wonder though, why Hartford doesn’t have a similar space?  You would think… but then, Hartford doesn’t do a lot of things you would think.

We then toured the Great Plains Art museum.  A small juried show of local and Native American artists.  Small museums.  I’m telling you they are the worth while ones.  The art was interesting and not the standard dead white men or bucolic trees (or large fields of color.)

But the real highlight of the day was the International Quilt Museum.  Again another fairly small museum, but the quilts were gorgeous.  One of this show’s was signature quilts - not my favorite type, but they made it intriguing.  They had great displays that explain styles - we’ve lots of ideas to try.  Lots of pictures, but too many to post here.  I’m thinking when we’re back with good internet and reliable computers, I’ll upload the pics online.  Meanwhile suffice it to say - the quilts were good: classical styles, contemporary designs, political statements. 

The quilts made Lincoln.  Because quilts aside, we’re not liking NE.  But we moved on to Omaha, thinking perhaps Omaha would be more compelling to us.

When we got to Omaha, we spent an hour driving around in a fairly small circle trying to find a particular motel - set of motels actually.  The AAA book gave directions, and we tried to follow them.  Multiple times.  It was laughable.  A spaghetti of  road among mall and highway. 

We finally decided it was ridiculous and we’d just move on and found another little hotel farm - not in the AAA book.  It was pretty frustrating.  But we picked up a better map at the motel and went into the city for dinner.

Omaha is the largest city in NE - and it clearly is so.  It has all the things you might want and can think of.  It is also clearly a true city and one that is filled with industry - banking, finance, that kind of thing.  The city itself is stereotypical:   One way streets, bad driving, streets that skip numbering.  North and South streets with the same number but don’t match up, bad driving, various good and bad neighborhoods, bad driving….

By the time we got downtown and in the restaurant district, I think we were both frustrated enough to not care what we ate.  Though we did get an unexpected surprise.  In this location (prompted by one of the large corporations) is a bronze statue of Chef Boyardee.  If you touch his hat it’s said to bring you good luck in the kitchen.  We did… though I have more concern that it will jinx me than help.

We had Omaha steak for dinner!  It did taste different, better, than beef back home, but not worth the drive and in this case - the city for it.  I’m sure it will hurt me tonight, but how could I not here?

We’ll look around some more tomorrow, see what interests us and head East.  We are earlier than anticipated at this point, so true adventure begins.

PS - I forgot to mention that at the Hasting Museum - there was a taxidermied squirrel chipmonk animal mentioned earlier.  It IS in fact a "13 stripe ground squirrel sometimes called a gopher."  So, as it turned out the crazy artist wasn't actually so crazy. Hmm?