Commencing the Nebraska portion of our trip! It’s about a five hour drive between Denver and Gordon and we stopped in Kimball to visit with Mary Sue. We had a quick lunch in Scottsbluff while watching the radar and storm warnings and had an interesting drive to Gordon, listening to the radio and tracking the storms to avoid hail and potential tornadoes. I was dredging up everything I could remember about western Nebraska geography and felt like I was doing word math problems on the fly (if a storm is moving in direction a at x mph and you are heading in direction b at y mph, will you intersect the storm and sustain hail damage?). A break in the weather as we drove north allowed for a stop at Carhenge (it’s tradition by this point!) and then we finally made it to Gordon unscathed. Whew!

We had a wonderful stay with my parents - it was relaxing and allowed a lot of time for chatting and hanging out. We played Oh Hell! (Norah is a vastly improved player this year and crushed us!), did a few puzzles, watched the original Top Gun and saw the sequel in Chadron (we thought it was really good), visited with friends and went to coffee, spent a day in Rapid City shopping, and did a day trip to Fort Robinson. At Fort Rob Norah and I did the jeep ride up Cheyenne Bluffs and we all did the historic trolley tour. And no surprise, we spent about an hour at the rock shop in Crawford before eating runzas in Chadron and having ice cream at the Covered Wagon (runzas and the Covered Wagon are other items on the list when visiting home). And we all suffered through our annual family photo session - this really is like pulling teeth! I love having the pictures though, so it’s worth the hassle (I’m not sure there is consensus on this point, lol).