Our first site! The Shrine of the Holy Family in Gretna; A beautiful chapel and meditation spot looking over the fields of Nebraska. Thanks to Grandpa Meryl and Grandma Kathy for the tip!
So, that’s one day in a row that we’ve gone out for a long walk in the morning. I feel like a winner. Tracie and I got up at the crack of dawn (actually, accidentally got up an hour before the crack of dawn and went back to bed for a while) and walked a little over 2 miles around the block in Lincoln. It feels good to start the day off like this, knowing we’re going to be in the car for another 300 miles today as we work our way West.
We might be spoiling ourselves a little bit, because we stayed at the Staybridge Suites in Lincoln NE last night, instead of camping in Clark. Our first day on the road, we covered a little over 450 miles and arrived in Lincoln at about 5:30. Knowing we’d want to be on the road early and exhausted from a week of travel (for Bret) and last week of school activities/packing (for everyone else), we decided we’d take a night to relax and recharge. The hotel stay was a bit of an unexpected treat, courtesy of the TravelHacking community (thank you Chris Guillebeau and the community at FlyerTalk) who showed me how to get the rooms for zero cost.
Last month, Chase and IHG launched their PriorityClub Rewards Visa – which came with the benefit of 80,000 Priority Clubs points and Platinum status after the first purchase, one free night each year, $69 annual fee waived the first year. Then I learned that IHG has monthly deals (PointBreaks) which offer select rooms for just 5,000 points per night. This means that our 80,000 points can get us 16 hotel nights, at zero cost. Unreal. Luckily for us, there was a PointBreak available in Lincoln, so we jumped on it. The upside — we’re now refreshed, clean, and back on the road before 8:30 am.
The downside — the kids got their own king suite, down the hall from us. A long ways down the hall. They got to swim, make popcorn and watch tv (a luxury they rarely get at home) all without the intervention of mom and dad. Natasha got a real pull out sofa bed with her own tv, not a lumpy rollaway shoved in the corner. Not sure there is a mountain vista in the world that can compare with that! We’re a little afraid the trip may have peaked too soon.
Gotta go – the road calls. Next stop: Ogallala Nebraska with a stop at the museum in Kearney (Sandhill Crane Capitol of the World) on the way. I love this!
