Diamond B Horse Motel

We made a tourist stop at the Union Pacific's Bailey Yard in North Platte, NE to see the largest railroad classification yard in the world. It is 2850 acres big and has 315 miles of track. The Golden Spike Tower was closed when we arrived, but we could hear the eerie "train chimes" made by all the squeaky trains.

On the way to York, Nebraska, we had 20-30 mile per hour winds. I was so thankful when we finally pulled into our parking spot at our Harvest Host: Diamond B. Horse Motel. Our host helped us with getting us electricity and water and then we got ready for bed.

In the morning, Diane let us feed and pet their 5 horses, 1 donkey (named Jenny), 3 cats, 2 dogs and an old americana chicken. She was really nice and talked to us about the farm. They had had lots of unique guests like the Budweiser Clydesdale team and plenty of stories over the years including a cat stowaway in an RV that headed across multiple states.

She also said that between the wind, the heat, the cold, the snow and all the bugs, including the no-see-ums, Nebraska has two nice days in a year. What?! Well, the new slogan of Nebraska is: "Honestly, it's not for everyone." Wow, I do NOT want to live in Nebraska. It is NOT for me. Furthermore, there are granaries and corn fields all around us being harvested. Every time a big semi drives down our dirt road, dust goes everywhere; it happens very often during the day. Yuck!

  

Caleb had planned out the activities in Nebraska; he wanted to go to the Edgerton Explorit Center. This was a small museum with a bunch of games and we were the only guests there! The kids really enjoyed the climbing wall with an interactive screen projected onto it which could play a variety of games. The kids also played with a plane simulator.

The room also had multiple building stations, bubbles, a paint your shadow on the wall with a strobe light room and ball chute created with a wall of PVC glued onto magnets. The downstairs consisted of even more games. A worker showed us some birds of prey outside too! The kids really enjoyed their time here. The most interesting part of the museum to me was the hallway dedicated to Edgerton. He created the strobe light and the first "moving pictures" by using a strobe light and an open aperture.

We finished off the day at home with one of our old favorite read-alouds, "Peter Nimble and his Fantastic Eyes."

We packed up on Tuesday morning and drove to another tourist stop, Lee's Marble Museum. We parked the rig across the street in a parking lot and to our dismay, they were doing construction. We had to unhook to be able to back up and move the RV. While doing so, a piece of our towing equipment disappeared and we had to search the parking lot looking for it. Michael found that the piece had rolled and fallen in the bumper (yay!), and then we had to hook up the Jeep again.

We walked across the street to the museum. Lee himself was there to greet us and show us his collection that he started in 1954. It is the largest marble collection in the world. He showed us marbles that were made before 1940s that had uranium in it and would glow under a black light, which he had. It was cool! He also showed us some of his favorites, some of which had mica in them and one had flowers inside.