We are! Penn Sta… er… Nebraska!

We left Marfa, Texas and promptly headed north to the land of open restaurants (Santa Fe, New Mexico).  It was the first of three days of long, long drives.  For once we based our destination on something other than blindly following the internet- this time we have Newsies to thank for ending up in Santa Fe.

Aside from Adam singing rendition after rendition of the song, Santa Fe was a pretty nice place to stop over for the night.  We found a randomly really pretty park in the city at sunset and ate some pizza… which wasn’t so bad as long as you thought of it more as bread with a whole lot of toppings on it.  The next day we set out early for another long, long day of driving across the flat expanse of the Middle West.  Before we reached the Great Plains, however, we stopped off in the southeastern part of Colorado for a quick hike.

It was beautiful and a really nice way to break up the drive.  That night we stayed in Burlington, Colorado- a tiny town off of I-70 where you can not even drink the water because nitrate levels are too high (we found out this is the case in most of Nebraska as well- something we thought we would have heard about before now…).  We only stopped in Burlington because I found great reviews online for this coffee shop– but it wasn’t open anyhow, so the stop was really just a midway point between Santa Fe and Lincoln.

Sunday was another long day of driving, but luckily Lincoln, Nebraska was waiting for us at the end of the trip and we wouldn’t have to drive again for another week.  The first thing I noticed when we got to Lincoln was how much it reminded me of Penn State- a smallish town that centers around a Big Ten school- but since our bed time is about the time college kids go out, the parties and late night drinking really had no effect on us (also there were no “WE ARE!!” cheers to wake us up in the middle of the night).

Lincoln was a nice break from figuring out the logistics of camping and finding food.  We took one road trip with some of Adam’s friends from work to eat at Modern Love (the vegan restaurant in Omaha)- it was great and a nice surprise considering we didn’t think we’d find much veggie-friendly food in beef country.  Speaking of veggie-friendly food, we did have a great veggie burger (ok… I went there twice… Adam went three times) and the ice cream we had was pretty great (no Ice Cream Show, but we’ll take it).  Vera finally got her staples out and is all healed!  (Thanks to the nicest vet ever!)

Overall, Nebraska was a great place to visit for a week, but the mountains are calling and we can’t wait until Colorado!