Experiencing Omaha

Today we did a little bit of sightseeing around Omaha. We started out by going to the Durham Museum. This was a great museum. It is located in the old Union Pacific Railroad terminal. This terminal was last used for passenger train service in 1971. The museum had some great interactive statues around the old terminal areas that when they sensed you were near by they would begin speaking and telling stories about different times in the history of the terminal. The terminal also still has a Soda Fountain that has been in continuous operations since 1931. Downstairs, where passenger loading took place, they have an old steam engine, Pullman cars, caboose & even a street car to tour. One Pullman car was from the 20's and the others were from the late 40's. In addition to the railroad stuff to see they had a great standing exhibit on the history of Omaha and the surrounding area. It was a great museum and if we had more than one day we would have stayed longer.

After lunch we visited the Zoo. It was 3 hours of walking in high heat (95) and high humidity (~60, as high as 80 earlier in the day). The heat index was 106. The zoo was great though. They had a lot of very good exhibits, quite a few indoors with AC. For walking around they also had a lot of shade which made it nice. The girls really enjoyed seeing the animals. They both really enjoyed the Butterfly house and Laura loved to see the elephants. The Monkeys & Great Apes were also quite the hit.

We spent the night recovering from our tiring day and will head out tomorrow to do some more Laura Ingalls Wilder sites in Minnesota & South Dakota.