Day 12: Home, where my thoughts escaping

Homeward bound.

We drove through the night to Chimney Rock, getting there at 6:30 a.m. as the sun was coming up. We went a little out of our way to go by this famed Oregon Trail marker, but what's an All America trip without a taste of past trips west? After Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons, it wasn't as impressive as it might have been otherwise, but it was humbling to walk through the cemetery by Chimney Rock and remind ourselves of the bravery of our ancestors.

Next stop was Gothenburg, NE, pony express capital. We went to an original pony express station where the gentlemen who worked there gleefully took the opportunity of a full room to give us a little history of the pony express. It's hard to imagine that something so iconic for our culture only lasted a year and a half.

Linoma landlocked lighthouse.

We were hot and grimy and aimed for our next stop to be a place where we could jump in the water. We stopped at Linoma Beach, home of the landlocked lighthouse. Linoma Beach was directly downstream from a sand and gravel mine. Fortunately, we didn't have to go through the ethical dilemma of to swim or not to swim in clearly polluted water because the beach was closed for the weather. We couldn't figure out why hot, muggy weather would necessitate the closing of a beach, but we've never had a beach right by a sand and gravel mine either.

Swimming was on our brain and although there are no entries in swimming holes.org for Nebraska or Iowa, we found a little lake right off of 80 in Iowa called Lake Manawa. Although we nearly circumnavigated the lake, we didn't drive by the public beach which was closed due to extreme flooding of the lake. No respite from the heat or grime for us. We grabbed dinner and headed back on the road toward home, getting to see some fantastic roadside attractions without even leaving the road.

Sapp Brothers coffee pot water tower