Roadtrip: Nebraska

What’s more summery than a road trip to a family reunion?

I have this very bad habit of volunteering for A Thing and then getting Overly Involved. (Case in point - see Lux Arati, the fire troupe I ended up co-founding after being a sub-in for one of the group’s first shows. Or the Gowanus Dredgers, where I started as an occasional participant and now am a board member and in charge of communications and social media. etc. etc. etc.) In this case, it was a family reunion. I helped out a bit for the inaugural reunion, mostly because I wanted tee shirts that I didn’t hate. Made the shirts, shot photos, helped with some coordination. This time - I somehow ended up on the steering committee. Oh, and this is the family I’ve married into. I’m not even ‘really’ a Palo! (I keep meaning to take the name as my middle name, but was waiting till my passport expired, and then when it was about to, had to rush the renewal for upcoming travel. Sorry Palos! Next time!)

All that to say - the planning happened, designs were made, houses were rented. The Palos were getting together again! This time at Fort Robinson, in Nebraska! No, there are no family members currently living in Nebraska. The family comes from all over - Spain, to Florida to Los Angeles to NJ to London. The reunion needs to be in a place that is “equally inconvenient for everyone, but close to an airport.” We landed on Fort Robinson because Chris’ brother in law grew up in nearby Crawford and lived for a short time after a house fire on the site. We could rent HUGE houses for a reasonable rate and all be near each other. Recipe for success? We sure hoped so!

Turns out, it was an awesome location for a family reunion. Lots of open space for our ‘olympic games’ and tons for everyone to do. Horse back riding, bike rentals, hikes or just playing at the pool. The site was far from anything, but really striking. The week started with a rodeo and the buttes gave us quite the epic backdrop to our family shenanigans. There’s a reason Fort Robinson is one of the most popular locations in the country for family reunions!

There were lots of fun places within a few hours of Fort Robinson as well. Toadstool Geological Park, Mount Rushmore, Carhenge… as one cousin put it - rocks, rocks with human faces, cars stacked like rocks. What’s wrong with rocks, I ask?! Nothing! Though honestly, Mount Rushmore was exactly as you might expect - touristy and a bit weird. Felt like a check-the-box stop, though I was happy to visit it with our cousins. We even got in a nice hike at Wind Cave, though we didn’t have time to tour the cave itself.

The drive to and from the reunion was great as well. We went out there via a visit to a friend in Chicago, which was a blast. We rented an electric boat and motored around the river- fascinating to see how well set up the river is for recreation! Let’s bring some of that energy to NYC! The three of us biked up to a bird sanctuary and wandered around getting harassed by red winged blackbirds who wanted us to stay away from their grumpy looking fledglings. We stopped for a few days in Des Moines, where Chris had an office. While he worked on-site, I got good use out of the city’s rental bike set up and explored all around. Some sunburn and some exhaustion later, I’m still not sure why people rag on the city so much. I had a blast! To be fair it was only a few days, and the weather, while hot, wasn’t that bad… I suppose it’s also a lot easier to like a place when the only thing you really have to do is remember to keep a spare camera battery with you and hope you have a snack bar hidden in your backpack.

We hit up as many National Parks as we could on both sides of the trip, getting lots of stamps for my National Parks passport! I think my surprise favorite was Hoover’s house. Not only was I able to buy a fun shirt with an owl on it (Who, Who, Hoover!), the space was also pretty cool to wander around, the perfect place for us to stretch our legs.

Did I ever think Nebraska would be a place I’d be excited to visit? Not really. But was it a blast? Sure thing!

Cousin Tiffany as a mermaid. Glad I brought the tail with me!