You are reading the 104th and final post from Marty & Janell's Big Retirement Adventure Blog. We want to thank our faithful readers for joining us on this journey. We've had a blast and have enjoyed sharing it with you. I also want to thank Janell for making this adventure everything I had hoped it would be, and more!
Since departing Livermore 39 months ago The Beast has traveled38,108 miles, we have stayed in 169 different RV parks and campgrounds, and we have explored all 48 lower U.S. States. We are now ready to resume our regularly scheduled lives... or, you might say, our bricks and mortar lives!
For our 48th and final State we visited Omaha, Nebraska followed by one day in North Platte, NE.
From Nebraska it was a 1,500 mile drive home to Livermore by way of Denver where we visited with our sons (one of whom flew in from Dallas). Our adventure ended yesterday, October 31st.
Home at last!
Before we talk about Nebraska, let's hear what Johnny Cash had to say about our adventure:
(and a shout out to Steve Donaldson for the song suggestion!)
Don't go to sleep on Omaha! It has more to offer than you might think:
The Old Market neighborhood comprises roughly 15 blocks in central Omaha.
"At the end of the 19th century, Omaha was in its prime as a great railroad center, connecting the settled East with the wide-open West. The Old Market was the epicenter of the activity, bustling with produce dealers, buyers, and transporters."
The area fell into decline in the 1960's when vendors and wholesalers abandoned the neighborhood for new facilities along the interstate. Sam Mercer, owner of four blocks in the area, instead of tearing down the structures or selling, invited artists to open galleries in the old buildings. Soon shops, bookstores, restaurants, artists' studios and apartments moved in too. By the 1970's the area became a tourist draw and was renamed the Old Market.
I got a kick out of the upper sign and didn't even notice the lower one until sorting photos... Amusing!
This repurposed Big Boy mascot resides in front of Hollywood Candy in the Old Market district. The following four photos are from Hollywood Candy.
In addition to LOTS of candy the store also "features a vintage pinball arcade, a movie theater, plus displays of movie memorabilia and curiosities collected by the owners for decades. More than a store, we're an experience!"
The Old Market Passageway is one of the most photographed locations in Omaha. It was originally an alley where sellers would store produce in the lower level for cooler temperatures. It was covered in the 1970's, "creating a beautiful unique space for restaurants, shops and art galleries.
I was aware of "Boys Town" but did not realize that Omaha was where it started.
Today the organization has 10 locations in seven states. Girls were first admitted to Boys Town in 1979 and today make up half of its residents.
Founded by Father Flanagan in 1917, the awareness of Boys Town skyrocketed with the 1938 release of the movie "Boys Town" starring Spencer Tracy and a young Mickey Rooney. Spencer Tracy won the Academy Award for Best Actor in this film.
Janell and I decided to watch the movie while in Omaha. Here is the trailer:
Boys Town has another claim to fame: the world's largest ball of postage stamps!
Certified by Ripley's Believe It or Not, the world's largest solid ball consisting solely of postage stamps resides in Boys Town! The ball is 32 inches in diameter, weighs 600 pounds and is made up of 4,650,000 postage stamps.
This community garden is in the Dundee neighborhood. Three miles west of downtown, Dundee was developed in 1880. The charming neighborhood is considered Omaha's first suburb and is home to Warren Buffett, the Oracle of Omaha, and the world's sixth richest person.
The beautiful S-curved Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge, which opened in 2008...
Bob Kerrey is a former Nebraska Governor and Senator. He also served in the Vietnam war as a Navy Seal and was awarded the Medal of Honor for heroism in combat.
...spans the Missouri River
...between Omaha, Nebraska and Council Bluffs, Iowa
I've been telling people of late that Janell and I haven't been more than 40' apart for the past three years! In this instance we were in different states yet still joined at the hip... er, hand...
On the Iowa side of the bridge sits River's Edge Park...
...which has a very cool pelican play structure
Fertile Ground Mural
One of the largest murals in the country, measuring 70 feet tall and 465 feet long, it "tells the story of Omaha from historical references to present-day neighbors, to the far-reaching dreams of the many children in the mural."
Test your baseball vernacular!
Omaha has been the site of the College World Series since 1950. The games are now played in Charles Schwab Field, which opened in 2011. This mural is on a building across the street from the stadium.
The text and graphics in the mural are all expressions used by baseball play by play announcers. How many do you recognize?
Pioneer Courage Park in Omaha's Central Business District
From First National Bank's website (the bank commissioned the sculptures):
The series of sculptures depict four pioneer families and their covered wagons departing westward from
Omaha. Each wagon stands approximately 12' high and more than 40' long
when the oxen, horses or mules are placed in their hitches. Individual
characters range in height from 3' to 7 1/2'. This site also includes
Blair Buswell's Wagon Master that stands at 11' tall and weighs
approximately 2,000 pounds. The Wagon Master served as a crucial element
to wagon trains, guiding their members west and looking after the
families and their supplies.
About Omaha and it's role in exploring and settling of the West (from a plaque at the park):
The area known as Omaha has seen its share of visitors. The name Omaha - meaning "upstream people" - came when the Omaha Indians began using this region as a hunting ground in the early 18th century.
In July 1804 Lewis and Clark passed through, noting that the territory was well suited for fur trading and as a possible military outpost. It was near here that they first met with Native American chiefs on "Council Bluff" overlooking the Missouri River.
After the fur traders, the Mormons were the first non-native settlers to call this region home. While migrating from Illinois, they stopped near present-day Florence (north of Omaha) in an attempt to winter there in 1846. The climate was harsh, the food meager, and disease ran rampant. Of the 4,000 Mormons who made the journey, more than 600 perished.
Omaha's Central Business District as seen from Gene Leahy Mall at the Riverfront
Union Station - Durham Museum
The Art Deco style Union Station opened in 1931. At its peak of service during World War II as many as 64 passenger trains carrying 10,000 soldiers and civilians passed through the station each day. With the decline of passenger rail service Union Station closed its doors in 1971.
Union Pacific donated the building to the City of Omaha and it was subsequently restored and converted to The Durham Museum. The Durham museum is primarily dedicated to telling the story of Omaha and the region. It is quite well done and informative.
Is this how people dressed for Zoom calls in the 1940's?
As seen from the gift shop, located inside the former ticket booth. I hope the sculptor gave the museum a discount on this one...
We learned many things about Omaha, several of which I am happy to share with you here:
In World War II Omaha's Martin Bomber plant employed over 14,000 people and built 2,116 B-29 bombers over four years.The B-29's that dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Enola Gay and Bock's Car, were built in this plant.
In 1955 the Omaha Stockyards surpassed Chicago's as the busiest in the world.
Omaha's roots as a telemarketing and call center hub, employing 11,000 people in 1985, can be traced to the Cold War. In 1948, as the Cold War was beginning, the U.S. military opened the Strategic Air Command at Offutt Air Force Base; by the late 1950's the base employed 20,000 people. To support the Strategic Command and military facilities around the world Northwestern Bell constructed a high tech communications network, which included new technologies like fiber optic cables and touch-tone phones. Eventually private businesses were allowed to start using the system too, which resulted in companies from around the nation building support call centers in Omaha.
Look familiar?
Omaha's Swanson and Sons began selling frozen chicken pot pie in 1952, followed by America's first frozen TV dinner: turkey with peas and mashed potatoes (yum!). In 1953 Swanson sold 10 million of these delectable meals!
Union Pacific is headquartered in Omaha. UP is the largest railroad in North America, covering 23 states across the western two-thirds of the United States.
President Abraham
Lincoln signed the Pacific Railway Act of 1862 to create the Transcontinental Railroad. This act created the Union Pacific Railroad Company to build west from
Omaha and meet up with the east bound line constructed by the
Central Pacific Railroad (which started in Sacramento) at Promontory Point, Utah.
If you want a short refresher on the Transcontinental Railroad check out this article from History.com
The museum includes several fully restored passenger cars from the 1940's and 50's
Union Pacific Railroad’s Bailey Yard in North Platte, NE is
the largest railroad classification yard in the world!
From the Golden Spike Tower website - edited:
This massive yard covers 2,850 acres, reaching a total length of
eight miles. If put end-to-end, Bailey Yard’s tracks would be 315 miles long.
Every 24 hours, Bailey Yard handles 14,000 railroad cars. Of those,
3,000 are sorted daily in the yard’s eastward and westward yards, nicknamed “hump” yards. Using a
mound cresting 34 feet for eastbound trains and 20.1 feet for those
heading west, these two hump yards allow four cars a minute to roll
gently into any of 114 “bowl” tracks where they become part of trains headed for
destinations in the East, West and Gulf Coasts of America, as well as
the Canadian and Mexican borders. Together, these two yards have 18
receiving and 16 departure tracks that see an average of 139 trains per day coming or going.
The on-site car repair facility annually replaces 10,000 pairs of
wheels, many identified through an in-motion defect detector using
ultrasound technology to inspect the wheel. This detector was developed
by Union Pacific and is the only one in the world. Some wheel repairs
even take place without the rail car ever leaving the track, minimizing
down time.
Bailey Yard employs 2,600 engineers, mechanics, welders, inspectors and other positions.
The Golden Spike Tower and Visitor Center gives you a bird's eye view of Bailey Yard. The eighth floor is glass enclosed and the seventh floor is an open terrace from which you can hear the workings of the yard.
Each month the fueling
and service center services 9,000 locomotives, repairs 1,200 locomotives, and dispenses 18 million gallons of fuel.
This video gives you a panoramic view of Bailey Yard with three trains moving at one time:
The video below shows you how the "classification" works. Look for three oil tankers rolling down the sloped tracks in the middle of the screen. Listen for the sound of the impact when they couple. The "east hump" is the higher ground in the background behind the three tankers. It is so named because 1) it's a hump!, and 2) it handles the trains heading east. The cool thing is that these rail cars (1-4 at time) are released at the top of the hump and sent to the appropriate tracks with only gravity to propel them.
1,000 miles of our 1,500 mile drive from Denver to Livermore were on Interstate 80. After seeing signs like the one above I was reminded that a large portion of I-80 used to be US Highway 30, the Lincoln Highway. You may remember reading about the Lincoln Hwy in our Pittsburgh, PA post.
My "wanderlust" can be traced to Hwy 30/I-80. In 1962, when I was just shy of five years old, my parents moved our family of ten from White Plains, NY to Sacramento, CA. Moving to California was a dream of my Dad's that dated back to his exposure to California during WWII when he was stationed at Mather Air Force Base in Sacramento.
The migration consisted of half the family traveling by air and the other half, including me, traveling by car. Our route would have taken us on Hwy 30 and the portions of I-80 that were complete at that time. It was fun to ponder this memory from sixty years ago as Janell and I drove home from Denver.
Once again, many thanks for your interest in our blog. Until we meet again! Or, as Edward R. Murrow famously said when signing off his broadcasts: Good night and good luck.
