Road Trip

We took a road trip from Thursday through Sunday. Dropped Holden off with grandma, and the dogs off with the vet, and hit the road. We only had our destination in mind, since my dear husband had made reservations at a beautiful ranch cabin in Western Nebraska.



The first leg of our journey on Thursday left us at Broken Bow for the night, where we happened upon the town's annual summer festival. We stayed at a beautiful old hotel called The Arrow Hotel, walked a little bit around the square, sat on the restaurant patio and drank wine and smoked a cigar (I took two puffs)(they had a large assortment of specialty cigars). It was a beautiful day...how many days in July have a high of 70?!



We woke up on Friday morning and went to a REAL doughnut shop, none of those Casey's fluffy doughnuts. These were heavy and with fillings. I don't normally like doughnuts but I was able to eat about half of my long john before handing it over to my DH to finish off. I spent most of the time in the doughnut shop lamenting my choice of doughnut and being incredibly jealous of his creme filled bismark.
Also, the doughnut shop reminded me of this guy I sort of dated when I was a teenager. He used to pick me up around 11 p.m. in the summer to go drive around and he always smelled like doughnuts because he worked at a doughnut shop and he had just finished making the batch for the next day. My DH would be annoyed that I thought of that whilst in the doughnut shop with him, but I've read that a smell is one of the strongest memory triggers. Strange.

Anyway, after the wonderful doughnuts we played a leisurely round of golf at a nice little course there in Broken Bow (and by played I mean he played and I drove the cart), and then headed to highway 2 where we took the sandhills scenic trail. Nothing but rolling sand dunes and blue sky and the road. The road winds along the Union Pacific railroad tracks through the sandhills and it is gorgeous.

We took our time and stopped at villages along the way. Sadly, many of the buildings in these tiny towns are dilapidated and the towns are desolate--proving that both the flight to the bigger cities and the economy have almost killed off these little villages in the rolling hills of Northwest Nebraska.

I had a fantastic chicken salad sandwich at a little cafe/coffee shop/scrapbooking store in one of the small towns--the name of which escapes me at the moment. And you know how much I like chicken salad. Only this one was even better because it was chicken salad, thinly sliced cucumber, and lettuce on french bread. I'm using cucumbers all the time on my chicken salad now. I can never return to the old way.

To be continued....