Day Twenty Eight

Up at 8.15am despite not wanting to get out of bed. Still knackered from yesterday. Knocked up dad and the three of us went down to breakfast. It was quite busy. I cooked myself a chocolate chip waffle. Went and joined Ann and dad at a table. I found out later in the day that when they first sat down a bloke appeared and said he was sitting there despite there being nothing to indicate this.

At 9.15am, I met dad and Paul in the lobby and Paul drove us to Lincoln airport just down the road. We checked dad in and then said our goodbyes to him. It is an odd feeling to say goodbye to someone who wasn't there at the start of your holiday and isn't there at the end either. We had arrived quite early as the flight wasn't due to take off until 11.15am. Being the loving, caring sons we are, we left him at the airport and drove back to the hotel.

Check out was at 11am and agreed with Paul we would check out then and say our goodbyes as well. We met in the car park and had a natter. I discovered I could start the car using the keyfob from outside the car. By the time we thought about going it was time for dad's plane to take off, so we decided to wait in the hotel car park and see if we could see it.

It eventually took off at about 11.45am. We saw it. Here it is.

Leaving on a jet plane

We hoped he was on board and hadn't been distracted in the airport telling someone about the eclipse.

We said goodbye and set off west on I-80, stopping for some fuel and supplies before we got properly underway.

Then we drove. And kept driving. After 148 miles we made it back to the point we had rejoined the road yesterday after the eclipse. I asked Ann if we could turn off and go back to visit the place we watched it from. She said no. So we kept driving. Eventually we got hungry having been moving for about 3 hours so we stopped.

Headed in to a little town called Cozad which was just off the interstate. Found a little café called The Daily Scoop. Unfortunately they weren't doing food on a Tuesday, but it looked nice so we stayed anyway. Had drinks and homemade biscuits.

Scoop shack

Whilst sitting there Ann found a booklet about the town. We decided to have a wander around when we left the café. Saw some things.

Murial

Pony Express Station

Unfortunately the Pony Express Station was moved to here from somewhere else which was a little disappointing as we thought it was stood in its original position. We then saw a marker for the 100th meridian, which the railroad company wanted to reach and celebrated doing so.

100 degrees west

We then got going again and drove the last 115 miles to Ogallala. We changed time zones back to mountain time. When we arrived the sat nav took us to a place but we couldn't see the Holiday Inn Express we were staying in. I looked on Google Maps and found it on the other side of the freeway. We drove over and parked up. Got all the stuff from the car bagged up and went in. The woman said she had no record of our booking. You may think this was odd but it made some sense to us. I'll explain.

When Ann booked the hotel months ago, she booked the Holiday Inn Express in Ogallala. Then not long before we flew out, she had an email saying that the hotel was no longer part of Holiday Inn Express chain but as the booking was with the hotel and paid for we would be still be ok to stay there. We could of course cancel if we wanted. We didn't cancel. The only thing was they didn't say what the hotel was now called but we presumed it would still look a bit like a Holiday Inn.

To make things more complicated, unbeknown to us Holiday Inn Express have just built a brand new hotel in Ogallala. So the sat nav took us to the right hotel, we just didn't know it. Then the Holiday Inn which we thought just still had the signs on it was the new one.

We drove back to the old one which is now called The Lonesome Dove Lodge. Went in and checked we were booked in. We were. Hoorah.

Checked in and lugged everything in with us ready to sort out before driving to the airport tomorrow.

Couldn't find anywhere we wanted to eat so headed to Walmart. Ann got a sandwich and I got some milk to take back and use on the last of the cereal we have lugged around the USA.

Headed back and ate in our room. Now going to sleep and will pack everything up in the morning before setting off at 11am back to Denver.

States visited - 12

Tiredness rating - 1000