First off, I must apologize for not keeping up with my blog updates during my stay here. Every time I go to sit in the computer chair to work on my blog, Mr. Curtis comes and sits right in front of the computer screen which makes it difficult! He is off napping somewhere, so maybe I can update my blog in peace.
In my last blog update, I told you we were going to the Railroad Days here in Omaha. What FUN! We went on both Saturday and Sunday and saw different places each day. I will tell you all about our adventures on Saturday during Railroad Days.
Kaya and I went to 3 different places today with host mom and dad. We started off at Lauritzen Gardens which is a botanical gardens, they have lots of different garden areas (such as English garden, Japanese garden, etc...). The Japanese garden area also included all different styles of Japanese lanterns made out of stone, those were so cool! It had a replica of Mt. Fuji too. The funding and materials for this garden were donated to Lauritzen Gardens by Omaha's sister city in Japan. Then we hopped on board the Union Pacific mini caboose for a ride through the park. It was just the right size for Kaya and me!
There was a special exhibit at the gardens called the "architectural wonders of the world". It was amazing! All the exhibits were made entirely of natural elements (stone, branches, nuts, twigs, etc..) and each one represented one of the architectural wonders. We got to visit so many far off places --- the Great Wall of China, the Egyptian pyramids, and the Eiffel Tower in Paris France!! I am bringing home some brochures of Lauritzen Gardens & the Wonders of the World display to show all my sisters. They would have loved this place too.
At Lauritzen Gardens they have the neatest model railroad garden display, we loved watching the model trains running along the tracks! The railroad engineer was very nice to us and let us actually go inside the train display (which people do not get to do) so we felt very lucky! All the buildings in this display and all the train tressels and bridges are made out of natural elements like twigs, branches, bark, etc... The buildings were replicas of buildings found in the Omaha area, and the trains would continuously run along the tracks. There were several levels of tracks too, there were 4 or 5 different kinds of trains running.
We went to Kenefick Park which is right by Lauritzen Gardens. This is where the Union Pacific Railroad has a display of 2 huge locomotives. One is a steam locomotive called "Big Boy", and the other is a diesel locomotive called the "Centenial".
From here we took a bus ride over to Council Bluffs, IA to see some railroad museums. Omaha, NE and Council Bluffs, IA are right across the river from each other. We went over the Missouri River, and host mom and dad told me about taking boat rides on the river. They had planned to take me out on their boat for a ride, but the boat is not running very good right now so they did not want to risk it. That would have been fun, but maybe next time I come to Omaha to visit we can go for a boat ride.
Our next stop was the Union Pacific Railroad Museum in Council Bluffs, Iowa. This museum is located in an old free library building that was donated to the city of Council Bluffs many years ago. This was a neat place to visit, they also had an indoor model train display. I got to pick out something in the gift shop... I selected a whistle shaped like a train locomotive. Won't that be fun!! I also got a pin that says Union Pacific Railroad on it.
Then we hopped on a trolley! and went to the RailsWest Museum in Council Bluffs, IA. This used to be a Rock Island Railroad Depot. In the train yard, there were lots of train cars that we could go through. We went on several different passenger cars and lounge cars. We even ate a late breakfast on the dining car! We were having such a fun day until we met up with this evil little boy. Kaya & I were having our picture taken inside the cab of the locomotive. Suddenly this boy appears out of nowhere and smacked Kaya down and she landed on the metal floor! He smacked me down also, but host mom was able to grab me somehow before I hit the floor. Talk about scary! You should have seen host mom screaming like a crazy person at the evil child... it was pretty entertaining LOL. After we all recovered from our scare, we went inside a train post office car, have you ever heard of that before? Was that ever fun! Kaya and I spent time sorting mail into different mail bags and slots, they used to employ people to sort the US mail while the trains traveled across the country. We think that would be an interesting job to have.
We had such a great time today at the Railroad Days! I learned a lot and had fun too :).
Here is an album of my adventures today: http://picasaweb.google.com/xmaskat/TravelingKitSRailroadDaysAdventurePartOne#
No comments:
Post a Comment