Making Memories: Part I

 

Time passes quickly. I know writers are supposed to avoid tired, worn out cliches like that. But the sentiment is definitely apt. When the 2026-27 school year begins, Kinley will be a freshman in high school. Brooke will leave elementary school behind for her first foray into middle school as a sixth grader.

And we know we're not getting any younger. So we decided to make a few memories while the girls were still willing - and able - to spend a few days with us. With their packed schedules - no matter the season - carving out time is a challenge. Last year, we took the girls on a short trip to Branson, Missouri. This year, the destination was Omaha. 

Thankfully, Kinley and Brooke were patient with the old people. And, as the society pages in the old weekly newspapers would report, "A good time was had by all." 

We left Topeka on Memorial Day. A flag-filled park in Auburn, Nebraska, caught our eye. We "crashed" the community's Memorial Day celebration in Legion Park. And it gave us a beautiful place to stretch our legs.

Legion Memorial Park is designated as a National Historic Park Site (one of six in the state of Nebraska). The granite and limestone building structures were part of the Works Progress Administration projects of President Roosevelt. On Memorial Day, there were hundreds of flags lining sidewalks and dotting the grass throughout the park. 

Our next stop was the Lee G. Simmons Wildlife Safari Park near Ashland, Nebraska. It's a four-mile, drive-through wildlife park, featuring elk and buffalo. 

We did see both elk and buffalo, but they were far enough away that the photos aren't memorable.

There are also a few places to park - like the Pelican Wetlands.

American White Pelicans can be seen fishing in groups, where they swim in circles to concentrate the fish and simultaneously dip their heads below the surface to catch them. During mating season, they produce temporary growths on the top of their bills. (You can see that better in the photo below.)

There was also an enclosure for black bears (maybe one black bear ... we only saw the one).

Our next destination was the Holy Family Shrine near Gretna, Nebraska. Randy and I visited their twice when Jill and Eric lived in Omaha just after they were married. 

The structure of the chapel reminds us of the one we visited in Eureka Springs, Ark., a few years ago. (I wrote about the Holy Family Shrine in more detail HERE and HERE.)

The Holy Family Shrine was built not far off I-80. The idea for the shrine was conceived in 1993, and the visitor center was completed in 1997. The visitor center is built into a hillside, bringing to mind Jesus' burial in the tomb following his crucifixion. After the original chapel collapsed in a windstorm in 2000, the rebuild took two and a half years to complete.

On Good Friday 2009, they erected a crucifix outside the shrine. It is approximately 40 feet tall, one foot for every day of Lent. The figure of Christ is just over 8 feet tall.

Since we'd last been there, they'd added a walkway with the Stations of the Cross. Even though we are firmly United Methodist - not Catholic - I think the symbolism and beauty are well worth the short detour off I-80.

Next stop was Lauritzen Gardens in Omaha. We began in the 17,500-square-foot Marjorie K. Daugherty Conservatory, which features a glass dome that houses thousands of tropical and rare plants. The grounds feature more than 20 distinct outdoor areas, including the Rose Garden, Japanese Garden, Victorian Garden, Song of the Lark Meadow and an arboretum.

We probably didn't do our best planning in regards to this stop. By the time we arrived, it was pretty hot. And remember what I mentioned about old people? Well, sometimes it's not just plants that do some withering in the heat. And, honestly, the teen and pre-teen were fading, too. 

But we did get a few 4-H photos taken.

We chose the Inner Rail Food Hall for supper. With eight different food vendors, everyone could choose what they wanted. We liked that so well that we returned for another supper later in the week.

As intended, we arrived at the Henry Doorly Zoo & Aquarium the next day at opening time to try to capitalize on the cooler morning, at least for as long as it lasted.

This was another destination we'd explored when Jill and Eric lived in Omaha, but this was B.C. - before children, so it was fun to experience with the girls.

The zoo consistently ranks as one of the country's best zoos, and we would concur. It spans 160 acres and houses more than 33,000 animals. In the photo above, we're in front of the Desert Dome, the world's largest indoor desert and the largest glazed geodesic dome. It recreates ecosystems from the Namib, Australian, and Sonoran deserts.

 

All four of us chose the Suzanne and Walter Scott Aquarium as our favorite zoo spot. It features the largest aquarium inside of a zoo, complete with an underwater tunnel that lets guests walk beneath sharks, fish and sea turtles. 

And Brooke tried some more photos for 4-H - bonus!

At the time we arrived, a zoo keeper was inside the puffins enclosure, so it was fun to watch her feeding and interacting with the animals.

The penguins seemed to be watching us as much as we were watching them.

They have a huge enclosure for apes, gorillas and monkeys.

 

 

This guy seemed protective of his celery.

I also loved the butterfly house. (Others were probably not as enamored.)

  

We saw the usual lions and tigers and bears - oh my! - along with elephants and giraffes. We also cooled off with some Dole Whip.

And we saved some steps riding the Skyfari.

We ended the day watching two films in the Imax theater. There was a method to our plan. The theater was near the exit. We watched Coral Sea Adventure and Wild Asia: Life at Extremes in the air-conditioning as the afternoon temperatures continued to climb.

After a rest and showers for grandparents and girls, we ate at Cheesecake Factory. Of course, we had meals. But the highlights were the desserts. Brooke isn't a cheesecake lover, so she ordered the chocolate cake. But the rest of us got cheesecake. (Half of the desserts ended up going back to the hotel refrigerators for another day-end treat.)

Grandpa's Banana Creme cheesecake is also shown above.

Yes, I should have taken the photos when they arrived at the table - pristine and photogenic. Come to think of it, it's a good thing that a guy asked to take our photo at the zoo just as we were getting started. It would have been a less photogenic picture at the end of the zoo day. 

More from our trip tomorrow.

Pot of Gold? Wheat Harvest 2026

Photo taken Saturday night - June 13, 2026

 

It's not a year when the wheat crop is like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But the sun has set on the 2026 wheat harvest. 

June 4, 2026

As my brother aptly described of his harvest in Pratt County, "Wheat 2026 is in the bin. Just didn’t fill the bin."

We don't have the final figures in. The Millers have the wheat custom cut by Frederick Harvesting out of Alden. They started cutting on us last Thursday and finished on Saturday. We are always amazed at how quickly it goes when a custom crew is involved. Back when we were farming full-time, it took a minimum of 10 days to get everything cut ourselves. It often stretched out further with weather delays and breakdowns.

You can barely see the third combine in the dust behind the grain cart.

 

But, when there are three combines in the field with 40-foot headers, things go quickly. (The one combine we owned at the end of our active farming (2022) was 35 feet. Randy says he thought that was big at the time.) 

With a custom crew racing on to the next customer's fields, you often don't get the scale tickets immediately, so we don't have the yield-per-acre numbers yet. 

But it was a year when we didn't get timely rains during the time when the wheat heads were filling, so we knew it wouldn't be a "pot of gold" year for our golden crop. It was a dry winter in our area. Until two weeks ago, we were in a swath of Central Kansas in extreme drought. Now, we're in an area classified as severe drought. 

Randy rode along with one of the combine operators a few times. Saturday morning, we spent quite awhile just watching the action.

Two combines were cutting during most of the time we were there, with a third broken down. 

But they eventually got it running, too, taking even bigger swaths through the fields. 

We were glad they got to our fields when they did. Weeds were starting to emerge, brought on by June rains. Those rains weren't beneficial to the wheat, but it was extremely helpful to alfalfa fields, pastures and fall crops. 

Still, we anticipate that the yields will be a little higher than we initially predicted. 

But time - and those scale tickets - will tell.

Speaking of pots of gold: Our neighbor Gary called us Saturday night and asked if we'd seen the double rainbow to the east. Our house is surrounded by trees, so we had not. But with his call, we hurriedly put on shoes and went down the road for a better view.

And what a view it was! 

 We had never seen a double rainbow that lasted so long and was so vivid. What a treat!

 We watched until the clouds swallowed up the rainbow.

 The photos don't do it justice. What a blessing to see an unobstructed view!

The Ball of Twine and Other Scintillating Tourist Spots

 

It was raining when we got to Cawker City, Kansas, last week. But I still got out of the car to take photos of the World's Largest Ball of Sisal Twine. 

 

Actually, this was our second trip to visit the Ball of Twine. It was also a stop on a long-ago vacation with Jill and Brent. Let's just say that vacation was ... memorable. I have never claimed to be either a camping enthusiast or a fisherman. I didn't grow up doing either of those things. 

 

Usually, Randy and the kids had their own camping adventures. They'd visit some convenience store situated near a lake and they'd load up on Oreos and other delicacies. Poker 101 was part of the curriculum for these educational journeys. 

 

But for this particular long-ago trip, I consented to go along - mainly because we weren't sleeping on the ground. Even at that age, my back couldn't take that. Randy booked a "cabin" at nearby Waconda Lake. It was ... rustic. It was more like a trailer that hadn't been updated with decor or repairs since it came off the factory line many, many moons before. And, of course, it required bringing and fixing all the meals. Yay ... what a vacation! (?)

 

I'm always willing to hold a fishing pole. I may have a book in the other hand, but I'll hold the pole. We all tried valiantly to catch fish. We even had a guide. 

 

And we didn't catch one.

 

We did catch a glimpse of Cawker City's Ball of Twine. It's still a vacation that the kids talk about. You can imagine what kind of talk. I snapped the photos and texted them: Remember the BEST vacation EVER?

 

Just in case you haven't seen it yourself, here are the stats:

 

At 17,320 lbs, 40 foot circumference, and more than 7,938,709 of sisal twine, the Cawker City Community Club is the official owner/caretaker of the ball of twine. Each year a Twine-a-Thon is held in conjunction with the annual Cawker City picnic and parade, so the ball never stops growing. Frank Stoeber started the twine ball in 1953 on his farm and by 1957 it weighed about 5,000 lbs. 

Snapping the photos gave me an excuse to get out of the car. We were on a 5-hour trek from Topeka to Kearney, Nebraska. Earlier in the week, we'd driven from Topeka to Omaha for a short vacation with the girls. (More on that to come.) We then took them back to Topeka, watched a tennis lesson and stayed the night before getting in the car again to go to Kearney for the Great Plains United Methodist Church annual conference, where I was our church's lay representative. 

Not long after our brief stop in Cawker City, we started seeing signs for the Home on the Range cabin. Neither of us had ever been to this historic cabin. After a lot of rainfall in the area, we weren't sure whether the road off the highway would be firm enough to travel. But it was well-graveled, though I was glad we didn't meet another car. 

By the time we got there, the rain had stopped and it was a beautiful day. And the cabin is in an idyllic setting among trees and near a creek. 

It was easy to imagine how Dr. Brewster Higley VI conjured up the words to a poem he called "My Western Home" back in 1871.

At the time, Higley was living on a dugout that he built on the banks of the West Beaver Creek in Smith County, Kansas. Not long after, with the help of a few friends, he constructed a cabin in 1872. Dr. Higley presented the poem to his friend Dan Kelley who set it to music and then gave it to John Harlan, the leader of a family band that included Kelley. The song “Home on the Range” was born.

 

The plaque says: Dr. Higley enjoyed sitting outside his cabin, writing, meditating and simply listening to the sounds along his beloved West Beaver Creek. 

 

There were times he would play his violin with the music enjoyed by those living on the Jones Homestead just south of Home on the Range.

The location of the historic Higley cabin was approved for listing on the National Historical Register in 1973. The cabin site is 57 acres of grassland on the 240-acre homestead. The crop land is rented to a private operator. Net income from the landlord's share of the farming operation is invested back into the site. No individuals benefit financially from the site. The entire site is privately owned and managed by the Peoples Heartland Foundation, a 501c3 charity.

The restoration of the cabin was done in 2013, but the management of the historic site have even bigger hopes and dreams. They'd like to build a $2.5 million amphitheatre on site. As with most projects, funding is the obstacle. They have built a new bridge and have created a walking path named in honor of Pete and Ellen Rust, who moved to the farm in 1936 and finally attained full ownership in 1950. The Rusts and everyone in the Highland community knew the cabin was built by Dr. Brewster Higley VI, yet it continued to be used as a chicken house until 1947, when Home on the Range became the state song of Kansas.

 

It was during the following years that the Rusts had several chances to profit from the sale of the cabin, but in every instance, declined the offers because the buyers planned to move the cabin off site. They established the basis for the cabin staying forever on the site for the enjoyment of all who visit. The Cabin is open for visitors daily from daylight to dark. There's no admission charge, though there is a collection box, if visitors wish to make a donation.  

We thought it provided a nice little break from the drive and were glad we took the time to stop. From Athol, Kansas, it's 1 mile west on US 36, then 8 miles north on Home of the Range Highway (K-8). Turn left on 90 road for a about a mile down a narrow gravel road.

My Western Home

 (also known as Home on the Range) 

 by Dr. Brewster Higley

Oh, give me a home where the Buffalo roam
Where the Deer and the Antelope play;
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word,
And the sky is not cloudy all day.

Chorus:

Home, home on the range! 

Where the deer and the antelope play. 

Where seldom is heard a discouraging word, 

And the sky is not clouded all day.

 

There are several other verses. One I particularly like is this one:

How often at night, when the heavens were bright,
With the light of the twinkling stars
Have I stood here amazed, and asked as I gazed,
If their glory exceed that of ours.

For one of the verses, I believe the poet took some liberties. There may be some hills in Smith County, but there are no mountains. And I had to look up curlews. Yes, it's a bird. 

I love the wild flowers in this bright land of ours,
I love the wild curlew’s shrill scream;
The bluffs and white rocks, and antelope flocks
That graze on the mountains so green.

However, as I stood at the cabin site, this next verse definitely sang true:

The air is so pure and the breezes so fine,
The zephyrs so balmy and light,
That I would not exchange my home here to range
Forever in azures so bright.

I may make light of a big Ball of Twine (though I definitely admire Cawker City's efforts for a little tourism). But I, like Dr. Higley, would not exchange my Home on the Range.

On our way home from Kearney, we took part in a little Nebraska tourism. We stopped at Runza for lunch. A runza is what we in Kansas call a bierock - hamburger, cabbage and seasonings inside yeast dough.  

I'll have more from our trip to Omaha with the girls to come.