Here's a trip that we just have to share with you...
One day around New Years Day, we were thinking of what kind of vacations we could take that year. There in the newspaper was a vacation guide with some interesting ideas, including you guessed it, a Wagon Train Trip on the Oregon Trail. So of course I called to Western Nebraska, and booked two days and an overnight for sometime in July.
Six months later, there we were driving to Nebraska...
The Wagon Train Trip...
We get there to find out the wagon train would consist of one wagon, a couple horses and a mule! Besides me, Joyce and the Wagonmaster there was Nancy and her two 12 year old daughters. Nancy was a food critic for the Milwaukee Journal and wanted to report on something unusual, so here they were...
We actually did drive that covered wagon down the Oregon Trail, and pitched tents and cooked a fine chuckwagon dinner under the open skies. There was Chuckwagon stew and we made bread in a Dutch oven, just like the settlers did. It was quite the history lesson. Our wagonmaster was the perfect host and professor of Oregon trail histoy and survival. Great stories. And the following morning started with a great bacon and eggs breakfast and a visit from the Pony Express!
All in all it was a great experience. Historical and beautiful.
I'm glad we did it, so now we don't have to ever consider doing it again!
Here we are with Wagonmaster Gordon.
This is where we camped for the night.
Here's where the story takes it's wierd turn...
About nine months after the trip, I'm sitting home on a Sunday morning when the phone rings. It's some guy from Milwaukee, asking for me or Joyce. He says he's looking at a picture of us on the cover of the food section of the Milwaukee Journal! He noticed Joyce's boots, and could he borrow them for a while! Wow, really he needs them for a play he's putting on and they just got robbed, and they needed a pair of boots, just like the one's he see's on Joyce!
Well needless to say my generous wife decides to loan him the boots, and we actually did get them back some months later.
But I sure was knocked out by that phone call. I mean the trip itself was weird, but then to hear from this guy about the boots!... Wow, not only a small world, it can really be a weird one, too!
Anyway, we still laugh about it, and wanted to share the laugh.
In case you are interested, this would be a great trip for the kids.
Oregon Trail Wagon Train
Bayard, Nebraska
308-586-1850
