Date: 16 May 2001 (Wednesday)

Start:

End: Offutt AFB Nebraska (0 miles)

We stayed in Omaha today. Here's a picture of our site in the FAMCAMP.

We called the numbers Bill gave us yesterday. Dolores’ message was from our health-care outfit wondering if she had received her blood-pressure medicine. My call to postpone my jury duty summons was less successful – the assigned contact won’t return till Monday and the person to whom she referred callers is out today. I’ll try again tomorrow.

After breakfast in the trailer, we went to the Henry Doorly Zoo. It’s a really nice zoo. Although there were a million school-age kids there, we enjoyed ourselves and took a bunch of pictures.

The most spectacular pictures are going to be of the polar bear cavorting in the pool three of them share. He would push off from the other side and swim submerged to the glass wall that allows you to see underwater as well as above water. There, he would surface from the bottom of the pool and push off from the glass wall like a swimmer doing the turn from breast stroke to back stroke – then he’d do backstroke across the pool back to the other side.

Bear Picture Another one One more

The usual animals were present – lions and tigers and bears (real brown bear picture here), plus orangutans and gorillas and giraffes and emus and a full aviary and a jungle building with all sorts of birds and a white crocodile and so forth an so on.

(Ed: This paragraph added 5/17) The funniest part of the day came while looking at the animal nursery. There were two small black bear cubs in a room with a glass wall and toys for the bears. An attendant walked out of the room, opening the door using the pull down handle type of doorknob. About two minutes later, one of the cubs stretched to full height against the door and pulled down on the doorknob. The door opened and he fell into the attendant’s room. It was quiet for a minute, then we could see the attendant going first one way, then the other. Finally, the door opened and the attendant pushed the little bear back into the room. The other bear tried the same thing, but the attendant had locked the door, and the bear just pulled himself up the door. The attendant came into the room in a few minutes to clean it; both little bears climbed up his legs and attached themselves to him while he worked around the room.

(Ed: Modified 5/17) Old Market is an area downtown (historic district, lots of old warehouses, etc.) with all sorts of shops and restaurants. We went there after leaving the zoo. Dolores bought a dress for the August wedding and I bought a western hat. We had lunch in the Uptown Brewery, a micro-brewery with great food.

We bought a flat coax cable for the dish antenna at an RV place. He gave us a steer on where we could buy a new Interstate battery for the pickup, but when we got there we found they don’t handle our brand. Too bad, we’ll look again up the road.

On the way back from downtown to the FAMCAMP, next to a city park on 13^th street, a deer crossed the street and headed into the park. I couldn’t see where it came from but it certainly was startling to see one in downtown Omaha.

Dolores identified an Eastern Kingbird today – I didn’t see it.

It got a little hotter than was advertised for today – up to 88f. Not very comfortable.

We’ll take it easy this evening and start out tomorrow after my phone call.