Panic At The Blinkin' Fallout

Saturday morning coffee in hand we started the trek to Omaha at 9am. We had targeted 9am and left right on time! Unfortunately just after Albert Lea I realized I had forgotten the concert tickets (the main reason we were going) and so we had to do a do-over. Fortunately it was only an hour in, and our friend Christine brought the tickets and met us in Stewartville which cut off about 40 extra minutes of driving into and out of Rochester again. Thanks Christine!

We got to Omaha at about 4:45 - originally I had targeted 3, and so an extra 1:45 wasn't so bad. We met up with good friends Karli and Trevor and headed downtown and to the Old Market for some walking around by the river and dinner. There is a new pedestrian bridge across the Missouri river which was really neat, and we walked over to Iowa and back - we even stood on opposite sides of the state line :)

After dinner we drove around a little bit more (Erin had never been to Omaha) and stopped for Cold Stone ice cream.

Sunday morning after breakfast at the Cracker Barrel, Erin and I headed over to visit Grandma Bye - always a lot of fun for me, and I get to see her at least once a year if not more. Grandma recently turned 90! Grandma is the only time I get to catch up on family news too, and it's great to hear how everyone else in the family is doing.

Back to T&K's and lunch at a Philly Cheese Steak place in Bellevue, and a little relax time (watching Tiger Woods choke away the PGA championship) and off to Council Bluffs and the concert. We probably should have gone a bit earlier, as it took awhile to park, but we made it in time to see the end of "Panic At The Disco", followed by an hour of "Fallout Boy" (including a cover of "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey which got the whole crowd going) and finally "Blink 182" into the evening - they are quite entertaining! The bad part was after the concert, where the "parking lot" was a bunch of empty fields and there was no one directing traffic, so it took over 3 hours to finally get out. We were happy to get to bed at 2am.

Monday we had breakfast at the "Wheat Fields", a great little cafe, and Erin and I headed down to Plattsmouth, NE, to give Erin a brief tour of where I grew up. All the schools I went to are either torn down or have been converted to other schools, but I was able to show him where they were. It was nice to see the house I grew up in looks to be in really good shape and is being well taken care of by its new owners. We cruised up and down main street, and took the toll bridge out of town for the complete experience.

Besides boredom, the drive back was uneventful and nice weather.