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The Southwest up to Omaha
  • Sophie White
  • Eric White
  • Sophie White
  • Eric White

The Southwest up to Omaha

Our first trek out to the Berkshire-Hathaway Annual Meeting in Omaha. Leia mais
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  • The Southwest up to Omaha

    Get the heck into Dodge!

    2 de maio de 2018, Estados Unidos ⋅ ☀️ 20 °C

    We pulled into Gunsmoke RV Park inside Dodge City, Kansas right after 5 o’clock. Glad there are no more time changes on this trip; we were continually falling behind! The RV Park has an old-timey theme with cowboy era wagon wheels and farm equipment as well as all the building resembling an Old West main street (I’ll try to take a photo tomorrow).

    We wanted to see Dodge City itself, so we zoomed around Old Town and found it well-preserved and charming. Many of the original railroad buildings are still in use (repurposed as restaurants and shops), and the buildings and streets are OLD. In the 2nd to last picture you can see the street is ?original cobblestones with irregularities and humps in the pacing that comes with age and heavy usage.

    We are hoping tomorrow to get a chance to explore further before pushing on to Omaha.    Leia mais

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  • The Southwest up to Omaha

    Gunsmoke RV Park

    2 de maio de 2018, Estados Unidos ⋅ ☀️ 19 °C

    Our RV Park was too cute! They had an old west theme going for them, with all the service buildings made up to be old west storefronts. We got a nice spot on the end where we were able to sit outside and watch the sunset and listen to the birds chirping. Spring has just sprung here!

    I loved the patriotic details on the RV that pulled in after us.    Leia mais

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  • The Southwest up to Omaha

    Boot Hill Museum

    3 de maio de 2018, Estados Unidos ⋅ ⛅ 24 °C

    After taking in the outside of Old Main Street, we explored the displays inside. They had a general store, a saloon, pharmacy, barber’s shop, tons of displays with period rifles and handguns, and even a undertaker’s shop. All of the props on display were authentic and gave a very cool feel to the place.Leia mais

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  • The Southwest up to Omaha

    Leaving Kansas

    3 de maio de 2018, Estados Unidos ⋅ ☀️ 26 °C

    More wind farms...and the crop is coming in nicely! Eric’s right forearm is going to be stronger than his left from always pulling the steering wheel right to combat the wind.

    We passed through a bunch of cute farm towns on our way north out of Kansas. The coolest might have been Kinsley, known as “Midway USA”. 1561 miles to San Francisco and 1561 miles to NYC.Leia mais

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  • The Southwest up to Omaha

    Two Rivers Rec Area, Waterloo

    4 de maio de 2018, Estados Unidos ⋅ ☀️ 22 °C

    After a 400+ mile drive yesterday, we pulled in after dark last night and settled in. We get to stay here for three nights while we attend the Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting. It is truly a sight to see: 40,000 people descending on Omaha for the weekend!

    Our campground is a charming park and our site is nearly on the Platte River. We had a great time sleeping in and getting some sun before heading into the city. The campground is surrounded by farmlands and cute barns and country homes.    Leia mais

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  • The Southwest up to Omaha
    1

    Berkshire Hathaway, Day 1

    4 de maio de 2018, Estados Unidos ⋅ ☀️ 25 °C

    The meeting is held at the Convention Center downtown, and the first day is a expo of many of the companies that are owned by Berkshire Hathaway. They set up amazing displays and have storefronts where you can browse and shop. Some of the companies represented are See’s Candies, Borsheim’s, Justin Boots, NetJets, DQ, Fruit of the Loom, Dynamax, BNSF, and more than I can remember! It got us both very excited to see the main event tomorrow!!Leia mais

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  • The Southwest up to Omaha

    Berkshire Hathaway, getting there

    5 de maio de 2018, Estados Unidos ⋅ ☀️ 12 °C

    We woke up EARLY to get to the CenturyLink Center in Omaha to get into the meeting. First time I’ve seen a sunrise in quite a while. The meeting starts at 8:30 so we arrived a few minutes before 7 to get in line. Evidently thousands of people had the same idea because the line snaked all the way around the entire building and had doubled back on itself by the time we found the end. It took us about an hour of waiting in line before we made it through the front doors, and we entertained ourselves by watching the frantic people behind us and the heavily armed police holding semi-automatic rifles. I feel like we’re going to some popular rock concert!

    Evidently there isn’t a space large enough to seat the 40,000 people in attendance, so the latecomers are directed to a secondary room where they watch the presentation on TVs. We wanted to be in the main room (which is a huge arena for sports events and concerts) so we jogged around trying different sections with no luck. Finally we jogged up to the nosebleed seats and snagged the last two seats in the section. We felt lucky to find them!    Leia mais

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  • The Southwest up to Omaha

    Berkshire Hathaway, main event

    5 de maio de 2018, Estados Unidos ⋅ ☀️ 15 °C

    At 8:30 the meeting started off with a custom video featuring Warren Buffett and a bunch of stars (Schwarzenegger, Floyd Meriweather, A-Rod). They showed a hilarious sped-up video showing Charlie Munger spending nearly 3 minutes trying to open a box of peanut brittle at a previous meeting, and it was entertaining to see how neither Buffett nor Munger take themselves seriously.

    A little after 9 the meeting commenced with a brief introduction from Buffett and then a question and answer session coming from shareholders (the audience) and analysts. It was pretty cool to get an insight into how both of these brilliant men think and act. We both especially enjoyed Munger’s sense of humor delivered with witty zingers (e.g. “the man clearly doesn’t understand his own profession” directed at someone asking a dumb question).

    The question and answer session went on for about six hours with a one hour break for lunch. We were disgusted to see how many people were disrespectful during the meeting: playing on their cell phones while sitting in the most coveted seats, chit chatting with their neighbors during the presentation, etc. People have no manners!    Leia mais

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  • The Southwest up to Omaha

    Wrapping up the day

    5 de maio de 2018, Estados Unidos ⋅ ⛅ 27 °C

    After the meeting we went back out to the Expo Center to do a little sight-seeing and shopping. The deals were killer so we had to buy some See’s candies and look at the awesome BNSF railway display complete with running train and little models of all the Berkshire Hathaway subsidiaries.

    After the meeting we drove past TD Ameritrade Park (where the College Baseball World Series is held) and then went over the border to Iowa to get some much needed refreshments: Dairy Queen blizzards (another Berkshire-owned company). On the way back for the night we drove past Kiewit Plaza, where Berkshire-Hathaway has its office. What a whirlwind of a day!!!    Leia mais

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  • The Southwest up to Omaha

    Nebraska Camping

    6 de maio de 2018, Estados Unidos ⋅ ⛅ 26 °C

    We enjoyed our campground outside of Omaha in Waterloo. It was peaceful and quiet, and best of all we could have a campfire!! We hauled a couple hundred pounds of firewood along with us and nearly every campground had a fire ban! Should’ve figured that’d be the case in the Southwest, but we didn’t know.Leia mais

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  • The Southwest up to Omaha

    Cheyenne

    7 de maio de 2018, Estados Unidos ⋅ 🌫 22 °C

    We pulled into Cheyenne last night and found our RV Park. We plan on exploring Cheyenne and Laramie today and get back on the freeway tomorrow.

    Cheyenne is a cute town of about 60,000 that was founded when the Union Pacific started building the railroad through the area. Next the cattle barons moved into town and started ranching. It sounds like it definitely deserves its Wild West reputation!

    We ate brunch at the R&B cafe which is decorated throughout with Elvis memorabilia. Best breakfast burrito I think I’ve ever had!    Leia mais

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  • The Southwest up to Omaha
    Historic mansion belonging to a wealthy citizen
    The 2nd floor used to be the sheriff/marshall stationWyoming Capitol Building, under renovationStatue memorialized to Lane Frost, a pro bull-rider killed at the rodeo here in townUs on the trolleyWild west Days frontier town (and rodeo in the background)

    Trolley Tour

    7 de maio de 2018, Estados Unidos ⋅ ☀️ 22 °C

    Spontaneously we decided to buy tickets for the historic trolley tour (first open day of the year) and we were definitely glad we did! Our tour guide did a great job of outlining the historic roots of the town and the evolution through the years. The tour read like a good book detailing the escapades of cowboys, lawmen, cattle rustlers, and more. The town has done a great job preserving and restoring many historic buildings (although its shocking how frequently severe fires ripped through these old towns taking out many buildings).

    In July the town holds Frontier Days, an annual rodeo and Wild West celebration held in July. The rodeo itself sounds epic, and the town holds special tours, staged shoot-em-ups in town, and an old frontier town. As you can imagine, the celebration draws in 200,000 people! It must be absolutely crazy to see.    Leia mais

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  • The Southwest up to Omaha

    Driving to Laramie

    7 de maio de 2018, Estados Unidos ⋅ 🌫 18 °C

    After our trolley tour we took our truck and drove out to see Laramie. On the way we took a couple detours.

    We love watching this show called Aerial America, which shows different states and regions and their local attractions and natural wonder from an aerial view. We watched several episodes before this trip to get ideas of what would be fun to see! One of the sights was the Ames monument, a fantastically expensive monument that was build by the Union Pacific railroad to memorialize the contribution that the Ames brothers made to planning and funding the transcontinental railroad. No mention was made that on many accounts they are considered to have swindled the American people out of tons of money. The monument once sat alongside the railroad, but the tracks were moved and now it’s on a dirt road.

    Next we drove through Buford, smallest town in the country (population 1). It is also the highest town situated on I-80 (8,000 feet).

    Next up was the Abraham Lincoln Memorial Monument, situated at the highest point that I80 traverses across the country (8,640 feet). The location also holds a tribute to Henry Joy, President of the Packard Motor Company. Together these two men created the first road that united our country, the Lincoln Highway (opened 1913).    Leia mais

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  • The Southwest up to Omaha
    UW campus building

    Laramie

    7 de maio de 2018, Estados Unidos ⋅ 🌫 19 °C

    We spent our time in Laramie cruising the historic district (smaller than Cheyenne but cute), driving the University of Wyoming campus, and looking at the wealthy neighborhoods with newer homes. We pulled over to go into War Memorial stadium, which holds 29,000 visitors. This would be a fun place to watch a football game!Leia mais

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  • The Southwest up to Omaha

    Heading West

    8 de maio de 2018, Estados Unidos ⋅ 🌫 16 °C

    Today is a big driving day for us! We’ve got to drive all the way through Wyoming, across the northern part of Utah, and into Nevada. Leaving out of the Cheyenne/Laramie area we were excited to see a friendly motor home! It was the same manufacturer and model as ours, just a couple feet shorter. We haven’t seen many like our so that was fun!

    So far Wyoming is a beautiful & rustic cowboy state with rolling hills, sagebrush, free range cattle and tons of wild pronghorn antelope herds.    Leia mais

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  • The Southwest up to Omaha

    Continental Divide

    8 de maio de 2018, Estados Unidos ⋅ ☀️ 19 °C

    Here outside of Rawlins, WY we passed the Continental Divide. From here on out all rivers run to the west! Lots of free roaming cattle and horses here, and we’ve seen some sheep herds too. Wyoming used to be primarily sheep ranching but now the cattle outnumbers them by a ton.Leia mais

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  • The Southwest up to Omaha

    Continental Divide II (?)

    8 de maio de 2018, Estados Unidos ⋅ 🌫 20 °C

    We were both super confused when hundreds of miles further along we passed another continental divide sign. What is going on? Divide means two parts, right? How can there be two divides and three sections?

    We had to look it up-turns out we just passed through a large elevated desert basin between Rawlins and Rock Springs, where all the water collects and none runs out to the west or east (it all pools into ponds and evaporates). Because of this, the Continental Divide is considered to split into two sections and run around this basin. Weird!    Leia mais

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  • The Southwest up to Omaha
    Best Hampton Inn location ever

    Green River

    8 de maio de 2018, Estados Unidos ⋅ ☀️ 23 °C

    As its namesake indicates, Green River is a little town in western Wyoming through which the Green River runs. It was an important town for its location on the transcontinental railroad, and later because two dams were built on the Green R. (One upstream, one down). Downstream even further the Green meets the Colorado inside Canyonlands National Park. We stood over the junction of the two great rivers on our vacation in 2016 when we were in Dead Horse SP.

    All along our drive we could see the snowy Rockies off to the south (zoom in on the horizon of the last picture to see).    Leia mais

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  • The Southwest up to Omaha

    Utah!

    8 de maio de 2018, Estados Unidos ⋅ ☀️ 21 °C

    Is it my imagination or is it immediately greener in Utah?

    Sorry about the bugs on the windshield. It was cleaned thoroughly yesterday when we had our windshield chip repaired while we tooled around Cheyenne, but the darn thing is a bug magnet!Leia mais

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