Nebraska Vacation Day 2

Wednesday was a "free" day with no scheduled activities or meals besides breakfast.  We took a (short) family bike ride and checked out the larger of the two playgrounds in the park.  Both kids had a lot of fun with the digger toys.  There was also a fun little merry-go-round and a really cool lion drinking fountain.

After lunch and naps we went to the on-site water park.  It was very busy on a very hot day!  After holding out for almost an hour, Emily finally decided to cooperate and go inside and had a great time going down the little frog slide about 50 times.  Neither kid was very brave about getting splashed or dumped on by the wide variety of water features.  Lincoln mostly loved the water pipe contraption.  He also laughed and laughed when Austin took him out to "jump" over the waves in the wave pool until he got a face full of water.  Austin & I both tried out the big water slides.

For supper we took a little road trip to the town of Waverly, NE (population 3,328), which is only 20 miles down the road from the park.  We ate at McDonald's and then stopped for ice cream at a little hole-in-the-wall drive-in type place called Joni's Dairy Sweet that I found online.  It was everything you'd expect it to be from hometown posters covering the walls; the junky "backroom" with a chest freezer, vintage bike, piles of empty cardboard boxes, two arcade games and a single highchair; the owner sprawled out in a booth talking with a regular customer to the 13-year-oldish boys behind the counter overly eager to help but still trying to figure out how to tell when a pizza burger is done (they took it out to the owner on a spatula for inspection and approval).  But it had really good, cheap ice cream that was a perfect way to end the day!

We made one final stop on the way out of town for a picture by the cool town sign.  This little side trip was the highlight of the vacation for me (especially the brownie blizzard!).