Day 5 & 6 - Omaha Nebraska

Day 5 (30 Jun) - Another beautiful day as we travelled through the rest of Illinois, across Missouri, a the south-west corner of Iowa and finished just inside Nebraska. A real treat was driving over the great Mississippi River into Hannibal Missouri which was the boyhood home of Mark Twain. You could really feel his inspiration for Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. It must have been something growing up around there as a young man. The only odd thing about the drive was trying to figure out the Missouri State Motto The "Show Me" State. Show me what?

We have now driven over 1,000 miles and while the license plate game is getting competitive (trying to spot all the different US state car license plates as possible) and the kids are being kept entertained with the occasional movie in the car and their Nintendo DS, we are getting a bit tired. We have decided that tomorrow in Omaha will be a day of rest to get ready for the bigger drive (about 10 hours driving) to Keystone South Dakota - home to Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse Memorial etc. We will be staying there three nights over the July 4th Independence Day weekend.

For those that don't know, other places will be visiting on this epic voyage include: Yellowstone National Park, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, Houston, New Orleans and both Walt Disney World and the new Harry Potter World in Orlando Florida.

Day 6 (1 July) - We were really impressed with Omaha as a city - much larger and nicer than we thought it might be, though we're not quite sure what we expected. A rest day and we all went to the movies on the opening day of 'The Last Airbender.' It was great. A nice Nana nap in the afternoon whilst the kids bounced on the large camp ground pillow, played mini-golf and swam in the pool. A welcome and timely break.