Saturday, October 26, 2013

Wedding Time in Nebraska

In early September I went to the wedding of an old friend of mine who I first met at Reading. Jerilyn was one of the Oklahoma students who studied at Reading, so when we reversed the exchange and went to Oklahoma she was there to look after us (and make many many many trips to Walmart to buy all the things we needed)!

Jerilyn and I in Oklahoma City in 2005!
I arrived Friday and after a 3 hour drive across Nebraska (yes, there is a lot of corn) spent a couple of hours hanging out with Jerilyn and some of her friends and family. Saturday morning I decided to check out all the activities Kearney, Nebraska had to offer, starting with the Yanney Heritage Park and the view from the tower. It was going to be a hot weekend (in the 90s F) so I wanted to get my outside activity in the morning. The park was nice, with a big pond and I spent a while watching the swans and cygnets and trying to take good pictures with me new camera.

View from the park tower
Sundial in the park



Kearney is the Sandhill Crane capital apparently!
Swans in action
Got to have a corn close up!

After the park I went to the Great Platter River Road Archway - a museum/historical center built as a bridge over I-80. It was quite interesting learning all about the Oregon trail, 49ers trail and Mormon trail that all went through Kearney - I didn't know a lot about it so I came out considerably more educated than I went in. It was a bit cheesy, but enjoyable!

The archway! That sun was hot...
I enjoyed this quote in particular
Flowers outside the archway

After a quick trip to downtown Kearney - which has all brick roads (and a nice mural on one building) it was time to head back to the hotel and get ready for the wedding!

Mural in downtown
The wedding was at Jerilyn's home church which was very pretty. I'm still not used to American churches (which are almost all modern buildings) compared to the old churches in the UK, but this was a nice one with stained glass windows so it felt a little older!

Congratulations Jerilyn and Travis!
 After the wedding I headed back to the conference center next to my hotel for the reception. It was a fabulous wedding and great to catch up with old friends from Oklahoma that I hadn't seen in many years. We ate, drank, danced and had fun all night. My legs were feeling those high heels the next day!!

This was a delicious cake!

Jerilyn and I in Kearney, Nebraska in 2013!
Sunday morning I was up and driving through the fog at 9am to get back to Omaha for my flight home.  It took a little longer than expected to get home - flights with broken radars and waiting on standby on the last flight of the night, but I made it in the end! It was a wonderful weekend and my first trip to Nebraska was a good one.

1 comment:

  1. Elllie! Thank you for this post! I love seeing what you did in Kearney and I'm glad you were able to come and enjoyed your time. Thank you also for the pictures, I love them! Finally, I'm so sad I wasn't able to spend more time with you, but I am SO thankful that you came out to Nebraska for our wedding. I really feel so blessed that you came all the way out here and it was SO fantastic to see you! It meant the world to me to see you and have you there! I hope we can have a little less time in between our meeting up than last time. Again, thank you...you are a great friend!

    -Jerilyn

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