In yesterdays blog, I promised to do two things today. First was to take pictures of The Avenue of Flags and the Second was to take pictures of the water tower… so here they are.
Avenue of Flags, I read that there are over 300 US Flags, all donated by Veterans and local citizens of York NE. Every lamp post has a flag.
The water tower, right behind our hotel. Isn’t this the most colourful water tower you have ever seen?
We had a late breakfast today since we are not checking out, and then Karen did our laundry. Around noon we headed out to visit Grand Island Nebraska. There is some Lincoln Highway there and a restaurant that we want to check out.
First stop in Grand Island NE was the Visitors Centre where we got some brochures for attractions in the area.
Then it was on to the Farmer’s Daughter Cafe for some lunch. No pies though, they were all sold out. We had read about this place and I had wanted to try the Peanut Butter Pie, but they forgot to bake them this morning. I told the owner that I had driven all the way from Ontario Canada to try her famous Peanut Butter Pie, she was sorry, but thanked us for stopping in.
After lunch, we began our search for Nebraska’s Seedling Mile. The original Lincoln Highway Association built one mile of road in each state that the Lincoln Highway passed through as an example of how they expected the highway to be built and to what standards. These sections in each State were known as Seedling Miles. On Route 66 the same thing happened, but they were referred to as Ideal Sections. Most of Nebraska’s Seedling Mile has dissapeared under ashphalt, or has been torn up and replaced. The road name remains as Seedling Mile.
We saw on the PBS video that there is a small, 200 ft section still remaining of the original concrete located in behind Kensinger’s Service & Supply, so we went to check that out.
As we pulled in to Kensinger’s, Dick Grudzinski came out to greet us. Dick operates this station now and has for many many years. He was one of the featured speakers, retelling his story and the story of his gas station on the PBS documentary.
Dick pointed the way to the original early 1900’s concrete behind his gas station. It is very overgrown with weeds and long abandoned. What really surprised me is that there is no sign or plaque acknowledging what this concrete represents. The Lincoln Highway is not promoted like Route 66 is. What a shame.
We then went to the Museum of the Prairie Pioneer in Grand Island Nebraska. They have many displays housed in several buildings, and there is an outdoor 1899 re-created Railroad Town and other Pioneer related displays.
Here are some photos from Railroad Town.
Also within Railroad Town, is Henry Fonda’s Birth Place home. Henry was born right here in Grand Island Nebraska. He lived here until the age of 9 months, then moved to Omaha with his family. The historical society moved the house here to Railroad Town to preserve it.
We had homemade cherry pie and ice cream at the Silver Dollar Saloon in Railroad Town. Karen ate most of her ice cream cone before I had a chance to get the camera out to take the photo.
It was a hot day today, this morning started out sunny, but then changed to partly cloudy. We saw a high of 32 C today.
If you wish to view all of our photos from today, please click on the link to my FLICKR site.
Tomorrow we are heading to Gothenburg NE along the Lincoln Highway.
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