Last Blog 2021

We headed to Lincoln, Nebraska to spend Christmas with family. It’s a long drive, and there isn’t a good place for the motorhome close to the Kids’ home… so we drove the car. That way we get to stay right with the Kids, which made for a great Christmas!

The trip would take about 20 hours of driving, and we decided to break it up into smaller chunks. We started out Saturday night, and drove a few hours to Deming, New Mexico. That night was spent in a mediocre hotel, but it was good to sleep!

Downtown Deming seems like lots of small towns in the middle of nowhere… it looks like it’s dying. Rather sad.

We drove a little while further, and decided we needed internet. Starbucks doesn’t live in these parts (Ha!) so we tried Nessa’s Cafe. Cute little brightly painted building, crazy fun decor inside, and an awesome yogurt parfait. If you are ever in… where was it? If you see hot pink Nessa’s Cafe somewhere in New Mexico be sure to stop in!

After a couple of days on the road, we made it to Lincoln. Great to be with family!

We enjoyed many Christmas Light displays… this one is downtown, and features a tall pole with bright changing colors. Is that a new style Christmas Tree?

We also drove through a commercial display with tons of lights and synchronized music. They even gave us all hot chocolate when we entered, and told us we could drive through a second time if we wanted. It was really fun, and we did do it a second time! Impossible to shoot the rapidly changing lights, but I tried anyway. The tunnel changed dramatically, sometimes like you were speeding through it, sometime like the whole thing was rotating. Fun.

The final display was a nativity scene. Nice to bring Christmas back to the point.

Another fancy show is the Lincoln Zoo Lights. We were here last Christmas too, and then it was fiercely cold. This time it was not nearly as cold, and I think there were even more lights than before. Very pretty!

This area had long lighted streamers streaming (what streamers do) down from tall trees. The colors would shift and move creating a really mystical feeling.

Some great folks here!

All are given the “Snowflake Glasses,” which make every point source of light into a snowflake.

The glasses make the Christmas Tree look like this:

Instead of this:

I liked the sculpture of Sandhill Cranes, which migrate through this area, in front of purple trees (which don’t really exist in nature.)

As usual at Becky and Kevin’s house, we had great fun making food! Peter is cranking the fun apple peeler prepping for pies (With both he and Kevin eating the peel,) while Becky is making Julpepparkarkor – a Swedish Christmas gingerbread cookie (not your usual Peparkarkor, the non-Christmas cookie.) Then we got to watch Becky making Hot Chocolate Bombs. If you are unfamiliar with these delights, they are Chocolate globes filled with hot chocolate powder and mini marshmallows. When bombed into a mug of hot water or milk, they melt into a really nice chocolaty drink. She uses all the regular fastidious chocolate tempering techniques to create the half shells, then “welds” the filled shells together by melting the rim of one shell on a plate warmed over a bowl of perfectly warmed water. The joint is smoothed up, and then they are decorated. You can see some of the process in the video below – I didn’t get to shoot the shell creation, and the process is sped up considerably. Too bad you can’t taste them!