Our last night in Lincoln saw a special concert. Our son-in-law Kevin and brother-in-law Steve both sing in the Lincoln Adventist Men’s Chorus, and they were doing the last concert of the season at the Holy Family Shrine. It is located on Pflug Road in Gretna, Nebraska – thought you’d like to know that if you’re into odd names.
The Glass Chapel is approached by an underground doorway, which leads to a large foyer.
A large sculpture dominates the room – a spiral that has water ever-so-slowly dripping into a stone covered pit. From that pit is a little water filled channel, which leads to the next doorway.
The channel runs under the door, and down the middle of the walkway to the sanctuary.
The sanctuary seems to have no support – just glass everywhere, and a few slender pillars to balance it all. It’s quite interesting!
It’s said to have been built by Catholics in a Catholic tradition, but meaningful to all Christian faiths.
Nice pathways surround the building, and lead through pretty scenery and the Steps of the Cross.
The choir was wonderful! So many men’s voices in the great acoustics of the all glass structure… it was really meaningful. So nice to hear them!
The concert was timed so the setting sun would add its color to the concert, and it did not disappoint!
Here’s the group, including some guest performers.
Since the Chapel is half-way to Omaha, and we were flying out of Omaha early in the morning, we stayed in a hotel there.
When we got to the airport, the car rental terminal seemed deserted. I guess not many folks fly in early Sunday morning. Our itinerary changed flights in Denver, and we barely had time to grab a sandwich there to eat on the next flight. When we finally arrived in Tucson, we saw this amusing sculpture near the baggage claim carousel. It may look like a strange mouth at first, but it is also a bag with an enormous zipper, holding 4 nicely folded glowing shirts. Strange.
When we arrived “Home,” we were relieved to find our motorhome was still there, apparently unharmed by our long absence. There were a couple of little things we noticed right away. The soap dispenser at the galley sink seemed to have exploded, sending soap all over, which then dried up and left a mess. But not bad to have a soapy mess in the sink! Another thing we noticed is that, with the water shut off to the rig, the ice maker obviously wasn’t working, but the ice in the tray pretty much sublimated into nothing. Unexpected!
Our campground is definitely showing signs of spring. Many cacti are budding.
Some are flowering!
And the skies are often gorgeous…
So we figured we’d been gone 111 days! Here is a collage of our “Bird a Day”
calendar, for the days we were elsewhere. We actually added 118 birds to our life lists, so that’s more than are shown it this picture!
We also discovered a few more problems. I guess the gaskets dried up in the back bathroom toilet, and this little solenoid stopped working correctly. I took it apart, and thought perhaps I’d fixed it… but, while it was better, it still would continuously add water to the bowl till it would have overflowed. So I had to shut off that bathroom’s toilet. I went to 4 stores looking for the right part, and ended up ordering one and having it sent to my old office in Denver – the next place we’ll be for a few days.
Since the mid-bath was still operating, we felt we could get going on our trip to Denver. With all the delays, we left mid afternoon, and only drove a couple of hours, stopping in Wilcox, Arizona.
When getting ready to drive the next morning, I (Stupidly) thought I’d try to close all the slides with only battery power, instead of being plugged in to shore power or having the generator running. We have powerful batteries, right? They worked fine that way, but when I went to start the engine, the truck battery was dead. Totally. Well, not really… I could measure the voltage of the house batteries and the chassis batteries, and they all measured fine. It felt like a fuse or circuit breaker had popped. I couldn’t find the problem anywhere, so called Newmar (the builder) and the service tech agreed, saying it was probably a certain fuse in a box back by the engine. I couldn’t get the box open at first, and Newmar forwarded my call to Freightliner (the chassis manufacturer.) Both gentlemen were very kind, patient and helpful, and when I finally got the box open it was obviously the fuse they’d expected. Now the problem was where to find such an uncommon fuse in Wilcox, Arizona!
We again went to a few stores, before I found a fuse of the right capacity, but physically too large to fit. I bought it, and bent it around to make it fit. The plastic casing broke off, but it shouldn’t really be needed. Sure enough, the engine started enthusiastically! So now I need to replace my Jerry-Rigged fuse with a proper one soon. And get a couple of spares.
Our next stop was at Caballo Lake, in New Mexico. The lake and the surrounding mountains were very pretty. We didn’t spend much time there, but did have a nice walk to the water.
Here also are some spring colors showing up… and interesting cloud patterns.
The beautiful skies continued as we drove to our third stop – Raton, New Mexico.
Our nice sunset in Raton:
When you leave Raton, you are almost immediately in Colorado, and the views were spectacular. Those aren’t clouds in the photo below, they are snow capped peaks. They don’t show up well in the pictures, but they were really great.
We arrived in Denver Friday afternoon. That evening we had dinner with Megann, a gal Cherryl has mentored, and her boyfriend. A nice evening.
Saturday afternoon we met with long-time friends Giny and Joe. We had a nice walk around one end of the St. Vrain Greenway trail system. Giny and Cherryl got photographed… Joe and I, well, you have to imagine what we look like.
The sky threatened to rain on us, but it held off till we got in the car headed home.
So I’m not sure why I got this menacing bird’s picture and not Joe’s, but that’s what happened. He said goodbye to us as we ended our week. A great day with great friends… what more could you ask for?
