Lincoln, Nebraska

The weather had been oppressively hot and humid as we pulled into our Lincoln, Nebraska RV park, and one of our two air conditioners died, a potentially deadly catastrophe.  (Perhaps that's a slight exaggeration.)  The AC had popped a fuse.  I replaced the fuse, it would work for a while, then quit.  I asked the campground hosts if there was a mobile repairman who would come to the park and was given a card.  I called the fellow, who stressed that he would work as cheaply as humanly possible.  He arrived in a half hour, didn't find a specific problem but cleaned and rearranged the wiring .. and the unit did begin working.  He must have spent an hour here.  He charged us $300.  Bit of a con job.

I also found an RV and truck repair place to both do a routine maintenance of the motorhome (oil change, etc.) and to attach a sway bar bushing that had become dislodged.  They did the work in an hour at their shop and charged us $150.  In talking with the repairman it turned out that he grew up in Nebraska but had lived in Santa Cruz for a while before returning home.  Really nice guy, and honest.

Lincoln is both capital of Nebraska and the home of the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers.  We visited the university campus.  The student body was fairly diverse, and once again - as with most other college campuses we've seen - women outnumbered the men.  The times, they are a-changing.

That's Memorial Stadium, where the Cornhuskers play, in the background above.  Historically Nebraska has won five national collegiate football championships, but the last one was in 1997, and they are not nationally ranked this season.  I suppose it's difficult to attract top-flight prospects to Nebraska, particularly if the team is no longer considered a football power, even though we ourselves found Lincoln to be a very appealing city.

There is a fascinating museum on campus - the University of Nebraska State Museum.  It features Archie, fourteen feet tall, the largest Mammoth skeleton displayed anywhere and unofficial mascot of the university.  Mammoths were an elephant species, but much larger than the elephants of today.  Archie was discovered in 1921 when chickens unearthed some fossil bones on a nearby farm.  While we were there, art students were sketching various specimens throughout the museum.  That's Archie, the big guy on the left.

Nebraska for some reason is a treasure trove of fossils - elephants, rhinoceroses, dinosaurs, and so on.  The variety of species exhibited, most of them extinct, and the quality of the displays were breathtaking.  Don't miss this museum on your next trip to Lincoln.

The state capitol in Lincoln is a striking design, prettier from afar than the capitol building we toured in Des Moines, Iowa a few days ago.  The interior, however, while well done, isn't nearly as spectacular as Iowa's.

We were told by a long-winded tour guide that the legislature, unlike most states, is not divided into Democratic and Republican sections, and the politicians work for the people, not the party.  Uh-huh.  We also learned that like Iowa, Nebraska did not elect to receive Medicaid money from the federal government and therefore is paying much more for medical care than for example Minnesota, which opted into the program.  Nebraska citizens have obtained enough signatures to place an initiative on the ballot to reverse that decision, in order to bring medical costs down, and the seven-member Nebraska Supreme Court has ruled that the measure can indeed appear.

As the gentleman droned on, I walked away for a quieter study of the capitol architecture.  He said to Nancy, "I hope that wasn't because I was boring him."  Nancy said, "No, he's deaf."  That's a solid, believable excuse for my sporadic attacks of rudeness.  I hope she doesn't have to use it too often.

Politically, Lincoln is in a blue bubble surrounded by the little red bubble counties where corn is king.  Nancy learned of a soup kitchen in town, went down there and loved the volunteers she met.  In fact, we both like the people of Lincoln a lot (with a couple of exceptions), so much so that Nancy says she could live here except for the weather.

I have to report that on our last evening in Lincoln, Nancy called that air conditioning repair guy mentioned above and told him off for overcharging us.   Reamed him a new one.  Then she got into a heated political argument with the motorhome owner next door.  Surprisingly, I kind of like this new kick-ass, take-no-prisoners, assertive woman I'm traveling with.