Posted By FarmerJ on January 2, 2011

Darling Husbie has had the past two weeks on leave, which is amazing in itself.  But, what is even more amazing is that during this two-week leave, he’s only had to go into his office twice!  That is a miracle.  The man works so much, he literally doesn’t know what to do with himself if he’s not stompin’ alligators or putting out fires.  Compound a quiet leave with a bitter cold front that moved through and had us housebound for the past three days, and you’ve got a man ready to climb the walls.  Trust me, Darling Husbie is too big to be climbing the walls.

The temperatures had warmed to a balmy 23 degrees, and the winds had calmed to a peaceful 9 mph.  Perfect conditions for a picnic in January.  So, I packed us a lunch of tuna sandwiches, Wheat Thins, bananas, candy canes and some chocolate I had stashed.  I threw in some Root Beer and water, and we were good to go!

Except…go where?  There’s nowhere to go in Nebraska.  There’s no public land to speak of.  Instead, there are thousands of acres of farmland…owned by a farmer, who most certainly does not want you traipsing through his property as a form of self entertainment.  There’s no awesome rock formations to gaze upon.  Instead, there are stacks of bales.  There’s alfalfa bales, prairie grass bales and corn stalk bales.  I’ll admit, some of the bales are stacked in a way that could be interesting…for a very brief moment.  Like the farmer who stacked his corn stalk bales to form a windbreak for his house.  There’s no mountain summits to climb to.  Instead, if you drive far enough, you will encounter a slight sand hill.  But then, if you get off the main road, you’d be on some farmer’s property.  So, there’s no need to get yourself worked up in excitement over a little bump in the road.

With nowhere to go, away we went ~ Husbie, me and the two canines.  Bubba was ready to take a run, anyway.  We headed north with hope of finding a place to enjoy our picnic on the frozen bank of the river.  No such luck, though, because of all that no public land stuff I mentioned above.  So, we just drove, with no real purpose…other than to get Husbie out of the house and to keep the freshly painted walls scuff free.

No.  We didn’t see any awesome rock formations, or mountain peaks, or wildflowers.  We did see a lot of tractors, a lot of cows, some goats and some sheep.  And, then, we reached the town of Greeley.  I need to make a t-shirt that says, “We took a 65-mile trip to Greeley, and all we got was this funny picture.”  Seriously.  This sign was the highlight of our sightseeing adventures today.  We’d never been to Greeley before, so we took 45 seconds to drive through town.  All of it.  We saw three or four of the friendly people, but never did see any of the old crabs.

Feeling a tad overexerted from so much excitement, we decided we’d head back home.  We macked our sandwiches, crunched our crackers and swilled our soda while rolling down the road.  A person could starve to death looking for a public picnic area around here.

All sarcasm aside, it really was a nice afternoon ~ what made it nice was the man I was with…my most beloved.  ♥

Categories: Prairie Playtime
Tags: