A Sister Road Trip Across America - Part 3

As you may know, at the end of January I drove cross-country with my sister, Meghan. We had a lot of fun, and took a lot of awesome pictures, and I've been wanting to share mine with you, but to be perfectly honest, her's are better. She's put together a few posts with some of her best, most amazing pictures from our journey and a few fun realizations. This is Part 3, read Parts 1& 2 here. 

Part 3: More Tourist Attractions

Last week I wrote about the first couple of tourist attraction stops we made along the way on our drive to California. The World's Largest Truck Stop and the World's Largest Time Capsule left us wanting more. Little did we know, the best was yet to come...

Our third attraction stop was our absolute favorite. We're talking about childhood dreams coming true, here. From the second we spotted the first old, tattered billboard advertising Pioneer Village (hours before we were anywhere close to it), Katie and I were intrigued. It was a little out of the way, but our love for Laura Ingalls Wilder and The Oregon Trail could not be suppressed and we just couldn't resist stopping.

 

 

Pioneer Village is located in Minden, Nebraska, amongst a million and one cows. The friendly elderly lady who sold us our tickets was probably confused as to why two twenty-somethings were giddy with excitement before roaming around the village. There were approximately six visitors at the village, including us, which was actually quite perfect.

This meant more freedom to explore, climb on trains, climb on covered wagons, take goofy pictures, take artistic pictures, and touch absolutely everything that was stamped with a little red 'OK TO TOUCH' hand (you know, the kind of signs that let young children like us know it's OK to touch things).

Our short stop turned into a few hours, we purchased some amazing maps of the Old West for $2, and being famished from all of the excitement we hit the road to find some food.

Our fourth stop was at Hole 'N the Rock in Moab, Utah. Hole 'N the Rock is a 5,000 square foot former home/restaurant for local miners that a man named Albert Christensen carved in red Utah rock. 

Though we weren't allowed to take pictures inside the actual home (click here to see their website with interior photos), we were amazed at some of the features--for example, a fully-functioning fireplace and a bathtub made of rock?! Awesome.

 We were also mildly disturbed by some details--for example, Albert was experimenting with taxidermy in his later years and stuffed his wild horse-friend in a less-than-professional manner. Poor horse. 

  

There were a lot of interesting weathered and rusty things around for me to photograph here (yay more old stuff!), so I enjoyed doing that. Partially exhausted from our journey and partially creeped out by the stuffed wild horse, we left Hole 'N the Rock to refuel at a brewery in Moab. Yum!

For our final act of American tourism, we stopped in Las Vegas for lunch and a quick gamble. Since we were driving through anyways we figured we had to stop.

 
Katie and I enjoyed walking around and people watching on the strip, we ate lunch at Margaritaville, and finally, we tried our hand at gambling. It was actually the first time either of us had gambled at a casino. Can you believe that?! Needless to say, we stuck to penny slot machines and were not lucky.

The variety of tourist attractions we stopped at made our travels go by quickly, and it was fun to experience new and different things. The beautiful, the exciting, and even the creepy.

Next stop--California!

xo Meghan