Day Trip to Creighton (December 22nd)
Well, it doesn’t take much to get us motivated to hit the road. This trip proves it.
One local TV show we like to watch on weekday mornings is Pure Nebraska. They highlight different business, events, towns, restaurants, etc. around Nebraska; especially in small towns. A week or so ago I had seen the segment on Creighton, Nebraska and their Christmas decorations, Santa workshop and the Gingerbread house. This sounded like a place where the whole community gets behind an event to make sure it’s a success and I love those kinds of stories.
Knowing that the drive would take us over three hours we left about 3:00 so that we would be there after dark. It really was a nice afternoon for a drive and seeing all of the Christmas decorations along the way just added to the enjoyment.
When we got there the first thing we did was drive through the park looking at all of the decorations. They also had different box like trailers with glass fronts set up, each with a different Christmas scene. Almost like a diorama. Each set of decorations and the trailers were sponsored by either a family or local business and those people were responsible for seeing that their display was set up and ready to go each year. They had so many to look at, that we drove through a second time just to see what we had missed before. Some bigger displays we’ve seen in other towns were synchronized with music, these were not and we really preferred it that way. At the end they had a box for donations which we gladly contributed to.
The Grinch
Frozen
After the drive, we went inside to see Santa’s workshop and the Gingerbread house. The Gingerbread house was more like a gather place where they served cookies, refreshments and had a meat and cheese tray. Through there we proceeded through Santa’s workshop.
Actually we ended up being in line with the families that had kids wanting to see Santa and sit on his lap, but that was fine too. We enjoyed watching the kids checking out the robotic elves working on toys and the train that went around the workshop. One elf would saw wood; another would be using a paint brush and so on. They had some recognizable Disney/Pixar characters in the workshop as well.
When we finished inside we decided to make one more trip through half of the drive-through decorations before heading home.
With me still trying to watch some of what I eat there really wasn’t anyplace for us to stop and grab a bite, so Ken suggested we stop at the Hy Vee in Norfolk and pick up some snacks and drinks for the drive home. Part of our drive home took us through Pierce which had some beautiful Christmas decorations. One house in particular was a 2 ½ story home with lots of decorations and lights in their trees that went way up the branches to almost the top. We thought they must have had access to a cherry-picker to get them up that high. It was very impressive.
We finally made it home about 11:30, which wasn’t too bad. We are crazy though, we spent a little over an hour in Creighton. Our drive was about seven hours, but we both enjoyed the drive and the Creighton Christmas decorations very much.