Well, we just finished up another year of the Junk Jaunt in central Nebraska.

We usually try to hit St. Paul so we started out there first.  The weather was pretty hot on Friday and we found some hot deals. I bought an old chair that didn’t have a seat to use as a plant display. As we were browsing through the buildings we found an ABC Man chair. It didn’t have the table or tray with it,  but it was in  very good shape. We didn’t get it but it’s fun to find things like that a long the way.

 

Then we drove up to Elba and found a place there that had a lot of old bee boxes.  They only wanted $5 each so I bought one . . . should have bought two.  They will make a nice setting for my gourds and mums on the deck.  That is if Zelda will leave my gourds alone. This vendor also had a bunch of collectible Barbies still in their boxes . . . My Fair Lady Barbie and Rapunzel Barbie.  Of course, Ken had to send a picture of some of them to Kalie and our friend Brandy who dances with us and also collects Barbies.

    

 Elba community building has a great enchilada  lunch/dinner but we decided to wait and eat later since we were meeting everyone at the Kinkaider Brewery near Broken Box for supper around 8:00 p.m. There’s a guy that comes to Elba each year and sells slabs of wood, benches and skins.  We bought our big wood bench from him last year for $75.  This year he had some smaller benches and he wanted $125 so we felt like we got a pretty good deal last year.

 After we left Elba we trekked down to Cairo to their fairgrounds/ballpark.  There’s usually a lot to look at in the building there.  Ken had been looking for a cherry pitter for Mark and he found one. He only paid $7.  I say only because later we found a few of them priced at $27 or $30. What a deal!!

 We didn’t go into Cairo that day but headed to Loup City.  At the fairgrounds there Ken found a pedal grindstone that someone had made over.  We took some pictures to give him an idea on what he could do with his pedal grindstone.  There was a trailer there with some miscellaneous items and I found a nice wood single-tree which Ken bought for me for $4. Something new for the Party Barn!!

 

Then it was time to make our way to Broken Bow. We stopped for lunch first at the Tumbleweed Café then headed to the fairgrounds.  The first couple of booths we stopped at had some unusual items – the one-man band, and the stick horse on wheels . . . really?:) 

  

Then we went inside a couple of the buildings and found someone’s alarm clock collection, a unicycle, a boar’s head, an old tuba and their annual display of old baseball gloves and mitts. Ken really enjoys looking at them.

        

      

Back outside we found a vendor that had a bunch of whirly gigs and since it was windy they were really spinning.

    

This guy looks board . . . or as Ken said, he must be the real life stick man.  

After dinner at the Kinkaider we headed to the Cedar Lake Bed and Breakfast (only we didn’t get the breakfast), the same place we stayed last year.  Glen (the guy who takes us coon hunting) and Shirley Rodgers were on their way home from a vacation in Colorado so they stopped by to spend the night. They went out with us to eat and later Glen joined in on a game of 10 point pitch. Ryli was just learning to play so Uncle Jim was her coach.

 

Saturday morning it was damp and only about 50 degrees but Ken, Den and Glen wanted to go fishing before Glen headed back to Fairbury.  The boat wasn’t too big but they all seemed to enjoy it anyway.  I told them they looked like “rub-a-dub-dub, three men in a tub”.

 

Later Ken and I headed northeast to Taylor and then up through Brewster and Dunning.  Brewster and Dunning are pretty far out there but we enjoy the drive.  The towns appear to be pretty much ghost towns as there are very few businesses, the schools are closed and there are more empty houses than occupied ones.  We did take a side trip to Schneidereit Ranch near Brewster. We had stayed there during one of our earlier Junk Jaunts and it is really a unique place.  It was great to see it again.

 We had all brought food for our Saturday night meal and we asked Tom and Bonnie Mayo (the owners of the B&B) to join us for dinner and of course Bonnie brought some food too.  This is probably one of my most favorite parts of the JJ. We usually sit around telling stories or talking about when the Steele boys and Nancy were younger.  This year the dining room was filled with laughter because of the stories and antics Tom and Dennis told about their days at Milford. Ryli was like a fly on the wall so she learned a lot about her family . . . not sure if that’s good or bad but she laughed just as hard as the rest of us! She will have stories of her own to tell after going Junk Jaunting with us for so many years.

 When everything was cleaned up after dinner and Tom and Bonnie headed back to their house, we all crowded into the living room to watch a movie. They don’t have cable or satellite there but they do have a few DVD’s we can watch.  We watched one that none of us had seen, God’s Not Dead.

 With nine of us and one shower everyone gets up early to shower.  This year Ken and I showered on Saturday to cut down on the wait time. We all eat what’s left of the baked goods and head to Church.  Anselmo, which is the nearest town, has a beautiful Church, St. Anselm also known as the Cathedral of the Sandhills.  After Church we stand around and talk, like we used to do in Fairbury when we would stay down there.  Last minute reminders about upcoming holidays and other events are passed on and then everyone heads home or off to do some more junking.