After making it across Iowa and most of Nebraska without much to report, we were getting kind of desperate for entertainment. And then along came a little place called Ogallala, on the edge of Nebraska before you get to Colorado. The name itself entertained us for hours, as we childishly sang, "Ogallala" to the tune of 'Oklahoma' and then proceeded to see if we could play around with this strange word and make some other meaning out of it. We tried seeing if the name could be used as an equivalent of the French, 'Oh la, la!' or as an expression of disgust, changing the stress in the word to see if that would fit. Or, in traditional English humour (which I hate by the way) we turned it into a sort of innuendo word, and put the stress and rising intonation on the final 'la' of Ogallala' and much fun was had by all.
In the place itself, we stopped overnight at a Best Western motel and were greeted by the kind of salt-of-the-earth type staff who all spoke with a distinctly 'kind granny' type of American accent, all soft and soothing. Our room was decorated with old country style wallpaper and dried flowers accordingly. Totally not our style at all, but it was sweet nonetheless. Like staying with a kindly relative whose life consists of writing cards and letters and meeting the deadline for post box collections and maybe making tea and coffee for the church coffee morning but not much else.
The cowboy nearly ruined this nice atmosphere by 'stealing' a couple of hard boiled eggs at breakfast and sneaking them out as we headed back to our room. But the nice lady taking care of the breakfast area didn't notice and instead said, "You folks have a nice day! Drive safe!". It's such a Czech thing to try to get the most out of a 'free' breakfast though, so I had to just hope she wouldn't hold it against us if she noticed. You can take the boy out of the communist country but you can't take the communist country out of the boy....
More free things awaited us just around the corner, and this time it was my kind of freebie - free coffee.
We were headed for Denver that day but we stopped at the first rest stop across the border with Colorado and found there was a visitor's centre with free maps and leaflets and pensioners volunteering as visitor guides.
Ah, little Julesburg visitor's centre, what a haven you were! We also crossed the timeline and were now an hour behind Chicago, which meant we gained a bit of extra time that day to enjoy Denver more. But before we set off, we got a fantastic bit of background info, a map and a 3D drawing of Colorado from the lovely people at the visitor's centre who outlined for us what the deal is with Colorado, i.e. that it's the same as Nebraska until you get to Boulder. Then that's where the mountains begin and it's a whole different world after that.
We wanted to get to Denver however, so we took all the maps and leaflets and finished our cups of coffee and headed off into the windy day to see how long it would take us to get down along the I-76 and into the centre of town. It was most fortunate that we gained that hour because it meant that when we did reach Denver, we had time to go straight to the Zoo! My favourite thing to do...
Denver Zoo was lovely and full of really amusing animal enclosures and fun information boards. We had to see the hippos of course, but we also saw some cute meerkats, a few monkeys and lemurs,
a wild chipmonk running along the path at random, some penguins
and sealions and some weird-looking fish.
There were big statues of hippos too, and a conservation section with letters from school children about saving the environment (some of which were written in Spanish, which was cool!)
And the giftshop had some gorgeous things, which I could have bought more of but couldn't afford...alas.
At the end of our day, we found another Best Western motel and got the best room of the whole trip. It was divided into sections, one bit with the bed and a desk and TV and the other bit through a door separating the two, a mini-lounge with another TV and a sofa and even another desk with a wheelie-chair! Oh, and a free newspaper. A writer's idea of heaven. I could have stayed there all week...
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