Finally!

We haven’t blogged in a while because we took a bit of a detour from the road. As our Instagram hashtag put it, “van life on pause”. After the beautiful National Parks we visited, we had planned to make our way across the country slowly to IL traveling through Denver with a quick stop to take care of mail and such. As you probably know, Libby’s sister Aly is getting married on Sept 1. The reason we were heading back to the Midwest AGAIN was to attend another pre-wedding celebration. While our plan was to meander across the country slowly, we hit the desert heat and decided to just keep driving. That did allow us to hang out in Denver a few extra days.

On driving into Denver traffic, Brad’s phone rang. It was his sister-in-law from Missouri telling us to look out our window. We looked to the left and didn’t see anything and then she said, “other window”, and we looked out that window and there she was with Megan and Nikki our nieces. We joined them for a late lunch at one of our favorite spots in Denver. They are in town to celebrate Nikki’s 16th birthday!

Libby got to spend time with Marisa from Washington D.C. too, along with many other friends. We got to check in on baby Poppy and see how much she has grown since we left. Mary hosted us at her condo in Golden and we had a fun night of games with friends there too! It was a busy weekend but perfectly timed. We even got to have a delicious lunch at SAME! What a treat to see it thriving and touch base with everyone there.

We headed out for IL with a stop over in Omaha, NE. This is about the halfway point for us when we are making the drive to IL in two days. Our usual limit of driving is 5 hours but for this part of the trip we decided to power through. Brad’s cousin’s Chad and Alicia and their children live in Omaha so their street was the perfect stopping point for the night after 8 hours of driving. The dogs got to play in their enormous backyard – which they loved. Gemi even caught a bird – yikes. We took the group downtown to Table Grace to have lunch before we continued the journey.

Table Grace has been open since 2011 as a pay-what-you-can café. When it first opened, we helped Matt with many questions and they have visited SAME many times over the years. We have always intended to stop in and see it, especially since we have family in Omaha but have never been able to make the timing work. Most times we are driving through Omaha at night and just catching a few hours sleep before we have to hit the road again to be home in time for some holiday celebration. Our time off while at SAME was limited. We were just so happy to finally make it happen.

When we walked in, we found a couple of customers dining at the few tables. They had a menu board hanging about a counter where we were to order. Alicia was joining us from her work so we wanted to wait for her to order so we looked the menu over. The menu had two soups, two salads, two pizzas very similar to SAME. This day’s offering included a lettuce salad with berries and nuts or a spicy pesto pasta salad. The choices for pizza included a spicy sausage or veggie. The soups were tomato basil and a pork stew. Once Alicia arrived we all ordered. They even provided a gluten free pizza for Alicia. There was a donation box on the counter where we dropped our donation into the box and helped ourselves to silverware and drinks. A volunteer offered us cinnamon rolls for dessert. It was awesome to be there and see it in operation. Matt was not there that day, sadly, but this won’t be the last time we stop.