When I left on this particular roadtrip, I intended to continue to wander and wend my way back to New Hampshire over the 2 weeks or so between the end of the Dabrowski Congress and the end of July.
Rocky Mountain National Park showed me that I needed a somewhat different end to my journey this time. I wanted to spend more time in the park, but hadn't planned ahead to do that (and it's difficult on to do on short notice in the middle of summer for various logistical and financial reasons). But I realized on Tuesday afternoon that I wanted to find a place in the mountains and/or woods, where I could settle for a week or so and just be in nature .... and really concentrate on how to find a path forward to the kind of connection with the world I need. It is necessary for the me I am still trying to become.
I had 'deposited' a week of vacation time I wasn't able to take at a small resort in central Vermont - a place I love. I called, and they might be able to accommodate me from 20-27 July. I was about 30 hours of driving away from central VT and it was Tuesday afternoon. I drove as far as Kearney, NE that afternoon into the early evening. On Wednesday, I drove to Lincoln, NE (first) and stopped at a very cute little 'pocket' garden called Sunken Gardens.
Construction of Sunken Gardens began in the winter of 1930-31, as part of a depression era project for unemployed me. The land had been a refuse dumpsite, and was donated to the garden project by a group of locally prominent families. The garden was know originally as the "Rock Garden". It covered about one-and-a-half acres, and opened with 416 shrubs and trees.
A renovation of the garden began in 2003 and ended in 2005. It included the addition of new statuary and also a pavilion. Today, Sunken Gardens is the only Nebraska garden listed in the National Geographic Guide to Public Gardens 300 Best Gardens to Visit in the US and Canada.
Mostly trees:
Mostly flowers:
After leaving Sunken Gardens, I drove as far as Des Moines before finding a place to spend the night. I knew by this point I was definitely heading for Vermont, and that meant a lot of driving coming up in the next couple of days.
Ready for a good night's sleep!
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