Omaha Zoo & back to Des Moines

 Thankfully the morning was cloudy with a chance of drizzle and only a heat advisory (as opposed to the extreme heat warnings we had been under for past couple days).

Our plan was to grab breakfast at the hotel and be at the Zoo gates when they opened.

We succeeded and headed into one of the biospheres to explore.

The Omaha Zoo is BIG with lots to see and explore.

One of the highlights was with their nocturnal creatures.  The keepers have flipped their day/night cycles so they are active during our daytime hours.

Brilliant.

We dodged a few raindrops here & there most of the morning but were fine with that.

Was a welcome break from the heat.

After taking a break for lunch, we continued exploring.

By afternoon, the sun came out and temp's rose quickly.

Good thing we had saved the aquarium portion for the end.

Was an excellent day, followed by dinner, World Cup soccer, & bed.

Our final full day of vacation started with packing up the car (again), and driving to the Old Market section of Omaha before leaving town.

This was supposed to be one of the must see's-small, local stores & restaurants, historic buildings, cobblestone roads.

We navigated a lot of road construction and pulled in front of the much hyped Old Market.

And looked around wondering-is this it??

Stores & restaurants were just opening, and some other tourists were walking the sidewalks......and sidestepping the people sleeping on the streets, assorted "trash" on the ground, and trying to avoid confrontations with some folks still coming down from what they had ingested the night before.

A really sad sight.

With that, we said a hasty goodbye to Omaha and headed to Des Moines.

Our lunch break was at a great, tiny diner in Avoca Iowa.

Leonard's Lunchbox.

Our hotel was outside of Des Moines & in a little suburb closer to the airport.

After getting settled, I noticed a place across the street and we decided to check it out before heading to dinner.

Candlestick bowling while watching World Cup on the bigscreen.

Then we walked to dinner, wound up with a server who loves the NC coast, and relaxed one more time watching more World Cup.

The next morning we woke up to a horrible storm and crazy, torrential downpours.

Thankfully our flight was mid morning, and by the time we left the hotel it was down to a drizzle.

Except the storm had blown water into our rental car.

The airport was chaos-early morning flights had all been delayed due to the storms and several others had been diverted into Des Moines.

We were thankful to not be in that crazy mess.

Our flight departed on time and headed to Atlanta.

Two easy, short flights to home.

Except it wasn't.

The pilot announced our decent to Atlanta.....and after a while I checked the time.  Why hadn't we landed yet?  That's when the pilot announced due to storms we would need to circle Atlanta before being cleared to land.

No biggie.  I finished my magazine, Keenan finished a crossword.

Then the pilot made another announcement-not one we wanted to hear.

Due to the lingering storm still over Atlanta we would be diverting to Nashville.

But not to worry, the crew had plenty of time before they would clock out......

Keenan checked his flight ap & saw Atlanta was on a ground stop, Kevin checked Delta ap since our layover was supposed to be two hours, Kieran napped, and I rummaged in my bag for protein bars.

We landed in Nashville, & the pilot said we would be back in the air as soon as ground stop lifted in Atlanta and we refueled.

And then we waited....and waited.....and waited.....and waited.

We watched the clouds move in, checked flight ap's, radar, Delta ap, & texted our dog sitter.

Then the pilot made the announcement Kevin and I were dreading.

He and the entire crew had timed out.  A new one had been requested but they were coming from.....Atlanta.

Our plane was going to get moved to a gate and if anyone wanted to de-plane they would be allowed to, while they waited for new crew to arrive.

Kevin & I ran through our options-continue to wait, get back in the air sometime that night, arrive in Atlanta too late for any flights to Greensboro, & have to crash at the airport.... or get off, rent a car and start the six hour drive home.

We chose the second option.

So while we waited for the plane to get to a gate Kevin lined up a rental car, I texted dog sitter, and Keenan told us storms were quickly approaching Nashville.

Several of us finally got off the plane, headed to the rental car station.  

We grabbed our car & headed out into the storm (and now Nashville had groundstop).

After getting out of Nashville and the storms, we did a quick drive through for dinner (our "lunch" was my emergency protein bars), watched a nice sunset, and listened to Argentina pull out yet another win in World Cup.  We kept getting flight updates and, just like we had thought, pulled into our driveway twenty minutes after that flight landed back in Atlanta.

The next morning Kevin and I drove to the airport to return our rental, and (thankfully) retreive our bags.

Memorable ending to a memorable vacation.