Travel

Nebraska Trifecta & More (Day 1)

joannie653514 Comments

 

Lately I’ve noticed that when contestants tell their amusing little personal anecdotes on my favorite quiz show, Jeopardy, they always seem to start with “So, we were” or “So, I was” or “So, this or that or the other”. It really doesn’t matter what question Alex Trebek asks them, they clearly have rehearsed their “moment” in their minds endlessly before appearing on the show and somehow or another it always begins with “So”. So, in the spirit of all Jeopardy contestants of whom I will never be one, I’m starting this series of travelogue blogs about our trip to Nebraska with…..

SO we were going to Nebraska…..and I had planned this trip for weeks…well, for several months. When our earlier planned winter in sunny Florida got cancelled for medical reasons (I had to get some surgery and figured I ought to recover in the same state where my surgeon was just in case things didn’t go so well), I decided we needed a consolation prize of sorts. SO, (see how easily that word just slips in at the beginning of every sentence?) I started thinking about trips here and there to see a few birds since I am partial to traveling long distances to see birds I have never seen before. Then I thought “what about Nebraska and Sandhill Cranes”? Now, Sandhill Cranes wouldn’t be new birds for us but I had heard that there’s this thing about Nebraska in the spring that attracts thousands of Sandhill Cranes….well, to be a little more precise, maybe a half a million Sandhill Cranes according to official counts.

Nebraska is a well-known layover for the Cranes to give them a bit of time to fatten up in the fields around the Platte River on an eighty mile or so strip between Grand Island and Kearney (car-knee). People from all over the world put on lots of layers of clothes and gloves and hats and wrap scarves around their faces to go and stand out in the cold (Nebraska is very cold in early Spring), trying not to stamp their feet to thaw your toes (don’t want to disturb the birds) or shiver too much in the dark confines of an oversized duck blind to watch these birds come down into the river for the night or, as an alternative, watch them leave the river before dawn. Yep, that’s the kind of vacation for me! Sounded awesome although anyone who knows me knows that my birding is severely curtailed because I really… really…. hate to get out of bed at the crack of dawn for anything (or, as my friend, Glo, says “the crap of dawn”) but a few hundred thousand Sandhill Cranes would be just the thing to drag my lazy bones out of a warm bed. Well, maybe.

So (there it is again…another “so”), the planning commenced and no sooner had I started googling and binging Nebraska and Sandhill Cranes, that I found that early spring is also the best time of year to see Prairie Chickens and Sharp-Tailed Grouse doing their courting dances at the Leks (what you call the place where these birds do their courtship dances). Bingo! We could see the three big birds of a Nebraska spring all on one trip – a veritable trifecta…without the wagering, of course. We were on our way in no time flat.

Now, note that I’m dividing the trip into several blogs because it will be easier to divide the photos and thoughts on the three different birds that way and, well, frankly, because I can get pretty wordy sometimes and the blogs can get rather long. If you know me, you understand. But this series of blogs will be more of a travelogue than the recent blogs that I have completed….good to change things up now and then, don’t you think?

This first blog (Day 1) is rather uneventful because it mostly involves travel and, for the blog, an overview of the planning and whatnot. But, look at it this way – I will bore you on the “going to” Nebraska travel day and I will try not to repeat it on the “coming back” to Maryland travel day. Deal?

Travel days are rather boring because you get on a plane and fly an hour or so, then get off the plane and race through a large unknown airport and then get onto another plane and fly another couple hours to the final city and walk a mile or so through an airport to the rental car stations and wait for a bit until you get a car and head out to a hotel (depending on the time of day) where you find yourself totally exhausted, which is why I have learned to leave day 1 of any traveling for just that – doing the airport, rental car, hotel thing – if we have to fly to get there. A good night’s sleep makes all the difference in the world on how much you enjoy your first official vacation event whether it is birding or beaching or wandering around (like us) or heading to museums or reenacting the Civil War – whatever – it is much better when you’re not totally exhausted. And, since no one got dragged off the plane by the airport police and turbulence was not bad and the pilot did okay on the landing, our travel to Nebraska was not really noteworthy although, as usual, our arriving gate at the transition city, Minneapolis, was at the most distant possible point in the airport from our departure gate to our final destination, Omaha, and there was, as always, limited time to get from one to the other but we made it easy peasy.

Omaha was rather unexpectedly nice – not too big and not really small being the largest city in Nebraska. We had a rather nice view of the city from the parking lot of our hotel just outside the city limits and a rather not so nice view of a tank farm from the window in our room. We saw our first Nebraska birds on the drive out of the airport (Eppley Airfield) – Double-Crested Cormorants – at Carter Lake which is not really in Nebraska so these were our first Iowa birds….we got two states in with one airport.

Omaha sits right on the Missouri River (which was a nice bonus also on this trip since I do not recall ever seeing the Missouri before) and, the river, as you might guess, is the boundary between Iowa and Nebraska. But, back to the birds which were our FOT (first of trip) birds along with a couple Canada Geese and that made the trip official – we were on a birding trip and we’d seen birds. There ya go. Mission accomplished. Well, not quite.

We were tired and we were hungry. You can get absolutely anything you want to eat in an airport these days but somehow it seems not to be enough because whenever I fly, I end up hungry. The little peanuts on the plane are just never enough. Oh, we did have one tiny bit of drama on the plane. Someone was allergic to peanuts so the stewards made them disappear like magic and we were offered pretzels and granola cookies instead.

But, back to being hungry, SO, we were in Omaha, the home of Omaha Steaks, and it stands to reason that we started looking for a good steak house. The hotel manager obliged by telling us that the more local steakhouse was not really the best in his humble opinion so he gave us directions that took us right through to the south side of the city to world famous (at least that’s what the sign said) Anthony’s Steakhouse. Turned out to be a great recommendation…for me….my filet mignon was delicious – tender as butter (or should I say “butta”). Jerry said his prime rib was good but not as good as my filet – yes, we taste each other’s meals liberally – heck, we have been together for a coon’s age and share bout near everything anymore. But, overall, the food was delicious and the experience was all very Nebraska right down to (or up to) the giant bull on the roof of the building.

One final note on day 1, I am a big fan of the NCAA basketball playoffs, aka March Madness. I do not follow basketball at all otherwise but I love the tournament. And, I am a really big fan of the Carolina Tarheels and every year, I root madly for UNC. And this year, they were, amazingly enough considering the challenges they had met and overcome during the tournament, in the final championship game. And, we were right there in the hotel and ready for the game to commence…….and I fell asleep. Yep, I slept pretty much through the whole game. I occasionally woke up and Jerry would tell me how exciting the game was and how the lead was back and forth throughout the game and how I was missing it all….but I could not stay awake….not to save my life. And, of course, UNC won! And I missed it all.

SO, a long day of travel and a tummy full of steak, I was tuckered out. Tomorrow, we would set out to explore south east Nebraska but tonight, you could stick a fork in me, I was done.

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Day 1:

April 10 – Baltimore, MD to Omaha, NE (via Minneapolis, MN): 1153 Miles

Birds Spotted So Far:

Canada Goose
Double-Crested Cormorant

Stone’s Chapel

joannie65354 Comments

“This was the church I went to when I was a child. I remember going to church in the summer and it would be hot so they would open the windows to try to stir up a little breeze throughout the church. The church sat beside a pasture where cows grazed. When the congregation would start singing, the cows in the pasture would lope on over to the wooden fence and lean their heads over the fence and start to moo … singing right along with the people in church. I recall that they did not muuurrrr too much during the sermon but they certainly did seem to enjoy the hymns.” (Jerry Hanline)

Stone’s Chapel is still there on Crum’s Church Road in Clarke County near Berryville, Virginia. So is the pasture with its sturdy wood and wire fence. And there are still cows grazing in the field munching on clover and Queen Anne’s Lace and the native grasses that grow there. But the congregation is no longer there…..no longer gathering on Sunday morning for the worship service….no longer opening the windows to catch the breeze or to sing the old hymns from the old blue-backed Presbyterian hymnal. After more than two hundred years, the chapel is now as still and quiet as the graves in the cemetery outside.

There has been a church at this site since 1740. Historical records note that there was a log building on the site as early as 1785. The first meetings were held in an old barn owned by Jacob Mauser. The earliest settlers in the area were mostly German and Scotch-Irish who were members of the Reform Church of Europe who worshiped God under the teachings of Martin Luther and John Calvin. In the new world, here in Berryville, the church building was used by both the Lutherans and the Calvinists for the first twenty-five years (25) of its existence.

The first Lutheran minister of record was the Reverend Christian Streit, a Lutheran Revolutionary War chaplain, who served his congregation from 1785 to 1812. Pastor Streit held the first communion at the church on October 30, 1785. How wonderful to consider these early American Christians gathering in a barn….no more than a stable really….to worship and take communion.

The Lutheran congregation knew their church as the Stenkirche Lutheran Church. In 1810, the Lutheran congregation moved to Union Church in Smithfield (now Middleway, West Virginia) but they continued to use the cemetery at Stone’s Chapel throughout the 19th century.

As for the Calvinists, Stone’s Chapel was first mentioned in local Presbyterian records in 1878. Prior to 1853 when the Berryville Presbytery was established, pastors were provided by the Winchester Presbytery. The first pastor for Stone’s Chapel was Reverend J.H.C. Leach who was appointed in 1824. Over the years several more pastors were provided by the Winchester Presbytery. Then in September 1885, the local Berryville pastor agreed to conduct services twice a month at Stone’s Chapel – a morning service on the third Sunday of each month and an afternoon service on the first Sunday of each month. On July 31, 1886, Stone’s Chapel was established as a separate church starting with just fifteen (15) members, eleven (11) of which had transferred over from the Berryville Presbytery.

The chapel was named after Jacob Stone (formerly Stine) who donated land for the church cemetery which has about two hundred marked graves dating back to the 1700’s and includes the graves of at least three Revolutionary War soldiers. The first burial on record was the son of Daniel Hukedom on August 18, 1786. The deed which transferred the property from Jacob and Barbara Stone to the Trustees of the Lutheran and Calvinist Societies was recorded in 1793. Ownership and maintenance of the cemetery was taken over by the Clarke County Cemetery Association in the 1950’s. (Note: the church was also originally called Stine’s Chapel. The name was changed when Jacob Stine anglicized his name to Stone.)

The current building was constructed in 1848. In 1905, it was renovated to add the vestibule tower and the back addition for Sunday School. At that time a new slate roof was added along with stained glass windows, a mahogany pulpit and a pipe organ. (I think maybe what we thought was a choir loft or gallery must have been home to the pipe organ.)

Stone’s Chapel was an active Presbyterian church until it was decommissioned in 2000. The Chapel had its last meeting on Easter Sunday, April 24, 2000.

I had the opportunity to attend this last meeting along with other members of my husband’s family who all traveled up to Berryville to attend that final service with their mother. It was a warm spring day and a lovely way to end more than two centuries of worshipping God there with the local assembly although I have to admit that I was sorely disappointed that the cows didn’t come on over and sing along with us.

Today the church is owned and maintained by the Stone’s Chapel Memorial Association. Donations for the upkeep and preservation of the chapel can be made to:

Stone’s Chapel Memorial Association
Post Office Box 844
Berryville, VA 22611.

  1. Source information for this article was found at https://stoneschapel.org/history/ .
  2. For information about the Revolutionary War veterans buried at Stone’s Chapel, see https://stoneschapel.org/cemetery/ .
  3. Other historical information was taken from the Stone’s Chapel Program/Pamphlet handed out for the final service on April 24, 2000.
  4. Stone’s Chapel is located on Crum’s Church Road – Routes 632 and 761 in Clarke County.