Vacation to Chicago: Day 2

Day 2: Denver to Lincoln
On the second day of our trip, we stopped at a visitors' center in Nebraska and asked for recommendations of things to see. Karen was hoping for something like the world's biggest ball of twine. What the nice old lady at the visitors' center recommended was almost as good: The Great Platt River Road Archway Monument was equal parts Disney, American cheese, and pioneer pride. There was a, as Carly put it, "ginormous" bison statue; an outdoor maze; an escalator leading up into the interactive tour with a wagon train projected on the screen around you as you "entered" the pioneer life; and a procession of exhibit areas that led up through the Pony Express, to the railroads, to the Eisenhower highway project. Random factoid #1: Eisenhower was so impressed by the autobahn during the war that he came back to adopt the idea in the States. All of this in a wood, stone, and acid-treated stainless steel monumount stretching over I-80 in Kearny, Nebraska. Oh, and we can't forget Random factoid #2: The hapless Albert Schmidt (Jack Nicholson) in About Schmidt visited the monument on his post-retirement trip from Omaha to Denver.
Now this, ladies and gentlemen, is the very definition of American Heartland!