The main purpose of the trip to Omaha was to allow my Dad some time with his grandchildren. The plan was for him to take the grandkids for a few days of spoiling. 🙂  Thus, Wife and I had to make ourselves scarce. What to do?

We went to a bed & breakfast.

Some years ago I worked at a company and there met Jeanna Stavas. We hit it off due to our common history with Nebraska. About 5 years ago Jeanna opted to leave the high-tech industry and opened up a B&B called Whispering Pines, in Nebraska City, Nebraska (about an hour drive south of Omaha). I figured that would work out great: let my Dad have the grandkids for a few days and Wife and I spend a little together time at a B&B.

We’ve never done the B&B thing before, and after this experience I think we’ll do it a lot more. It was fantastic.

We stayed in “The Roost”, which is an old barn converted to a charming room off from the rest of the house. Everything was quiet, private, and quite nice. The pictures on the Whispering Pines website just do not do the rooms justice, and I think that’s really a limitation of the medium… how can you convey the experience in a picture?

Jeanna was a fantastic host, tending to any needs we had. She even took care of a special request I had to have some of Wife’s favorite flowers already in the room. A little wine, a little cheese, some other treats. Nothing was a problem.

Breakfast. Oh my my my my my. Simply delicious. Gourmet, but not pretentious at all. Fresh fruits, local eggs, veggies from her garden. So so so good.  Oh, and let’s not forget the constant supply of home-made cookies. Mmmm.

Nebraska City itself was pretty cool too. Wife and I actually liked just driving through the town looking at the houses… quite a contrast from your modern tract house subdivisions. Local restaurants like the Timber Room at the Lied Lodge were wonderful. Oh, and Parker’s Smokehouse wasn’t Texas BBQ but it was pretty darn good. Frankly, one nice thing was just seeing the wide variety of trees and other plants, because down in our part of Texas it’s just not as diverse. We also took in the Lewis & Clark Museum, which was really well-executed. Of course, we also did a little shopping, and there were some fantastic little shops down there.

So with all this wonderfulness there has to be a downside somewhere, right? Depends how you look at it. 🙂  We didn’t have great coverage out there, so some phone calls didn’t make it through or would drop. If we were lucky we got AT&T’s Edge network (no 3G at all) but most of the time we had the “o” (GPRS) or “Searching…” or “No Service”. Jeanna does have some Wi-Fi, but the signal doesn’t make it down to The Roost (tho you can get it up at the main house). So, lack of connectivity…. good or bad, all depends how you look at it given your reasons for going to a B&B and how badly your “Internet addiction” is. But it did point out how spoiled I am here in Austin. 🙂

All in all, Wife and I had a fantastic little get-away for a few days, and Jeanna @ the Whispering Pines Bed & Breakfast was at the heart of it all. We look forward to going back.