Tourists in Our Own City

This summer, the Lincoln Chamber of Commerce sponsored a program called "Be A Tourist" to promote tourism (both from visitors and residents) in and around Lincoln. We thought it would be a fun way to see some things around town, so early in the summer, Cliff picked up 4 "Passports" for our family that listed the events/places featured in this year's program. The idea is to visit the places you choose from the Passport, get a stamp for each place visited and turn in your Passport when finished to be entered into prize drawings. There are 2 levels of prize categories (6-10 stamps or 11+ stamps), and we went for the Gold Level, completing stamp number 11 on Thursday, just 2 days before the deadline. Here are the places we visited, in no particular chronological order:
1. Jazz in June--weekly free, outdoor jazz concerts each Tuesday in June on UNL's campus. We've been visiting Jazz in June since we first started coming to Lincoln when Laura was a baby. Great family event!
2. Grand Manse--beautiful, historic building in downtown, built in 1904. It used to be City Hall, housing a court and post office. It now is a mix of banquet space, restaurant, office space and apartments. Really cool architecture!
3. Nature Center at Pioneers Park--part nature preserve, part educational facility. We got to see snakes, a bald eagle, screech owls, elk and buffalo.
4. Sheldon Art Museum--on UNL's campus, a beautiful little art gallery with permanent and traveling exhibit space.
5. Friday Nights at South Pointe--free weekly, outdoor concerts and the local outdoor mall.
6. Capital City Ribfest--annual gathering of several BBQ vendors from all over the country. There's some live music, but basically, you go there to eat and not much else......
7. Celebrate Lincoln International Festival--another downtown festival with ethnic food vendors, live music, etc. This one actually has bounce houses and stuff for the kids to do. :)
8. UNL Dairy Store--ice cream.....need we say more?!
9. UNL Tractor Museum--a collection of tractors and tools from many years back. The kids love sitting on all of the tractors, and the guy at the museum and my dad enjoyed talking about the tools together.
10. Lincoln Saltdogs baseball--Cliff got to throw out the first pitch, we had great seats, free food, and a lovely, relaxing evening.
11. Lincoln Children's Museum--a family favorite! The kids can't get enough of this place!!

So, as you can see our city offers a lot to do. There were more listings in the Passport that we didn't even get to. What a great program!!

Next to a big tractor tire at the UNL Tractor Museum:

Ice cream at UNL Dairy Store while our family visited:

Petting a screech owl at the Nature Center:

Haymarket Park, home of the Lincoln Saltdogs, including a playground in the outfield:

"Shopping for groceries" at the Lincoln Children's Museum:

And for all of our efforts, the kids got these t-shirts, "I Discovered Lincoln":

Gina