Omaha to Denver / Yanney Heritage Park
Driving from Omaha, NE to Denver, CO | Visiting Yanney Heritage Park in Kearney, NE | Camping in Nebraska & Eastern Colorado | September 2024
We spent our evening in Omaha in our friend’s driveway, and spent some more time chatting over breakfast in the morning before saying our goodbyes. Before leaving Omaha, we decided to visit one of our favorite parks, so we drove over to Walnut Creek Recreation Area. It was just as we remembered it, a peaceful walking trail in the middle of the city, another beautiful place that holds a piece of our hearts. We remember walking this trail at least twice a week, no matter the season, while we lived here. Today, we knew that Charlotte likely wouldn’t be up for walking the whole 3 mile loop, so we were content to just walk a little ways in either direction before getting back on the road.
We now had 2 days before we were scheduled to arrive in Denver, which means we were able to break up what would have been an 8 hour drive on the interstate into three ~4 hour driving days on a nice mix of interstate and highways, through some new counties in Kansas and Eastern Colorado. Today started with a 3 hour drive on I-80 to Kearney, NE. As we neared Kearney, I started to look for a spot to stop for lunch and a walk. We had already visited the state historic site near here, so instead I picked out what looked to be a nice little park with walking trails: Yanney Heritage Park.
The park turned out to be so much nicer than we would’ve expected: plenty of trails through flower gardens, pretty and unique sculptures throughout, and a tall tower that you can walk up that gives great views of the park and surrounding areas. We ended up spending several hours here and thoroughly enjoyed every part of it. Everyone who drives I-80 across Nebraska talks about how flat and boring it is (Us included, before we lived here!) but this just goes to show that you can’t judge a state by its interstate. Or maybe we’re just easier to impress because we grew up in Iowa and have learned to make the most out of every area we’re in. 🙂
When we were finished at the park, we decided to drive only another 30 minutes to a camping spot for the night. We ended up at Blue Hole State Wildlife Area, which is free with a few dispersed sites just off of I-80. There were enough trees blocking the view of the interstate, but you could definitely hear it — we were thankful for our fan to drown out the noise. It was also a little buggy, but we were still able to hang out outside until the sun went down.
The next day, we headed South into Kansas, then continued our journey West. Today we only made one short stop at a historical marker off a Kansas highway related to the aftermath of the Sand Creek Massacre. After reading the signs and letting Charlotte walk around a little, we grabbed snacks from the fridge and pressed on to our chosen campsite. We knocked out 3 counties in Northwest KS on our way, then finally crossed into Colorado — a first for us in the van! Our campsite tonight was located about 6 miles off of US-385 at a place that used to be a state park, but now is a State Wildlife Area that consists of a dried up lake and a slightly creepy abandoned campground. Camping was still allowed here, as far as we could tell, and we had the assurance of someone else also camping here to feel ‘safe’. It was hot and buggy when we arrived, and we still had several hours before sunset. Being an abandoned area, the weeds were pretty overgrown so the best place to sit was on the ground, in the shade cast by our van. Not ideal, but at least we had cell service and freeze pops, and were able to entertain ourselves until night fell.
The next day, all we had to do was drive South on US-385 to I-70, then make our way into Denver, claiming a few more counties on our way. There wasn’t much on our route that we cared to stop for, so instead we drove right to the city and to our hotel for the weekend. That’s right, after some back and forth, we decided to use hotel points for our stay here. It just made things easier since we had several family events to attend and Charlotte needed a safe place to be during all of that. And we were sure glad we did — it was much hotter than we had anticipated, with highs in the 90s! Thankfully our hotel let us check in early, so we were able to wait out the hottest hours of the day before heading out to explore.
