We had originally planned on taking the bullet train down from Tokyo to Kyoto for a day or two. While being epically fast, it was a bit spendy for the four of us. After talking to Brooke's coworker we settled on a two day trip to Nikko and its World Heritage Sites to break up our week in Tokyo. This turned out to be an amazing decision. The town is teaming with beauty from ancient shrines to epic waterfalls and some of the best meals we had on our trip. Kyoto didn't seem all that appealing to me when I started researching which location to go to. I too am glad we chose to head north to Nikko. When we booked our Tobu Nikko Spacia X tickets I upgraded to the premium seats thinking that we'd be sitting facing one another. Instead we ended up with 4 individual seats, two in the first two rows and two in the last two rows. It turned out just fine with the kids sitting in front of us in two groups. Meadow and I were seated at the front of the car. Once in awhile we'd pas...
Scott had a job in Nebraska City ( in nearby Peru, Nebraska, actually) . I had never been to Omaha and thought we could tag along and make a weekend out of it. A family workcation for once! The route took us through Le Mars, Iowa. I insisted we stop for ice cream at the Ice Cream Capitol. They're famous for Blue Bunny ice cream. I could've passed, but we had to recreate this photo. They had renovated since we last were here, so it wasn't quite the same. I was a little disappointed to see they had changed the interior. Having read the whole Lewis and Clark journals, I wanted to stop at every historical site; starting with the the memorial for Sergeant Floyd in Souix City. Floyd was surprisingly the only member of the expedition that died. I guess that gets you a mini-Washington Monument. Tiny Peru, Nebraska (where my shoot was) had no hotel in town, so we booked the Lied Lodge at Arbor Day Farm in Nebraska City for a couple of nights. Scott always books our accommodatio...