From Crete to Bartlett

Crete, NE is home to Doane College. Doane is a college I have known of since 1949 or so, because I considered it when I was applying to colleges as a high school senior, and that's because it was a "Congregational college." My father was a Congregational minister, and the Congregationalists had founded some of the best colleges and universities in the country, e.g. Harvard and Yale. So why not limit one's search to that cluster of institutions? Doane was one of them, but in the end, I did not apply to Doane. I applied to Grinnell (IA) and Drury (MO), was accepted by both, and chose Drury - sight unseen -  mostly because it was half the cost of Grinnell - $750 a year, room, board and tuition, as opposed to $1500 a year at Grinnell.

But back to Doane. I was curious to see the campus of a school I had heard about for decades. It turned out to be a very impressive school which has a beautiful campus. Not what I was expecting in Crete, NE! The campus is large - 350 acres, rolling, wooded, with a large number of handsome buildings, many of them quite new. We took a short walking tour and I took some photos:

                      Entrance to Doane College

            The Bell Tower and administrative building .

The main academic building where faculty and students can mingle.

    The "Con" - originally used as a conservatory, dating back to the late 19th century. 

         Swans on a campus pond

       Boswell observatory, the oldest building on campus.

If you're looking for a college, check out Doane!

 

We left Crete at about 11a.m., and headed east on Rte 2 into Iowa, and worked our way up to I- 80. Along the way we passed some wind farms: 

We stopped in Sidney, because Ellen's friend Bonnie has a grandson named Sidney (these are for you, Bonnie):

Crossed the Mississippi at Savanna, IL: (another family name! ) 

            The bridge at Savanna 

                     The Mississippi at Savanna

While we're into family names - we went through this town yesterday:

    

    

I don't ever expect to go through a town called "Larrimore."

We got to Bartlett at about 8:45 pm. Great to see Maggie and Jerry.