"Photo Op"...what you should know is not all of my kids are ready and willing to pose at every opportunity. It was early, so she accommodated the situation.
We crossed the Mississippi at La Crosse, WI. Landing here was fairly haphazard. It was on my plan, but I didn't actually pay that much attention to my plan to know about this lovely little place. I need to go back and visit again. Seriously, one of the cutest towns I've ever been to in the U.S.
This is the view from "Granddad's Bluff". You can see three states (Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota) from up there. Don't ask m what is what, because I don't know. The views are incredible, though.
You have to know the backstory. Jac got that plaid blanket for Christmas. He has a habit of wandering all of the house wrapped in it (knocking stuff off counters in the process...highly annoying). I started calling him Linus. We stopped in Sleepy Eye to get a snack (deep fried jalapeno strips...for real) and there was Linus. Jac couldn't get across the street fast enough. Alicia was mortified. "Who does that?" "Is posing with a blanket on the side of the street really necessary?"
Uhh...yes. It actually was necessary. Because I wasn't leaving Sleepy Eye until I got the picture.
Sod house on the prairie...
I forgot how flat it is out here. I mean, I remembered it was flat, but one forgets the extent of exactly how flat it is. You can see for miles. I'm convinced every tree was intentionally planted by man. I'm not sure if we saw any trees for half of Minnesota that weren't part of an obvious line.
Some kind of prairie flower...
The other thing worth mentioning is we took some windy, little, two-lane (for most of it) road from Rochester all the way to Brookings, SD. We did so under the guise it is called the "Laura Ingalls Wilder Highway". I thought that whole tourist angle would be played up. Not so much. We drove forever until we came to Walnut Grove. Know what's there? Not much of anything. There was a little museum, but it was closed by the time we got there. Pretty sure we didn't miss much.
One of the 10,000 lakes of Minnesota
This one is for Ryan. He relies on the GPS. I hardly ever use it, because it either doesn't know where we are or takes us all over the world to get somewhere. According to Sheila (We refer to the GPS as Sheila....Sheila is also my mother's name. There's no relation between the two, just to be clear.), we were in the middle of nowhere. For what it's worth, Sheila was right. We were in the middle of nowhere.
Finally. 12 hours of travelling later...South Dakota. We aren't driving a whole lot tomorrow. That will be a nice break.
