midwest

MIDWEST

Wisconsin

We drove through Green Bay and saw Lambeau Field just days before the opening game of the season on our way to Spread Eagle Lake to stay with Shirl St. Germain, aunt Ruthi's sister. She has a beautiful place right on the lake and had to go out of town for a few days so we dog sat for her while she was gone. It was a much needed relaxing week on the lake. The first couple days were a bit chilly, but we enjoyed ourselves; a lot of reading & steaming! When the weather got nicer we took the kayaks on the lake and did some runs in the woods with Audrey, a neighbor that Annie was friends with from a few years back when she worked there for the summer. Shirl came back and we did a nice hike and went to pick apples at a local orchard and cooked some good fish and chips dinner.

Michigan

We borrowed some bikes and went up to Marquette MI on Lake Superior to visit some of Grammy & Pop's friends from Marco Island. We stopped in at Tim & Sue's house. Sue had plans for the day, but Tim showed us around town. We got to try the local delicacy, Pasties. They are delicious pastry full of beef and potatoes. Then we hiked up a hill that gave us a beautiful view of the lake and rode our bikes in the afternoon.

Minneapolis

One of my good friends, Sarah, from my study abroad in Costa Rica lives in Minneapolis. We got to spend the weekend catching up with her. We had beautiful weather and luckily got tickets to the Summit Brewing Company 25^th Anniversary party. We read that they were sold out, but figured we would try anyways. Right before we were going to turn around to leave one of the volunteers said he had an extra and gave it to us, and Sarah randomly asked this couple if they were selling their tickets and they had 2 for sale! Funny thing is we met the guys inside that had given the volunteer the extra ticket. They had really great beer and an even better show of local bands playing all day. That night we just went back and had an easy early night at her house. The next day we walked around a beautiful lake, watched the awful Steelers opening game, and had a tasty walleye dinner with Sarah's parents.

South Dakota

We had a long day of driving through South Dakota. We did a few hours Sunday night from Minneapolis to a couch surfer's place in Sioux Falls. South Dakota has tons of interesting places to stop along the drive. The Corn Palace is a building all decorated & maybe even made out of corn. It's a little bizarre, but impressive. I guess you make use out of what you have. Then a few hundred miles later we finally made it to Wall Drugs. If you've even driven through SD you know what this is. It's this town that the Drug Store started putting billboards up along the highway years ago to get people to stop before they visited the Badlands. It's this huge tourist thing now and they advertise by giving away “free water.” The Badlands were really cool. We hung out there for awhile with the dozens of big horn sheep. Then got on our way to the Black Hills and Mt. Rushmore. After that we decided to drive a few more hours until we were tired and just sleep in the car. We were fine with driving because we were listening to Harry Potter on CD. It's a little addicting. Well, once we got on Rt. 16 in Wyoming we didn't go too long at night due to the hundreds of deer along the side of the road. I was driving about 20mph when the biggest dear I've ever seen walked right out in front of the road. This huge bull elk majestically was standing there. It was surreal. There was a full moon and he just glided across this windy mountain road. It wasn't long after that we pulled off the road to sleep for a few hours until the sun came up and we could get the rest of the way to western Wyoming.