Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois & Indiana

On Thursday morning we ate the buffet breakfast at our hotel, left Red Wing, Minnesota, and hit the road. Our destination was Dubuque, Iowa. Unfortunately, when you give Google Maps your destination, it gets you there by the most expedient route. Before this trip I had researched the Great River Road, a scenic route that follows the Mississippi River from its headwaters to the Gulf of Mexico. 

On the Minnesota side, this is Highway 61, and on the Wisconsin side it is Highway 35. We wanted to go down the Wisconsin side, so we “short-circuited” Google Maps by putting in the first stop in Wisconsin, and when we got there, we put in our final destination.

We got to Stockholm, Wisconsin (218 residents), the home of the Stockholm Pie Company, widely regarded as the world’s best pie shop, by 9:00 AM. The quant little country store didn’t open until 10:00 AM, so we didn’t stick around. We did stop in Pepin, Wisconsin, the birthplace of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and the setting for her first book, Little House in the Big Woods.

The driving was wonderful; a curving, two-lane road, hugging the banks of the Mississippi, with almost no traffic. Everyone else was using their computerized navigation, clogging up the interstates, while we had the scenic route almost to ourselves. If you have the chance to drive it, we highly recommend it. 

In the small river town of Onalaska, we stopped for lunch. I had the local special, Muskie. It was more than I could eat. Those are two separate 12” long fillets in the picture.

Once we crossed the river into Iowa, we drove through mile after mile of corn fields that were brown and dry.

Kathy thought that maybe the actual corn had already been harvested, but neither of us could figure out how they could harvest the corn, yet leave the stalks still standing. So, we pulled over to the side of the road, walked into the corn fields, and found that the ears of corn were still on the stalk.

Our hotel in Dubuque, the Iowa port on the Mississippi, was the Redstone Inn, a historic 1894 building turned into a B&B. The owner, Robert, had moved here from Mission Viejo and bought the property in 2008.

The building itself is striking both inside and out. The bathrooms have been modernized, but it was a lot different than the Hampton Inn. I had a hard time sleeping, because it felt kind of Adams Famliyish to me. Kathy slept just fine, though.

On Friday, Robert made us breakfast in the dining room, which was nice, china settings and all. Then, we loaded up our car and headed for our next stop, Springfield, Illinois.

Before turning east to Springfield, we drove south to Coralville, Iowa, to visit the Trader Joe’s, and to pick up the Iowa version of the Traders Joe’s bag. Unfortunately, they didn’t have an Iowa Trader Joe’s bag. Bummer.  

Driving from Iowa, through Illinois, toward Springfield, was similar to driving through Iowa. The land was pretty flat, there was corn in every direction, and, skipping the interstate, we had almost no traffic as we rolled through the small rural towns. Our “sight” on Friday was to visit Abraham Lincoln’s home.

This is the only home that Abraham and Mary Lincoln owned. After their death, their son Robert inherited it. He then gave it to the United States government, with the provision that it should be cared for, and that it should always be free to tour. And, the only way you can see it is to take a tour.

We got there at 2:30, which is exactly when the next tour was scheduled. A ranger walked us through the house and talked about each of the rooms; which items are originals and which are replicas. The tour takes about an hour. After the tour, Kathy and I walked around the four-block neighborhood of restored 19-century houses, which are being used for National Park Service offices.   

This time we did stay at a Hampton Inn, and went out to a local restaurant, the Chesapeake Seafood House for dinner. It was 5:30 and the large parking lot was almost filled. Inside it seemed like most people were senior citizens, so we fit right in. Maybe the younger people eat later. Kathy had a hankering for clam chowder and I got some fried clams. Very good, and very large portions. With an appetizer and drinks, dinner was under $50, including the tip. Everything really is cheaper outside of California. 

Friday night I slept great; no haunted house vibes, and I didn’t wake up until 6:30 AM. Hampton Inn has a great breakfast buffet, so we didn’t get on the road until almost 8:00 AM. Google Maps has a new AI feature, called “Ask Maps”, so I decided to try it out. My prompt: “We want to go to Wabash Indiana by the most scenic route, avoiding highways as much as possible.” 

It went really well. It planned out three routes and it was great. Again, we traveled on almost empty, two-lane state roads. The total time on our journey was only an extra half hour. (However, every time you stop, you have to do it again, or it will route you back to the interstates and state freeways.)

When we left Springfield, our tank was half empty. The local gas stations were all about $4.69 a gallon. While that seems ridiculously cheap to those of us from California, we had gotten used to paying around $4.20 in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, and Iowa. We asked Google. It said that gas was much cheaper in Indiana. It was. Where we filled up, we saw this sign in front of the local high school announcing “JV Volleyball at Judah Christian 8:00”. Judah Christian Gilbert is our son’s name.

Outside of Lafayette, near Perdue University, we stopped for lunch at Christos Grill, which appears to be a local chain. I had a pork cutlet sandwich (think German schnitzel) and soup, while Kathy had a tuna melt and steamed broccoli. The portions were ample, the food was delicious, and the bill, including tip, was $30. We got to Wabash around 5:00 PM. Wabash is in the Eastern Time Zone, so we gained an hour going from Springfield. We’re staying at a Hampton Inn again tonight; we should probably sign up for their loyalty program. Look out the window of our room; endless corn fields.

Tomorrow is Sunday and we’ll be driving to Canton, Ohio, to visit Kathy’s aunt Joann.

Long Drive on the Prairie

Tuesday was a long, long driving day. I’ve tried to limit our daily trek to four hours, with a couple hours driving, then a hike or a sight, and then another two hours, with, possibly, another sight or activity. We drove 266 miles on state highways, to De Smet, South Dakota, before we stopped for lunch at 2:30 PM. That’s 5 hours on our first leg, with another hour and a half to get to our hotel in Sioux Falls.

“So”, I’m sure you’re asking, “why didn’t you take Interstate 90? You could have driven from Wall to Sioux Falls in four hours. What’s so special about De Smet, South Dakota?” Well, I’m glad you asked. When Laura Ingalls was 13 years old, her father, Charles, left Plum Creek and the town of Walnut Grove and moved to the Dakota Territory to work for the railroad and earn some money.

Later that year, Laura and the rest of the family took their first train ride to join him, and spent a very cold winter living in a surveyor’s house on the shores of Silver Lake. When spring came, Charles built the first permanent building in the brand new town of De Smet. That marked the end of their nomadic, covered-wagon days. Laura describes this time in the two books By the Shores of Silver Lake, and The Long Winter. This is the actual school house where Laura and Carrie went to school. The building was moved onto the grounds of the museum, along with the surveyor’s house.

When Laura was fifteen, she managed to earn a teaching certificate, and got her first job teaching in the remote Brewster settlement. This is a recreation of the one-room school that she taught at for $20 a month.   

Inside, there are crude desks and a pot-bellied stove. According to the information panels, the walls were not insulated, nor were the cracks chinked, daubed, nor caulked. Laura describes this time in her book Little Town on the Prairie. 

Before we left for Sioux Falls, we went to the cemetery where the Ingalls family is buried. The pillar that Kathy is pointing at is Charles’ grave, while the plaque on her right is where Caroline (“Ma”) Ingalls is buried. Most of the rest of the family, as well as Laura and Almanzo’s infant child are buried here as well. 

Laura herself, her husband Almanzo, and her daughter Rose are buried in Mansfield, Missouri, which we aren’t going to visit. We are going to stop by Walnut Creek, Minnesota Wednesday, while listening to Laura’s book, On the Banks of Plum Creek.

Plum Creek, Trader Joe’s & Red Wing

Wednesday was another long driving day. After breakfast at the hotel, we set out for Walnut Grove, in a dense, dense fog. Our car kept saying “Eye sight disabled. Cameras don’t work.” We prayed about it and, after about an hour we drove out of the fog, listening to On the Banks of Plum Creek on the car speakers.

Immediately after we crossed the bridge over Plum Creek, we stopped to take a picture with the “Welcome to Walnut Grove” sign. Then we went to the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum, and picked up a map of Walnut Creek as it was in 1870. Then we got back in the car and headed to our next stop, Rochester, on the other side of Minnesota. “What’s in Rochester?” you ask? Trader Joe’s, of course. Here’s Kathy standing beside the key to the Minnesota Trader Joe’s shopping bag.

After Trader Joe’s we drove to our overnight destination, Red Wing, Minnesota. After settling into our hotel room, we left to see the sights. Our first stop was the Red Wing Pottery Museum.

My grandfather on my mother’s side, Elroy Smith, was a potter in Sebring, Ohio. When the depression hit, he was let go. Along with the rest of his extended family, he moved out to Los Angeles in 1934, following a cousin who had gotten a job at one of the movie studios. Red Wing was a center for all kinds of pottery, including sewer pipes. Kathy especially liked these giant pottery vats, used for things like making pickles.

After the pottery museum, we headed downtown to the Red Wing shoe store, where we got our picture taken with the largest work shoe ever made. 

Just to be clear, this is not a “replica”. It was made just like one of their regular shoes, only larger. While we were there I tried to buy a pair of trainers to replace my Brooks running shoes with a hole in the toe. They were out of stock. Our last errand before turning in was to find some gelato. (We ate a late lunch in Rochester.) It turns out that Minnesota and Wisconsin (across the river) is not really gelato country. However, they do make good ice cream. We bought a scoop of pumpkin and a scoop of baked apple pie, and walked two blocks down town the Mississippi River to eat it.

Tomorrow we’ll be crossing the river to Wisconsin, where we’ll follow the Great River Road down the Mississippi to Iowa.

Devil’s Tower, Rushmore, Custer & the Badlands

 

On Sunday we ate breakfast at our hotel in Buffalo, Wyoming, and got on the road by 8:00 AM. Our first stop was the Devil’s Tower National Monument, called by the Native Americans, Bear Lodge. Apparently, the interpreter on Richard Dodge’s 1875 expedition to the area mistook the Lakota word for bear with a similar word that means “bad god” or evil spirit. Here’s the picture in the park, illustrating the Lakota legend about the tower’s creation, where the vertical columns were caused by a giant bear’s claws.

Of course, we European Americans have similar legends. Kathy and I spent an hour walking around the base of the tower. It is a favorite of climbers, and we saw several groups climbing the different rock faces. We also saw a family of deer running through the forest. 

What I never found was the flat landing area on the back of the tower, where Richard Dreyfus boarded the alien spacecraft in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. At first I thought that maybe that never happened, but when I went into the Visitor’s Center, I was greeted by a statue commemorating the alien visit. And, if you can’t trust the National Park Service, who can you trust?

After our hike, we drove to Spearfish, South Dakota and had lunch. After lunch we drove through Deadwood, and stopped at the Mt. Rushmore National Memorial. The memorial has a large, high-tech parking complex, and it was the first place that didn’t accept our America the Beautiful park pass. 

The Memorial was fairly crowded, with a lot of foreign tourists. It wasn’t overcrowded, but just not as peaceful and awe inspiring as the Devil’s Tower Monument. Also, it was almost 3:00 PM, and both of us were really tired. I planned our trip with two “E-ticket” sights each day, and that might be more than we can handle. We got unpacked at our bungalow in Custer, and then went downtown for dinner. I was sound asleep by 7:30 PM.

Monday morning we got up and left early, planning on eating breakfast on the way. Custer State Park has a scenic wildlife drive, and we wanted to drive it as the sun was rising. The Park is the home to South Dakota’s official bison herd, so we were looking forward to something like the Lamar Valley experience in Yellowstone.

Just as we entered the park, we saw a large bison down in the canyon. Driving on we saw white tail deer, were stopped three times by flocks of wild turkeys crossing the road, met the park’s herd of wild burros, watched innumerable prairie dog towns, and sighted several pronghorn “antelopes”. But no more bison! Finally, though, we came around a corner and the hills were full of them.

It turns out that the previous Friday was the occasion of the annual buffalo roundup. Once a year, in late September or early October, most of the buffalo in the park are rounded up into corrals, where the calves are branded and the mothers are vaccinated. After the calves are born, the herd grows to about 1,450 animals. However, the park can only safely support around 950 bison, and so the excess animals are sold at auction in early November, while the rest are returned to the park.

Leaving Custer State Park, we stopped in Rapid City for a late breakfast, and then took the scenic route to the Interior entrance to the Badlands National Park.

Driving through the park was fun, pulling off at all of the vistas, and walking along the paved boardwalks. We took a few selfies; I have to admit, I was frightened when I got near to the edge. 

We never saw the only animal that was advertised to live in the Badlands.

We did, however, see this fellow on our way out of the park. When we pulled up next to him to take his picture, he only yawned.

We got to our hotel, the Best Western in Wall, South Dakota, by 2:30 PM, and found our room all ready, even though we were early. We unpacked and then headed over a few blocks to see the famous Wall Drug. 

We had originally planned to eat dinner there, but Kathy had her heart set on soup, so we went up the street to the Salty Steer, where she had onion soup and I had spaghetti with bison meatballs. Very good. Apologies for forgetting to take a photo, until the meal was half consumed. Before we left Wall Drugs to head for dinner, Kathy did manage to snag a ride on the Jackalope.

Tomorrow we’re heading for Sioux Falls. Hope you can come with us.

Yellowstone, Cody, Thermopolis & Buffalo

On Friday morning, about 7:00 AM, we left our motel in West Yellowstone, (The Alpine Motel), and headed into the park. It had dropped below freezing during the night, and as we drove towards Old Faithful, the warmer water in the Madison River was covered in mist, and it drifted across the road. (I borrowed this pic from Google.)

As we went further into the park, the temperature continued to drop, going as low as 29 degrees. As we drove by the lower geyser basin, it got so foggy that we had to slow below 10 mph. When we finally reached the upper basin and Old Faithful, the temperature had risen to 35 degrees and the fog had dissipated.

Since we didn’t have breakfast at our hotel, we decided to eat at the Old Faithful Snow Lodge dining room. All of the other dining options were buffet only, but the Snow Lodge had an à la carte menu, and I had my heart set on their Bison Hash Skillet. Unfortunately, they were out of bison, so we had a pretty unremarkable breakfast.

After breakfast we headed over to see the Old Faithful geyser, only to find a thousand people heading our way. We didn’t know the schedule, and had missed the 9 AM eruption. That was OK; it’s Old Faithful; it’ll be back soon. While we waited, we walked the boardwalk trail around the upper geyser basin. 

Of the twenty or so geysers on the walk, two of them went off while we were there, but not when we were standing right next to them. For instance one sign said “Erupts every two to five hours.” Do you wait or you go on. We went on, and so we only saw the eruptions from a distance.

Finally, we noticed people lining up around Old Faithful, so we made our way off the hill, and found a seat. After about 15 minutes, it erupted again, right on schedule. (We walked through the Visitors’ Center on the way back to the car, where we saw a sandwich board advertising the next eruption, with a plus or minus of 7 minutes. Apparently we were the only people there that day that didn’t know exactly when it was going to go off.

I’ve seen Old Faithful at least twice before; once as a child and once on a Northwest road trip with Kathy. Even though I knew what to expect, I still found it shockingly awe inspiring.

Throughout the afternoon, we drove around Lake Yellowstone, and out the East entrance towards Cody, Wyoming, crossing the Continental Divide. Once we passed it, we could immediately see the river, next to the road, flowing east instead of west.

We got to our hotel around 4:30, and although we were really tired we went out again to get some dinner, and walk through town. The town is named for “Buffalo Bill” Cody, and it still contains his original hotel, named after his wife Irma. I got a picture of Kathy, with the statue of Bill, out in front of the hotel.

Since I missed my bison hash for breakfast, I was determined to at least have a bison burger for dinner. We found one at the Proud Cut Saloon.

The bison burger was great, with bacon, barbecue sauce, thick-cut bacon, and two huge onion rings. I had to remove the onion rings before I could even get the burger in my mouth. When we left, both of us were stuffed.

On Saturday morning, we had breakfast at the hotel. It was pretty minimal; toast, coffee, orange juice and some yoghurt. The hotel we stayed at, the King’s Inn, is owned by a big game hunter, and the lobby is filled with stuffed animals. Kathy posed with the elephant…

…while I got a picture with the giant crocodile. 

We got a little later start this morning. Our first stop was Thermopolis, Wyoming, where we topped off our slim breakfast with some Egg McMuffins at McDonalds. Thus fortified, we headed across town to the Wyoming Dinosaur Center. 

In the car, we’re listening the Micheal Crichton’s Jurassic Park, so we were already pumped. Interestingly, one exhibit points out that Crichton based his large, human-sized predators on a dinosaur named Deinonychus. In the book, though, Crichton chose the name Velociraptor because he felt it sounded much more dramatic and scarier than Deinonychus. The T-Rex is still the T-Rex, though.

After leaving the Center, we drove to the other side of town to Hot Springs State Park. Besides having the largest natural mineral hot springs in the world, the state park is also the home of Wyoming’s official bison herd. We drove through the park on several of the different (sometimes gravel) roads, and found a small herd of about fifteen animals. All of them were sleeping except for one, which seemed to be keeping guard.

The State Park maintains a public bath house where they cool the natural water at 104 degrees. You can soak in the pool for free. I had seen pictures of the natural outdoor pool, but had heard it was closed until September 25. Since it was the 26th, I was hoping it would be open, however the construction still isn’t finished. We looked at the small indoor pool, but it was pretty crowded, so we decided to skip it. Here’s a picture of the travertine ledges produced by the hot springs from just across the Big Horn River.

Our Saturday night destination was Buffalo, Wyoming, the home of the streaming series Longmire. (I’ve never seen it, but it is a big deal there.) Leaving Thermopolis, we took Highway 20 to Worland, where we had lunch at a great Mexican restaurant named Los Tapatios (4.7 on Google Maps). Then, we turned off on  US-16 East, called the Cloud Peak Scenic Byway, and followed it through the Big Horn Mountains. This drive is one of the most dramatic we’ve taken. 

We got to Buffalo before 5:00 PM, checked into our room, and then drove into the two-block downtown area to walk around. Both of us were still satisfied from lunch, so we didn’t eat dinner. By 6:00 PM we were back in our room. Since I missed the hot springs soak, I sat in the hotel’s hot tub for a bit, and then caught up on the blog.

Tomorrow we’ll be heading for the Devil’s Tower, featured in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and then on to Mt. Rushmore.