As far East as we will get this year.

We headed East again out of South Dakota. We will hopefully be back this way in September to finally get our drivers licenses taken care of.

The Corn Palace in Mitchel South Dakota

All the decoration is made with corn cobs!

East brings us to Minnesota, which when I was a kid in UK, I imagined was on the East Coast! It is of course just about smack in the center of the US. We were heading for a small town North West of the “Twin Cities”.

Our UK readers are probably scratching their heads. The Twin Cities are Minneapolis and St Paul which form a single urban area split by the Mississippi River. Due to Covid and civil disorder we would be staying clear of the cities and instead staying in Cambridge at the county fairground, which turned out to be very enjoyable.

Barbara, George and Sheri

Our reason for picking this place was because friends from Sundance in Casa Grande stay here during the summer, George and Sheri O’Brien. We were quickly enjoying dinners out and visits with them, having a good old time!

Neat old building in Princeton now an antique store

The fairground camp ground was nice and spacious, large grassy sites with 50amp and water and a convenient dump station on the grounds. We even found a sports bar with dart boards to do some practicing on.

We crossed the Mississippi into Wisconsin after saying “See you back in Arizona” and followed the river down back roads to La Crosse Wisconsin. It turned out that the campground was actually back on the west side of the river. Over the next 3 days we crossed the river about 10 times!

The La Crosse Campground had a beach!

One La Crosse oddity is the Blue Baby

One interesting side trip was to Winona MN. I saw a PBS show about rt61 and it’s history in which there was a segment on Winona. What a neat place! Once the third largest city in the state, it was obviously a wealthy place and had a big Polish population. The churches were spectacular as were many of the stores and business buildings.

Another La Crosse oddity "Worlds Largest 6 Pack"

Mississippi Barges

Winona Churches

We also called in at the Elks Lodge to see if they had any pins to add to our collection. We have over 100 now.

Janesville Elks, simple camping.

A few days in Janesville camping at the Elks Lodge there, and then to our friends David and Sheri’s little farm near Beloit, where we were again welcomed with open arms.

Our favorite characters, Festus left and Newly right

Their little farm now has a selection of animals with sheep, horses, cows and our two favorite characters Festus and Newley. These guys were just puppies last time we visited. They might be 2 years older now but they are just as silly as ever. Naturally we had to spoil them some more!

Where's the carrots?

Fancy Pants likes apples too

In short order we had the horses eating apples and carrots from our hands, and the cute little calves would let us pet them. The sheep were pretty indifferent, probably because we had nothing they wanted to eat!

Buttercup

David and Sheri had a full calendar for us with trips to a local horse event, dinners and lunches out, a visit to a historic bar/hotel in East Troy (Which was haunted by at least 2 spirits). The planned 2 weeks got extended to 3!