Brief day break

 We left both Minnesota and Wisconsin yesterday but not the River. It had rained most of the night but we had stored enough electricity from the day before that the frig was still humming when we awoke.  Since it was still cold and rainy we opted to pull up stakes (so to speak) and delay breakfast to a park down the road.

This was the view as we drove up to our campsite Wednesday evening.  Yes, that is the River looking to the Wisconsin.

We had breakfast watching one of the locks on the River.  The River seems to be rather quiet to us as we have seen few barge chains.  The lock where we had breakfast had a tug and just two barges in it.  Later we saw a push boat and three tugs going up River. Lots of rail cars as the railroad runs just next to the River in many places. Leaving many towns with not only the River running through it but the railroad also.  Much of the day we spent on the Wisconsin side.

The big event of the day was the detour that took us all over the country side.  It seems transportation folks were completely remaking the Main Street of Stoddard and there was no other through road. We took a grand tour of the corn fields of Wisconsin.  We saw corn fields that had the grass cut right up to the corn, almost English Garden like.

We even drove through Amish Country.

We struggled with finding a camp site for the night.  We had not made a reservation and thought we could find a place as you always see those camping tent signs all over.  Well, you guessed it, yesterday afternoon we never saw any little camp signs anywhere.  We used a couple of apps and found one none existing country campground and a closed for renovation State Park.  

We had stopped several times during the day at places like Cabella’s and tried to go to another Great River Road information center, actually two.  Both had schedules affected by COVID19. We saw lots of the River as it got wider, thinned down and got wider again.

It was getting late in the day, we were frustrated and tired..  We even considered a Walmart parking lot.  But we don’t know the procedure.  We have been planning to visit a friend in northern Illinois so we popped her address into the old I-Phone and found that we were just an hour and a half away.  One short phone call and we were on out way.

There are actually two dogs in this picture, one on the couch and the other to the left on the floor.  They are a part of the Dr. Doolittle farm where we found our friend.
  

This is a friend formally of Mackinaw City that has most recently moved to Illinois to be with her daughter and son-in-law.  They have a farm with all kinds of animals despite the fact they are not farmers by vocation.  They both consult for companies in Chicagoland.  That will be left for the next blog.

We are spend a good part of today catching up but also making reservations for our next few nights! 

This was a piece we found at the head of the Mississippi River. She is releasing turtles that symbolize the seasons.  Turtles’ legs point in the four directions, the head points up at Grandfather Sun and the tail points down to Mother Earth. Her flowing hair is the waters.