Minneapolis may have been my favorite part of the trip. We went on a morning walk along their Heritage Trail, which is a mile or two through ruins of the old mills around the Mississippi River. There were lots of placards with historical information throughout the walk. The weather was gorgeous, the mills were super cool, and the history was fascinating. I was incredibly pleasantly surprised by this charming city.
We drove on to Wisconsin Dells that afternoon. Wisconsin was my last continental state to visit! As we pulled into Wisconsin Dells, we were both shocked. Wisconsin is pretty - lots of rolling hills and farmland, plenty of trees, very green and rural. Then you pull into Wisconsin Dells and all of a sudden all you can see are giant water parks, amusement parks, and entertainment venues. It is the weirdest thing ever. Two thoughts kept running through my mind: 1. This is a Vegas for families. 2. This is a money dump.
We went on a duck tour, which is a tour on an amphibious vehicle made during WWII. They can go on land or in water, and we went back and forth a couple of different times during the tour. We toured the Dells of the Wisconsin River, which are gorgeous rock and land formations created by the water in the soft rock along the river. It was so crazy to me that people were dumping so much money on roller coasters when this kind of natural beauty was just minutes away!
There's our sweet ride. It was actually a really fun tour. The scenery was beautiful, of course, the novelty of land and water was cool, and our tour guide was actually pretty funny.
Afterwards we went to a cheese place on their main strip and got, you guessed it, cheese. We were in Wisconsin! We got grilled cheese and mac 'n' cheese with pulled pork on top. So good! Then we walked along the river walk for a minute before getting some ice cream and heading to our hotel.
Before heading back to Indiana the next day, we drove down to Madison, WI and walked around the state capitol building there. It was amazing! The detail and grandeur were stunning. We loved it! It made me want to go visit the Indiana state capitol to see how ours compares.
The view from the top. Madison is positioned right around two lakes, so we were on a narrow strip of land with a lake on either side.
We were supposed to have a pretty easy five-hour drive home, but we skirted too close to Chicago and got stuck in crazy traffic. Five hours turned into almost seven hours and we were both pretty sick of the car. When we left Madison, Jaime mentioned she needed to go to the bathroom so I said we'd stop once we got out of the city because I needed to get gas anyway. But when I thought about it again, she was asleep so I just kept going. Then we got trapped in the crazy mess that is suburban Chicago at rush hour. About five hours later, running on fumes, we finally stopped for gas. And ended up paying almost four dollars a gallon for it. We ended up driving through the country of northeastern Illinois for quite a while before making it back to the freeway. It was nuts. We did get to drive right on the state line for a while!
We were so relieved to finally make it into Indiana, but our relief was pretty shallow, knowing we still had a few hours to go before getting to Indianapolis. We enjoyed the sights, though, including the huge wind farm in Tippecanoe County.
We finally made it home about 11:00 that night (I thought we might be back by 8:00. Ha.) and enjoyed some of our spoils from Wisconsin. Our own version of wine and cheese. :)
Four weeks, eleven states, 5015.4 miles, and over sixty hours of driving later, we were back in Indiana. Suze the Cruze was a champ. I had absolutely no car trouble the entire time, which is a huge blessing. I was definitely grateful to have Jaime with me on that last week, but I was pleasantly surprised at how well I did on my own the rest of the time. It was a great month!
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