We left the great north woods behind and are in the Wisconsin dairy land. No more forests, it's all farms and small woods.
The park is nice and we have a site on a hill overlooking the lake. Unlike the last place we stayed, this place is grassy and has very large sites. We would stay here again if we come through this area again. The only knock against it is that it doesn't have a dog park.
This area is on the upper Mississippi River. We are almost at the headwaters. Because it's on the Mississippi, the town is required to have a paddlewheeler. La Crosse is no exception. Most of the tours were sold out, but we got seats on a 1 1/2 hour pizza cruise. It advertised all you can eat pizza and unlimited beer. It's true, I had all the Dominoe's pizza I could eat. The beer was Miller High Life. It's really hard to get drunk on MHL, but 2 guys on the boat managed it. I don't know how many they drank, but they said they 5 beers each when the pizza was served.
The cruise went up river to a Railroad bridge, then turned downstream and went a ways past the city before turning around and going back to the wharf.
We talked to one group of people and one of the men had something to do with the cranberry industry. He said that Wisconsin is the largest producer of cranberries in the US. It produces 3 times more than any other state. We haven't seen any cranberry bogs, but they must be around here somewhere. We talked to another group and their news was that Cheap Trick was playing at their town festival because they live there.
We tried driving around downtown La Crosse, but the police were closing streets and messing up the traffic. There was an army helicopter flying circles around downtown. We didn't know what was going on. Later, we learned the President Biden was in town to give a speech about the infrastructure bill.
At our last stop, Jan bought a potted flower, a geranium with some other viney looking plant. She put it out on the picnic table to liven up the place. When we got here, she put it on the picnic table again. Yesterday, it was sunny and warm. I looked at the flowers and saw a bunch of bugs flying around it. They looked kind of like lady bugs but they had gold/copper shells with a green head. I took a picture and there were 7 of the little buggers in the picture. We looked up the beetles and found out that they are Japanese beetles. They are an invasive bug that eats any plant in sight. The larva were probably in the soil and they hatched when the pot got warm. We immediately threw the pot in the dumpster.
Porter had a bad day on Tuesday. He peed in the backseat of the truck, he peed in the living room, and when we went to bed, I took him out side and he did nothing but run back into the trailer. He didn't like the rain and wet grass. After 3 tries, I gave up and let him back in the trailer. Jan put him on the bed and he peed on the bed. We thought we were over the hump with potty training, but I guess not.
This is not a particularly coherent blog. Lots of different things and none of them are related to each other. If you made it this far, you can make it to the end.
I thought I was done making reservations, but I'm not. We had a long travel day and we decided to put a stop in the middle to shorten things. It was after Crescent City so Jan called Dolores and asked her if she and Larry would like to meet us in Eureka. She said they would so I rearranged our reservations at Crescent City and Red Bluff to make it fit. We will see them in September.
I also ran into a snag in Sacramento. We wanted to spend a month at the KOA in Shingle Springs, but when I called them, they said they had a 75 person waiting list for the long term sites. PG&E has hundreds of people running around fixing power lines. They all need a place to stay too. I did find a 3 week spot in Lotus. It's not as convenient and Shingle Springs, but it is in the area. I need to make one more reservation to get us to October 17. My options are Auburn, Vacaville, and Plymouth. None of the options are as convenient as Shingle Springs, but we will make them work. After that, we have reservations at Yosemite for 2 weeks.
Our next stop is Minnesota and then 2 stops in South Dakota. The westward voyage is speeding up. A lot of short stays and only 2 stops that are 7 days long.
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