Saturday

Hubby and I went on a mini-road trip on Saturday to celebrate our engagement anniversary.

(This was a quite mini road trip compared to one we are planning for this summer.)

(That one will be about 3,000 miles.)

(This one was 200 miles.)

Anyway...back to Saturday...

Our destination was Lanesboro. A small river town that has tons of Bed & Breakfast Inns, some cute shops and a bike trail along a river. There are pretty bluffs along the river.

While we did poke around in a few shops (Hubby found me a really cure pair of earrings) and drove around the small town and had a very yummy lunch, we spent most of our time on the back roads in the area. For a measly $26 we rented a CD from one of the shops and followed its directions for a back roads tour of Amish country.

The CD directed along the roads with use of the car's odometer. We learned about the Amish people and made 9 different stops at 9 different Amish farms. These places had little shops of their own where the families sold honey, sorghum, small furniture, quilts, produce, baskets, eggs. It was so fun to look around at the goods at each place. One place had very beautiful child-size chairs and tables. The man there had also made some little barns for children to play with. The detail was so fun to look at. We wished we had some little ones to buy one of those barns for. ;) (Someday.) We did come away with a jar of honey and a jar of sorghum along with some homemade candy and a cherry turnover.

It was a pretty humid day, but being able to hop in and out of the air-conditioned car made it more bearable.
The trip was very interesting and fun to do together. I don't have any photos because we were told that the Amish find cameras offensive.

Thanks to Yelp, we had supper at a very good barbecue restaurant in Austin, MN, home of SPAM. (Seriously, Austin is where SPAM is made.) (Thankfully the restaurant was in no way associated with SPAM, although there was some on the menu.)

The Great Midwest Vacation

I certainly did not intend to not write a blog post for a whole week. Hubby and I have been on a wonderful vacation for the past week.  We were got away from the routine and celebrated our 27th wedding anniversary. I had intentions of posting a couple of times while we were gone, but a MASSIVE rainstorm that knocked out our internet access changed those plans. More on that later.

Our vacation started before we hit the road with a drive-in movie.

I got my very own tub of popcorn. :) Hubby and I realized we had never been to a drive-in movie together. Isn't that crazy? We hope to make it to another one before the summer is over.

Last Sunday we headed over to to the great state of Wisconsin and stayed 

at a hotel with a Rubber Ducky.

Then on Monday we drove along the Mighty Mississippi (remember when you learned to spell Mississippi and were so proud of yourself?),

 

saw some pretty wildflowers,

and a real live A&W.

Our destination was NW Illinois. What's there? A little town called Galena.  It is a town full of history that began in the early 1800s as a lead mining town. It's a beautiful, hilly town with a lot of quite old buildings. We took a trolley ride around the more historical part and learned quite a bit. 

Eight Civil War generals came from there. Ulysses Grant had a home there. His parents moved there (operated a tannery) and he did too for a while. After the Civil War some business men went together and gave General Grant a home. It was basically a vacation home. He was there when he learned he won the presidency.

Grant's home.

The parlor where people came to congratulate Grant on winning the election.

President Lincoln and three Civil War Generals

This makes me very thankful for indoor plumbing. :)

Some other sights around town:

This is the Bed & Breakfast we stayed at 2 months before Megan was born. Kind of our last getaway.

We learned that it was the first house built in Galena with steam heat. (Such trivia I know!)

Galena has a very picturesque downtown street with a lot of shops. Did I take a picture of it? Of course not! It was so incredibly hot I was concentrating on getting to the next spot of shade and did not think of taking pictures. :)

It started raining Wednesday evening about 6 o'clock. And didn't stop. And didn't stop. We had a nice dinner out and were at a one man show about Mark Twain and I heard tornado sirens go off. I felt uncomfortable being on the 3rd floor, so we left. Dear Hubby ran the 2 1/2 blocks to get our car to come pick me up. The poor guy was soaked. We headed out to the golf resort (6 miles out of town) we were staying at. It was very dark out for being only 8:30 in the evening. It was raining so hard the wipers on the highest speed hardly made a difference. I noticed the ditches were almost full of water and felt sorry for the cows and horses I saw standing in the pouring rain. There was water rushing across the highway in a few places and once we got on the resort property we had to cross a low spot where water was rushing off the golf course into a lake on the other side of the road. We got to the villa we were staying at to find that the roof was leaking in a couple of places. We called the office and they told us they would let us move to another villa and someone would bring us a key. About 20 minutes later, the office called and said they weren't letting anyone leave the main lodge because two cars had been swept off the road. It happened at the same low spot we had crossed just 20-ish minutes before! God is our Protector for sure! The drip-drip-dripping slowed down and we were able to sleep that night and got moved into a dryer villa the next morning. 

Whew! That was a tense time!

(That storm knocked out the internet access for a couple of days. Thus no blog posts.)

We stayed put at the resort the next day because the flood gates to downtown Galena had been closed and the shops and restaurants were all closed. We enjoyed a lovely anniversary dinner at a resort restaurant.

I had grilled pheasant (yum!)

 And carrot cake! (Yum, yum!)

This restaurant we ate at the first night we were there was my absolute favorite:

Starting at the top left: Fried Green Tomatoes (of course!), Salad tossed with a Raspberry Vinaigrette, Amazing Bread, Lobster Ravioli (YUM!), Lasagna (Hubby's), and French Silk Ice Cream (shared).

It was a wonderful week. Not fun to come back to this small, rural town that smells like poo (see: rural).
And no nice restaurants to choose from. :(
No one brings me clean towels everyday. :(
And Hubby goes to work and leaves me all alone. :(
(Pity party has begun)

Alaska -- Part 4

Day 5 of the cruise was spent in Glacier Bay National Park. Three park rangers got on the cruise ship and were narrating over the PA things we should look for. It was very interesting.

I took a thousand (give or take a hundred) pictures of the glaciers we saw. But I won't post them all here. You're welcome. :)

This glacier was 25 stories tall. Think of being on the 25th floor of a building. That's a lot of glacier!

A couple close up shots:

In another park of the bay was this glacier. I took it through the window so I could remember the awesome view from our room. This one shows the glacier coming down through the mountains to the ocean. To get some perspective, the rangers told us it was 5 miles away!

A telephoto shot:

And a farther out shot:

A close up of yet another glacier. I just love the blue in this one. So pretty!

Just a couple, well maybe more than two, more posts about our Alaska trip. I still have random photos from the ship and a few other places. a gorgeous garden in British Columbia, the food (!) and then the four days we spent in Seattle. Oh well. At least it makes for some good memories for us and a great way to document this on my blog.

Alaska -- Part 1

 I really should be going to the grocery store since our son and daughter-in-law are coming tomorrow and they probably would like to eat something while they are here. But I think I'll delay that a bit and post some pictures from our recent cruise to Alaska.

(Just as long as I make it to the store before 9. Yes, the grocery store in this small town actually closes. So, my goal is to make it here before it closes and before the rain comes. Wish me luck. :) )

I set out to document our trip. (500+ pictures) Complete with pictures of what I like to call In Flight Entertainment:

And In Flight Refreshments:

It was a pleasant non-eventful flight to Seattle.

Sunday morning we enjoyed a very yummy breakfast delivered to our room:

We had quite a bit of time to kill since I woke up at 6:30. Go figure. (It was 8:30 Minnesota time.) I think my hubby was in heaven....having me wake up early like him. :) (That only lasted a couple of days, until I adjusted to the time difference.)

About noon we headed to the pier and the cruise ship:

Can you see our balcony? (I can.) It's two decks up from the life boat. We sure enjoyed the views from that balcony.

See what a beautiful day it was? We left Seattle on, what I'm told, is a rare warm and sunny day. It was 75+  degrees and quite clear. We could see a long ways. Even 50 miles away to Mt. Rainier. It was so beautiful.

 
The Seattle skyline as we are heading out of Puget Sound.

Our room. Is it called a room? A cabin? A stateroom? I have no idea. It was cozy, but sufficient.

I took a few more pictures of other boats as we were headed out to sea:

Yes, that's a container ship. They fascinate me because when we moved to Singapore 12 years ago, they packed all our belongings in a container and it traveled across the Pacific on a ship like this. Yikes! No wonder it took 7-8 weeks to get there.

I'll end with this.

It was exciting to be getting ready for the cruise. It took us from Sunday late afternoon until Tuesday afternoon to get to Juneau.

I'll have couple more posts about our trip and even devote one solely to the food! Oh it was good. And pretty.

A Taste

Three days ago we returned from our wonderful vacation. The anniversary cruise to Alaska! I want to find some time to post just a few of my 500+ pictures and to do it justice. 

Right now I'll just show a few... just a taste. 

Oh, now that I wrote that I better include a food picture. (I took pictures of almost every meal we ate. My hubby's cousin gave me the idea.)

Our ship and hubby going back to get a warmer jacket. He was cold.

 

 

We indulged in a Salmon Feast one day. Oh, it was yummy! (The corn didn't quite fly with this Midwest girl. though.)

And for dessert, of course we had Baked Alaska!

Well, this is turning out to have more pictures than I thought, but I have to post the pictures of all the Towel Critters that showed up in our room. It was so much fun to see what new one we'd have every night.

Elephant

 

 

Seal

Puppy

Mouse. (Hiding under the covers)

Frog

I even bought a DVD of how to make towel animals. I hope I can master it and surprise our guests!

I'll write more next week. (Aren't you excited?)

Happy 26 Years To Us!

Twenty-six years ago today I married the most perfect man for me. I count myself blessed for being able to spend my life with this guy. I hope the next 26 years go by really slow so I can savor every moment with him.

Happy Anniversary Sweetheart!