Impromptu Trip To The Midwest...

As explained in the previous post, last week felt like a marathon.  This will serve as the much longer post with all the road trip style pictures.

Mike and I got up at 4 am to make our early flight.  The good thing about traveling early in the morning is that the lines are short.  The bad thing about traveling early in the morning is that nothing is open.  For the record, Chili's restaurants in airports have some good breakfast options including the breakfast tacos I had been looking forward.

Once we landed in Chicago and met up with my sister we made our way to our rental car.  We were suppose to have a Chevy Impala but were excited when we got an Infiniti FX35.  It took some getting use to.  It had a back up camera, push start ignition, sunroof, and plenty of other interesting features.  Those heated seats snuck up on me at first but quickly became my favorite feature as we drove north and it got colder.

Mike was very excited to be stuck in Chicago traffic in his snazzy rental car.

Christine brought the Garmin she got for Christmas.  As she said, Mike had three women telling him what to do.  It was definitely a fun toy to play with.

As we drove we passed many interesting places such as Six Flags Great America.

If you read my road trip blogs from last summer you know how much I appreciate being welcomed to places.  We finally made it to Wisconsin!

Just barely into Wisconsin we started seeing advertisements for cheese everywhere.

I took this one for the men in Sunday School.

The sights and smells of farm country bring back a lot of memories!  Things always seem to be just the way you left them.

Who put these windmills all over the place?  These weren't here last time I was here.  I guess there is modernization in farm country.

We took a break from driving to pose in the snow.  The locals were excited about what a warm and beautiful day it was but no one could convince Mike.  "Get inside before you get hypothermia!  It's too cold to be outside!"  He was really surprised to see people jogging in shorts and t-shirts.

To remember our grandma we stopped at the Kristmas Kringle Shoppe.  She bought us each a Christmas ornament with our name and the year each year since we were born.  This is one of the traditions we will miss the most.

Welcome to downtown Fond du Lac!  This is the big city in the area.  I'm sure you can imagine why I had trouble blogging while we were in the area.

Welcome to the St. Joe shopping center!  My grandparents farm was in St. Joe.  When we were little we didn't really understand why grandma couldn't just order pizza.  There are so many small towns in this area.  We also passed by my great-grandparents house and their business.

This is the church in St. Joe.  I remember many summer picnics here when we visited during the summer.  It was a temperate forty degrees and quite windy.  The priest's car got stuck in the snow but we managed to push it out.

This is the building where my mom went to school for a while.  It is right next to the church.

As we made our way back to civilization we were really excited to finally see something familiar.  I think Mike was tired of seeing places like Menards, Fleet Farm, Culvers, and Piggly Wiggly.

After all the funeral events were completed we took dad with us to Madison to see our other grandpa.  We had been looking forward to stopping at Schultz's Cheese Haus on our way to get our cheese fix.

When in Wisconsin, you must have cheese!  Yum!

Madison is a very interesting place especially compared to the farm country parts of the state.  One of our favorite places to visit as kids during our summers with our grandparents was Ella's Deli.  It is very difficult to describe just how unique that place is.  It is too bad we didn't have time to stop and relax there or at the Nitty Gritty.

We drove through the University of Wisconsin campus.  It was a school day so there were students everywhere.

I'm sure it is a shock, but the University of Wisconsin has a great agriculture program.  My grandpa who wasn't a farmer graduated from the program and I think he was some sort of animal nutritionist.

This shows how out of practice my picture taking reflexes are.  I thought it was cute!

This is my aunt's dog Midas the golden retriever.  She brought him to visit grandpa too.  He was huge, fuzzy, and slobbery compared to Sadie.

Though we weren't looking forward to our late flight home, we did have to keep moving south back toward Chicago.  Our impromptu trip to the Midwest was brought on by a sad event but we still managed to enjoy life while remembering my grandma.