Day 1: The Great Sibling Trip 2017

About Us

            We are a brother (Detroit, MI) and sister (Houston, TX) who love to travel together to parts unknown. This year my sister flew into Detroit and we began our journey West. Stops include Davenport, IA, the Amana Colonies in Amana, IA, Marengo, IA, Des Moines, IA, Omaha, NE, Grand Island, NE, Rapid City, SD, Sioux Falls, SD, several cities in MN including Mankato, MN, Wisconsin Dells, WI, Marinette, WI, Mackinaw City, MI and back to Detroit.
            We are also stopping for selfies and pictures along the way at some very interesting and unusual out of the way places that you will see in the blog. Enjoy!

     Our trip started at 6 AM sharp. We drove over 470 miles on ONE TANK of GAS and got over 57 MPG!!! Actually, we went through a whopping 8.8 gallons and had enough to go another 100+ miles. Gotta love a Prius...
     We stopped along the way and I got a 32 oz cup of coffee. There was construction along the way near Chicago and we ended up in the express lane. It was both a blessing and a curse.

     Blessing: We cruised past stopped vehicles in the other lanes.
     Curse: After drinking 32 oz of coffee, I had to GO!!! No way to get out of the express lane. I managed to hold it.  
     Somewhere in Illinois, there was a bad 18 wheeler accident on the Eastbound side. The truck was on its side and looked like it burned. Traffic was backed up for miles. Just down the road from that we saw yet another bad accident. The whole front end of a van was gone. Again, on the opposite side.
     We stopped for a bathroom break and lunch (forgetting about the time change and had lunch when others were stopping for breakfast. Oh well.
     Next up, we began looking for a carved wood statue created by Peter Toth. It was located next to a river...we found it.
     And little wonder, that coffee still needed to find a way out so off I went to find a bathroom. Aha! I found me an Outhouse and if I see an Outhouse, I use the Outhouse.
     Have you seen The Outhouses of America Tour web site yet? It's a hoot!

Peter Toth statue carved out of wood

The entire Peter Toth statue

      Next we proceeded to find a giant Vulcan carving out of a tree.  It was in Peru, Iowa in someones front yard. We got out; snapped the following pictures and got out of there!

Vulcan Carving

Live Long and Prosper

     Next up on the agenda? Do some Geocaching. Click on the link to go to the web site we use and find out more about it.
     We also loaded in the coordinates for the geocache we would be looking for in Iowa. We found the one we were looking for. Actually, both my sister and I looked for it and she ended up spying it deep inside a tree. We are actually having a lot of fun geocaching.

Here it is!

Hidden micro cache

My sister is proud that she found it

     If you've followed my blog for a while, you know that I, er, we love to eat and try new places. We usually go up on Yelp and look at restaurant reviews and then go to the highest rated ones. Tonight we found a nice little Mexican restaurant with $5 Jumbo Margaritas as the special. We didn't waste any time ordering one for each of us.
     The waiter brought us a basket of salsa chips and some excellent salsa in a glass carafe. Boy were they good! Nice and warm chips and not too hot salsa. There was also a good selection of hot sauce if you wanted it.
     The food was very good and we are now stuffed. Since we are on the road again tomorrow, we took home the leftover chips in a paper bag that our waiter gave us.

Jumbo Margarita

Be Thirsty My Friends...

     Tomorrow we head out to the Amana colonies to see what they have to offer and we will do some more geocaching.
     Update in the morning at the hotel. Apparently, there are some massive curtain eaters of some kind in this hotel. Even though it's brand new, the curtains are either eaten by something or it is the new style for curtains!!!