Ye Olde Outhouse Fly Paper: Day 9: 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!

Fun Facts:

Total Miles Driven so far: 2,772
Average Miles Per Gallon today: 59.8 MPG
Car being driven: 2016 Prius 4
Miles Driven Today: 263 Miles
Weather: Perfect with temps around 80

Today was another busy day filled with visiting with one last relative, driving to a new location, searching for geocaches and eating.

Several things you notice when you are on a long trip and every night is spent in a different hotel:
It becomes difficult to remember where your room is, what number it is, what floor it's on and which side of the bed you are sleeping on. The beds seem to face the opposite direction every night and the windows are on the opposite side each night. We tend to leave the bathroom light on and crack the door open in order to figure out where we are when we wake up in the middle of the night having to make a trip to Aunt Susan. Also, the A/C seems to work differently in each room. Amana seems to be the most prominent wall A/C system. Some have a thermostat on the all; others have the temperature on the unit itself; some have digital temperature readouts while others have a rotating dial for "Colder" and "Warmer". Some run a fan constantly while others turn on and off at intervals.
While I'm mentioning it, the bathrooms have their differences too. Some have an exhaust fan that you can turn on and off while some bathrooms only have some ventilation system we haven't quite gotten used to. Some have heavy doors while others have doors so light you can hear through them.
Breakfasts? Some have hot breakfasts with some kind of egg and meat along with cereal, hard boiled eggs, yogurt, fruit but almost all of them have the classic waffle making machine that I love. They all have coffee and juice although we just had one place that had a gallon of OJ in a small reefer.
The most disappointing stay we had was in Candlewood Suites. We paid an arm and a leg for one night in that hotel and we found out it didn't include any breakfast, there was no ice machine and to top everything off, the coffee machine gave us brown water that wasn't even coffee. When we told the front desk, the girl just shrugged. We stayed at hotels that were 1/3 the price but had all the above mentioned items. I don't recommend Candlewood Suites to anyone.

Soft Water vs Hard Water in the Showers
OK, What is going on with Minnesota? We have been through Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wisconsin and all the hotels had hard water. When you take a shower, the soap rinses off.
Enter Minnesota and all the hotels have soft water. You just cannot get the soap off you in the shower. Everything is slippery. You fill up with gas at a gas station and there are pallets filled with bags of water softener salt. Weird.

A Strange Experience in the Elevator this Morning
Get this...we were on the second floor of the hotel. We have two suitcases and our computer / camera equipment so all of it fits on one of those hotel rolling carts. We loaded up and headed for the elevator. When the door opened, there was one man on it with a suitcase. Heaven forbid he would have to move his suitcase to allow us to enter it. He finally moved it over and I rolled the car on. My sister and I entered the elevator and he looked strangely at us and then picked up his suitcase and left the elevator in a huff saying "I guess I'll take the stairs...". What an A-Hole!

Visit with a relative
We had a great visit during breakfast with a distant relative. He had a lot to say about dentistry, the government, the election and we got a great history of the Dayton family (who used to own Dayton Hudsons but still own Target stores).

Cousins

Rest stop signs
Many of the rest stops in Wisconsin have information signs about the area. Here are a couple from one rest area. These two tell about The Iron Brigade during the Civil War and how the Wisconsin River is harnessed to produce power for the state.

Wisconsin Rest Area Sign

Geocaching

Today we found three geocaches. We are finding that the people who place these get very creative in the way they hide them.

Only you can prevent forest fires

Signing a Geocache log

Thinking about possible locations

Pulling the log out of a geocache

Wisconsin Ducks Tour

The highlight today was splurging by taking the Wisconsin Ducks Tour. These are amphibious vehicles from WW II with Diesel engines, WW II Jeep type tires and a propeller. The vehicle can be driven on the road and right into water. It's kind of like the amphibious cars of yesteryear you see in parades. This one can hold probably 40 people.

The tour takes you through the woods with lots of wild life, onto/into the Wisconsin River, and then into another lake that actually was filled so high by rain years ago that the river found the weakest point and broke through the road to completely empty into the Wisconsin River taking houses along with it. The river actually dried out and lots of interesting things were found at the bottom including a police boat. Since then, they replaced and shored up the road that was washed out and installed a dam with a spillway.

We also drove by the Dawn Manor that contains over $1,000,000 of artifacts in a collection.

Almost at the end, the driver/tour guide stopped in the woods, shut off the engine and then handed out a little booklet about the Duck tour. He then handed out packets of post cards. Then he announced that he was a college student and asked for a $5 donation for the book and post cards. About half the people paid and the other half gave the stuff back.

Pictures from the Duck Tour