Mississippi River

We travelled along the Great River Road in Wisconsin which follows the Mississippi River. Here is the scene from one vantage point along the road.

Foggy mornings

During our short visit to the west, the weather was just spectacular...highs in the mid 80s, lows in the the 60s, beautiful blue skies, white puffy clouds...perfect flip flop and shorts weather. The mornings though were always foggy, so much so, that some mornings you couldn't see more than 5 feet in front of you.

The one good thing about travelling in a winnebago is that you spend more time living closer to nature. This was the scene when we woke up in LaSalle Illinois. Had we stayed in a hotel, our view would most likely be of parking lots, storefronts and restaurants. It was a refreshing change from our normal everyday lives.

North Dakota

As if we hadn't had enough problems on our trip, things went from bad to worse. We abruptly cut our trip short with the passing of Steve's father last week. We had made it to South Dakota when we received the news and we headed straight home, a 30 hour non-stop journey back to PA. Needless to say, it was a long ride.

To complicate matters, I had dropped my computer the day before and damaged the hard drive. The little shop we found in Rapid City, ND worked tirelessly for 7 days to get as much data off the old drive as they could before installing a new hard drive. It certainly was a trip with a lot of adventure, but Steve and I feel we were just getting started and we plan to resume where we left off. We'll keep you posted, but we are considering heading back out west in late Oct.

In the meantime, now that I am reunited with my computer, I will be processing the images I had taken thus far. Today's blog image is from North Dakota and the Theodore Roosevelt state park.

Land 'O Lakes

We pulled over and stopped somewhere in Central Minnesota for the night. When we got up yesterday morning, we headed for the Lake Country Scenic Byway or route 34. We ventured off onto some side roads, some of which ended up being dirt roads and here we found the reason why Minnesota is called the Land 'O Lakes. They boast having 11, 842 lakes in all, most of them concentrated in the northern part of the state. We counted the number of lakes we passed before crossing over into North Dakota...the final tally being 50. I guess we have some more exploring to do! Today's blog image is of Bottle Lake.

Wisconsin's Dairyland

Our day today started with waking up in Prairie du Chien Wisconsin on the Mississippi River. It wasn't as glorious as it sounds as we were also parked about 200 feet from the railroad tracks with freight trains running about every ten minutes until 2 am or so. Thinking I could get some photos of the river when we woke up proved to be a hopeless idea as the fog didn't lift until late morning.

We took the Great River Route scenic byway up route 35 in Wisconsin follows along the Mississippi River. Every now and again the road would veer into Wisconsin's farmland and to our surprise we only encountered 1 dairy farm, today's blog image. After crossing into Minnesota we got on a highway to make tracks so we could prepare ourselves for the next scenic highway adventure somewhere in the state of 10,000 lakes.

Rural Iowa

Our trip out west thus far has been quite an adventure. From bee stings, to losing a credit card, to frying the brakes on our RV, we've had our share of things gone wrong. It's been a heck of a learning curve, but slowly we are getting used to life "on the road."

In spite of all the setbacks we managed to get as far as Illinois by the end of our second day. There wasn't much photo taking opportunities as our truck problems required our full attention. Today was an easier day and we travelled some rural roads in Iowa. Learning to nagivate the backroads and stop a 12 year old 22 foot RV to photograph the scenery has posed it's challenges, but I did get this image of rural Iowa.

Elfreth's Alley

I recently moved from the Philadelphia area, but before doing so, I spent some time photographing some of the sights of the city. Here's an image from Elfreth's Alley, the "nation's oldest residential street" with the homes dating back to the early eighteen century.

Due to my move, I haven't been able to keep up with processing my images or photographing any new ones. But all of that is about to change as my husband and I are about to embark on a month long journey out west. We begin our adventure tomorrow, so stop back and follow along with us as we travel some of the most scenic roads in the country.