Wisconsin, May 2016

MOOOooooOOOooooOoooOOOOoooooooo..........!

Another trip to Wisconsin has come and gone.  As much as I hate traveling and leaving home for more than a few days, it was overall a good and fun trip.

We started off by going straight to Ladysmith to spend the first night with his sister JudyBug and her hubby Al.  It is always so fun to visit with them. Plus she always gives us jugs of locally made home-grown real 100% natural maple syrup that she gets from a friend of hers.  Yum.  Her only fault is that she is always trying to fatten us up with tons of food.  Plus, as I mentioned last year, her house is "Tick Central", but it was SO cold when we got there, so we didn't spend any time outdoors anyway.  It even started snowing on Saturday morning!  Weird.  I was glad that I packed some warmer clothes. 

Here is a picture of an Oriole that comes around to nibble on the oranges that she puts out in her yard:

On Saturday we headed south to Marshfield.  I was anxious to see how my mom was doing because I knew that she had been in and out of the hospital recently.  When we got to Marshfield, no one was answering her phone, and knowing she had been in the hospital we thought maybe something happened and perhaps she was in the hospital again.  So we called the hospital to find out if she was admitted, and it turned out she was, so we started off with visiting her first.  Well, we had to because we couldn't get into our guest room without the key.

We didn't know for sure how long she would be cooped up in there, so on Sunday we went to church without her, and luckily our rental car gave us the freedom to go where we wanted, so we were able to meet up with old friends and family members in between visits with my mom at the hospital.

On Monday she was able to go home, but she was pretty weak, so we just took her home so she could get some rest.  While she was resting, me and Chuck went shopping for a new couch for her.  I've been wanting to get her a new one for a long time, and this was our opportunity to do it.  She was pleasantly surprised, and we were all glad to see that old uncomfortable "bucket couch" go away.

Every day she was making tiny improvements, but she was still tired and weak most of the time, took lots of naps throughout the day, and we wanted her to get all the rest she needed, so throughout the week, Chuck and I did what we wanted/needed to do and visited my mom in between everything else.  We were SO BUSY.

On Tuesday afternoon, we went up north to Phillips to visit my brother Chuck:

He owns 100 acres of land and took us for a ride on his 4-wheeler.

This is where my niece Rachel sits and waits when she is deer hunting:

On Wednesday we went to Plover to visit Chuck's sister Karen.  On the way, we HAD TO stop here:

Just look at all that yummy cheese:

and all that yummy "squeaky cheese"

Chuck's sister Karen lives only a mile away from the nursing home where his mom is, so we spent the afternoon with her.

When we got there we found her sitting outside with a few other patients.

Of course Chuck's mom didn't have a clue who we were, but holy cow! she talked non-stop for the whole three hours that we were there!  And Chuck knew just what to say to keep her going!  It was a very interesting conversation, to say the least!

I am so glad we got to spend that time with her because it was fun to see her in good spirits and laughing. 

After awhile though, her topics of conversation were turning negative, which was making her ornery and more animated, so that was our clue that it was probably time for us to go.

So we spent the rest of the day visiting with Karen and headed back to Marshfield in the evening.

Every day when we did our running around and visiting people, I always wanted to get back to Marshfield early enough to see my mom before she went to bed, but most of the time we always got back a little too late cuz my mom goes to bed so early.

I was starting to feel bad that I hardly got to see my mom, but I knew that she just needed time to recover before I could have a good long visit with her anyway.

In the meantime, we were getting a lot of our other obligations taken care of, so it was working out good.

On Thursday, me and Chuck wanted to start our "mini vacation" road trip along the Mississippi River.  So after we made sure that my mom was gonna be okay, we headed out west.

The first town we stopped in was Stockholm because a guy that Chuck works with insisted that we go there to a certain pie place and try their pie.  So we did.

I liked that their pies are totally hand-made from scratch.

I had the triple berry pie (rhubarb, raspberry, strawberry) and it tasted very good!

After we ate our pie we went to a little museum across the street.  It was very small but had lots of old antique stuff to look at, plus a few locally made items to sell.

I wanted to purchase a ceramic sugar bowl, but there was absolutely no one manning the place.  There was only a sign that directed us to the building next door if we wanted to purchase anything.

So we took the sugar bowl to the building next door, and we walked in, and the first thing we saw was this big ol' tom cat gnawing on a baby rabbit which was still twitching (poor thing!).

The guy who owned the shop apparently didn't know about it until we walked in cuz he was in a different room.  But he took care of it right away and apologized - he said the cat brings his dinner into the store all the time.

Anyhoo, now that we've paid for our sugar bowl, we went for a walk in this little park next to the river, and found this spit that spans halfway across.

Here is something really neat that I've never seen before:  public bicycles that you can use whenever you want:

So when we were done at the park, we each grabbed a bike and pedaled back towards the car.  It felt really weird to just take a bike like that - I felt like I was stealing it!

They had bike racks like this in different parts of the town; you just drop it off at any bike rack. 

Between unmanned stores and public bikes, this town is really laid back!!

But we were there before the tourist season started, so I suppose things are very different now.

Our next stop was Pepin.  If you know who Laura Ingalls Wilder is, then Pepin should sound familiar to you.  It is where she was born and it is the setting of "the big woods" in her first book.

They built a replica of the cabin on the spot where they think the original one stood.

As you can see, there is no longer any "big woods".  It was really cool to be standing on the same ground where she spent her early childhood, but at the same time, I wasn't too thrilled about the surroundings of the cabin.   They say that this replica cabin might be as much as 200 feet off the original spot,  but they KNOW that this is the very land property that she was born on.  And based on her writings,  they think they did an accurate job with the cabin.  Really? Maybe on the inside, who can know for sure? But on the outside ---with all the cleared land, and the neatly mowed grass, and those fancy plants in front of the cabin, it's too modern looking to give me that nostalgic feeling of authenticity.  But yet, it was still pretty cool to stand there and try to imagine the Ingalls family living in that very spot.  Even though I felt half-disappointed, it was worth stopping for.

Then we went to the museum:

They had a lot of old antique stuff in there from the same time era as Laura Ingalls Wilder, but not much of it was actually linked to her personally.

But here is a quilt that belonged to her:

Here is a doily that belonged to Rose.

And here is another quilt that belonged to either Laura or Rose:

They also had some other items that belonged to Laura's first teacher.

Well, I am taking too long with this road trip, so I'm going to skip a lot of stuff and move on.  But I suppose I should at least show you a picture of the Mississippi River.

It's not the greatest picture, but it's the best I could do.  We stopped in a town called Alma, where you can climb to the top of a big bluff and look down on the river.  I imagined that long ago, that bluff was probably a popular scouting spot for the Indians.

After awhile all these little old historical towns started looking the same, and it was fun to see all these historical places, but we were running out of time.  So after stopping in several towns and shopping in some old historical shops, we parted from the river and headed east again.....cuz we had other things to do, like visit a cemetery, visit my sister, and run a half-marathon.

On our way east, we stopped in the town of Viroqua to take a walk, just because we liked the look of the town.  It had a kind of small town homey feel.

While we were there, Chuck made a new friend:

So we headed to Cashton to hunt for some of Chuck's buried ancestors with the name Brueggen.

When we got close to it, we happened to end up behind this truck and Chuck wondered if it was owned by his distant relatives:

Wow, that's really weird..........

At the cemetery, we found lots of Brueggens:

While I was taking a picture of one of the tombstones, an old lady and her son noticed that I was taking a photo of someone she knew.  After talking with her, we learned that she was Chuck's mom's cousin.  I told her that we were looking for the grave of Martin Brueggen, and she said, "Martin was my grandfather." Wow, what a coincidence!  

  She also said that the driver of that oil truck we saw was her nephew.

So yes, Chuck was right about about that truck we saw.

That was really weird.

BTW, we never did find Martin's grave.  The old lady pointed us over in yon direction and said he was out there "somewhere".  We combed it over twice and never found him.  Bummer.

We did find lots of others we were looking for, so the trip to the cemetery was very productive.

Okay, now we're off to Mauston to visit my sister Laura:

She fed us a scrumptious dinner and we had a very nice visit. I was glad I got to have some time with her cuz she is one of my siblings that I don't usually get to see.

Then we headed over to Holmsberg to spend the night cuz Chuck was signed up to run a half-marathon  (13 miles) in the Kickapoo Valley Reserve early the next morning.

 It was a nice day, so after the runners started running, I walked on one of the trails there, and then just sat around waiting for the runners to start coming in.  Here Chuck is finally crossing the finish line.  He was really pooped.

They had the runners divided up into categories.  For the male runners in the 40-49 year age group, he came in 3rd place, and he won this wooden medallion. 

That's not bad for a first-time half-marathon runner!!  

Okay, there were only 4 runners in that particular category, but we don't talk about that.

We are still proud of him for even doing it.  Over all, out of all the runners (I forget the number now) Chuck came in the first half of them, so he did pretty good.

So now I was ready to head back to Marshfield cuz I've been away from my sick mom for three days and I felt the urgent need to get back and see how she was doing.

She was fine.  Doing a little better each day, but still weak and tired all the time.

On Sunday she was able to go to church with us, but had to go home and lay down as soon as it was over.  So we took her home, and my sister Judith came into town so we could spend the afternoon together and take my mom to the park.  Unfortunately, she didn't know that we had another obligation that day.  

  So, as much as I hated to leave her, I had to leave her.

We were expected to attend Chuck's family reunion at his sister Joyce's house in Neillsville, and there was no way I could get out of it.

Here is Joyce's fat cat, Cali.

She is SOOOO fluffy!!

We had a good time there.  Everybody just goofing around.

Jim, Chuck, Dean, Karen, Judy, Joyce

After that was done, we of course get back to Marshfield right AFTER my mom went to bed.  So in the evenings whenever that happened, which was practically every evening, me and Chuck would go for a walk around the neighborhood and up and down Main Street before the sun went down.  I always enjoyed this because it was so retro.

Here in Alaska we don't have those old cracked sidewalks under the shade of the trees with all those "helicopters" lying on the ground.  I really miss that!

Plus we really enjoyed looking at all the old houses, and of course Chuck was interested in all the ones that had a real estate sign stuck into the ground.

Anyhoo, it was just kind of a nice relaxing way to end the day before retiring in the guest room.

Monday was our last full day in Wisconsin, and it was also the first day that we had no plans.  So I committed us to finally spend a whole day with my mom.  By that time she was feeling much better and was able to do more.

We wanted to take her to the park, but knew it wouldn't last very long without a wheelchair cuz she still couldn't walk very far without getting dizzy and tired, so first we went to WalGreen's and bought her a walker.

This was money well spent cuz she really liked it a lot.  

And the nice thing about it is that she can sit down on it while me and Chuck are standing around watching the bears goofing around.

What I wanted to see the most was the bears because these two bear cubs came from Alaska, so I felt a more personal connection to them.

The Marshfield Zoo built really nice extravagant living quarters for them.  They are not just in a small cage pacing back and forth; they have a lot of space with trees and water, and even a bridge to go from one part of the cage to the other.  I'd say they are pretty spoiled and living in the ritz!

Anyhoo, after a little while, I could see that my mom was starting to wear out, so we took her out for some ice cream.  And then she still felt good enough to be out a little longer, so we took her to the mall.  It was just good to see her finally able to get by longer without having to lay down and rest.  But she did eventually say she needed to lay down, so we took her home.  

On Tuesday morning we had to pack up and leave, but I took this last picture of my parents sitting on their new couch. They covered it with a quilt to protect it, which I think looks better anyway.  (Yes, my mom hand-sewed that quilt - that is what she does.)

So that was our trip.

It took me awhile to post this because I have been SO busy since I got back home.  Every time I wanted to update my blog, there was always something standing in the way.

We put up the greenhouse and I got all my veggies transplanted outside, then planted all the seeds that didn't get started indoors.  It took several days to get everything planted, and every time I thought I was done digging in the dirt, there was always something else to plant.  This weekend we are gonna be planting some raspberry bushes yet, and then I should be finally done planting!  

Then there's the task of keeping everything watered and pulling weeds, but it's so exciting to see the fruits of my labor when they come in!!

This has been a really long post, so I am ready to stop for now.

And now I will be back to posting boring routine stuff.(yawn!)