September 26, 2012 ~ Wednesday

After we left IL, we stopped for 1 night in Crawfordsville, ID.  The four bears slept non-stop for several days and went to sleep, saying, "wake us up when you see something "interesting."

 

HUH??  Which way?

Someone has a great sense of humor here!

Looking out our front door....beautiful!

 

September 24th found us spending the night in Brookville, Ohio.  We couldn't use our Satellite TV as there were too many trees but it was a beautiful setting.

 

 

 

September 25 and 26th are being spent in New Stanton, PA.  It is a fairly good sized town but they don't have a single grocery store in this town.  You have to go 15 miles to the nearest store.  What do people do who can't drive?  At least they had a Bob Evans restaurant where we had lunch today so all was not lost.  We love Bob Evans about as much as Casey HATES it!

 

 

 

 

From WI to here in PA, we have seen acre after acre of dried corn.  I remember once when we lived in WI, I was feeling so sorry for the farmers because I thought their crops had dried up in their fields due to no rain.  NOW, I realize it was dried corn they were going to harvest.  We saw several fields being harvested as we passed, with semi-trailers filled with dried corn.

 

At least my heart was in the right place, even if my brain wasn't!

 

 

This is where we are staying in New Stanton.  It's been raining a lot since we got here.  Other than going out for lunch and getting the truck fueled up, Judy has been sleeping most of the day and I've been catching up on my missed TV shows on my computer and catching up the blog. 

 

I really thought the bears would do better at keeping it up to date but they have joined Judy in hibernating today.  :)

 

September 19, 2012 ~ Wednesday

Next, we drove to Holmen, WI and spent 4 nights so we could see our very good friends, and former neighbors, Rod and Louise Peterson. We went to dinner with them at the Freight House (I had FRESH CRAB) and also to Ardies for their Friday Night Fish. Both restaurants were as good as we remembered. Judy and I also went to Hunans for Chinese Food. Judy loves their Vegetable Egg Foo Young.

 

 

 

Rod and Lousie drove up to Holme, where we were staying so they could see our RV..

 

While we were at Rod and Louise's house, we looked over the fence at the backyard we created.  It was pretty over-gown but the front yard was even worse.  We both would have loved to have some pruning shears and some time to prune things back in our old yard.

The garden shed was added by the new owners.  They have really let the landscaping and yard go...there wasn't a weed in the yard when Judy was in charge of the grass!

We planted all the trees in the yard except the 4 big Maple trees that were in place when we bought the house.  I can't remember the name of this little tree but the Cedar Wax Wing birds would spend several days eating all the berries off it in the fall when they were passing through the area.  It was always a treat to see them out there, enjoying the berries.

There were 2 big Maples in front and 2 in back when we bought the place.  We put in the flower beds around the trees when we had the house.  We were in the local paper for "Best Yard" once when we lived there.  The Maples sure need pruned so you can see under them once again.

 

 This is looking under the second Maple....they have let the lilac trees get out of hand and you can barely see down the side of the house.  There WAS a really pretty little side garden that we planted in honor of Granny after she passed.  She would have loved it!

 

We ran into our first toll road after we left WI.  It was $2.80 for us to pass through it, on our way to Garden Prairie, IL which was our next stop.  We just stayed one night and then moved on, with PA being our goal.  Judy's sister, Sara, lives there.
 

 

 

September 17, 2012 ~ Monday

Since Sadie Rose loves to shop, SHE got to go to Mall of America with Momma Sue and her good friend, Barb Slater.  Barb and Sue met through the scrapbooking site, dMarie about 15 years ago. 

We went through Rochester, MN just to see Barb.

 
We had lunch at the Rainforest Cafe; woudn't you know it, they have a Build a Bear section!  How lucky was THAT!

The JUNGLE Salad.......yum-O!

 

 

I asked a couple of ladies to take our picture and they said "yes, if you will take our picture afterwards" so Barb jumped in to do the deed.

At the end of our trip to the "big city" I took Barb to our favorite cafe, Cafe Latte, in St. Paul, MN.  Their desserts are to die for!  I took a huge piece of chocolate cake home to Judy!

September 15, 2012 ~ Saturday

We drove to Austin, MN from Rochester to see the SPAM Museum.  When we got to Austin, you could smell the SPAM in the air.......THAT really got Sadie Rose's attention.  She let us know that BEARS LOVE SPAM!!!