Wednesday, July 24, 2019

Monday, July 22, 2019, WI, MN

Backtracking again. Last Saturday afternoon, we went to Ben’s house to drop Frisco off and to have a visit (they are dog sitting for a few days). It had been a busy morning for them, as Charlotte had a sleepover on Friday night and the twins had a birthday party in the morning. The kids were all a bit tired and cranky at first, but once Tom started playing with them, they cheered right up and had lots of fun.


Ben made burgers, Jill made potato salad and I mixed up a fruit salad. It was fun and a good visit. We left Frisco there and headed back to Monticello before dark so we could get in a brisk walk before retiring.


Our neighbors and friends were hanging out, drinking beer and making a bit of noise, so we had to run the fan in order to block out the noise.


On Sunday morning, we took off by 9am, heading toward Jim and Sue’s house in St. Germain, WI. We had a 5-hour drive ahead of us and got turned around a bit only a few miles into the drive, so that slowed us down a bit. Even with a few stops along the way, we made it in 5.5 hours. Along the way, there was a lot of evidence of storm and tornado activity from Friday night and Saturday morning. As I write this, there are still power outages and the news is reporting 16 or more tornadoes that touched down.


It sure was nice to see Jim and Sue again - there is never a shortage of things to talk and joke about. They fixed ribs and grilled potatoes for dinner, we took a nice walk, and went to bed fairly early.


I fixed breakfast of fruit and biscuits and gravy for breakfast and then we headed into town to the flea market - a very big one with a nice variety of stuff for sale. We bought maple syrup, cheese, soap and a ‘miracle’ cleaning cloth. 


Shannon Lake was next on the list for a hike around the lake. The temps were cool and it was a nice hike.


We had a couple of hours to rest before going to meet up with Sue and Ron, friends of theirs at Mar-Li’s. We had actually met them at Viking Village in Stoughton last summer and it was fun talking with them, learning that we had some things in common like people we had worked with or knew through the years. They came over to the house after dinner and we talked and laughed some more.