impromptu road trip to sioux city

John and I had taken last Monday off as we were needing a longer weekend. We didn't have a total plan of what we would do but thought a state park trip day trip would be nice. Last Sunday I awoke to John maddly googling and search the internet. Want to go to Sioux City he asked? Its only a 4 1/2 hour drive?
Now if you know me well you will know that at any suggustion of travel I am all in. I love to go new places! YES I said and i went to pack my bags. We found a nice hotwire hotel and loaded into the car an hour later.

The losses hills of western Iowa

We made a wrong turn because of some construction and ended up in South Dakota. Were the state was full of casinos.

Beautiful natural prairies at stone state park

View from the top of the bluff overlooking the river and South Dakota

A beautiful weekend for great pictuers of the scenaray

We hiked up a bluff in the prairie to find a geocache

historic downtown Sioux City were we had dinner and stayed Sunday night

  Monday morning we heading into Nebraska for a bit to find a geocache

John and I are taking a picture in every county of Iowa here is one from our weekend trip. It was the first time either of us had been to this area of the state

We leraned how beautiful and rolling the hills of Western Iowa really are.

Cool clouds + drying corn + blue skys = lots of cool fun and intresting pictures

Hitting some new counties on the way home.

What a great trip. Made even  more fun by the lack of planning and being able to just go do instead of doing a lot of planning. Thanks for thinking of this John!

Lanesboro

Well it only took me two months to post about our trip to Laneboro, sorry! I got sick with the flu right after and well you know.

We took a trip to Lanesboro, MN July 24th. My aunt and uncle reccommed it as a very nice town to camp with lots of things to do. We loved it! We cut the trip short to only one day due to the bad weather but are planning on going back this fall. Here our our pictures from our trip:

Stormy weather followed us the whole trip long

This was the 2nd, yes 2nd tree we ran across driving to MN. We later determined that we had three bad omens (when we woke up Montgomery was on his back, plus 2 down trees- what was Montgomery trying to tell us??) and maybe should have stayed home. Although we did have fun.



The town sign





After a long day of bad weather (we were both drenched at one point) and not being able to find a campground we stopped at the local 50's dinner for salad and coffee.



This was an amazing salad and inspired me create a similar version.




Main street Lanesboro



We ran across this great flower garden and grabbed a few shots before it started to pour again.


Great clouds on the way home!

This is corn, yes corn. They had sever hail damage so much that the fully grown corn was then about 3 ft tall- just nubbins.

i'll take 90lbs to go please

warren dunes state park

warren dunes state park

playing around in the water

taking a swim in the water (that is Kristel)

A picnic super on the beach reminds me our honeymoon in Mexico

Loving the sun and sand!


sunset on the beach is delightful

The campground


Our camping area


St Joseph river, view from our campsite


We went to pick up the blueberries Monday morning. All the blueberries fit into the car. We were a bit nervous about that as we had all our camping gear in the car.
90 lbs of blueberries. Tasty.


I loved the SW part of Michigan great fresh fruit, great nature things to do (beach, camping, hiking, etc), loves of winery, interesting and fun restaurants. John and I will defiantly need to make a trip back again soon.

Blueberry note: I just have just a few fresh berries left as I have frozen the rest of the 20 lbs we got for ourselves. I can't wait to enjoy them all winter long. Yummy!!

learning about Michigan

We stayed in Berrien Springs, MI at Shamrock Park campground. I would highly recommend the campground as its clean, well taken care of, and has nice bathrooms.
In town they have a university- Andrew's University.

This is what a field of blueberries look like! Wow!


Sunday we took a trip to the blueberry 'place' to skope it out and place our order for 90 lbs of blueberries!


On the way back to our campground. We went to St Julian Winery in Paw Paw, MI


At the winery they offer tours and tastings. After we tasted some very nice wine we got to see the operation and learn a lot about grapes and wine making. A lot of fun!

The wine 'curing' in the barrels


checking out the wine


this is where the grape juice is stored before its made into wine


Another stop on the way back to get groceries turned out to be a wonderful surprise for me. We wanted to get ice, cheese, and turkey (this would be for john not for me). We looked and looked all over the store for turkey with non to be found. It turns out this is an all VEGETARIAN grocery store. Yup no meat at all and its the size of a normal sized hy-vee. I was in heaven looking at all the veggie products. How cool is that!


As we were camping on the St. Joseph river we had some geese that likes to hang out at our camp ground.

More to come stay tuned...

Mission: Blueberry

On July 11th John and I set off to Michigan for a camping trip. This would not be any ordinary trip as it was a mission... (flash back to Decorah camping trip) Janet and I where discussing blueberries and how she wasn't going to able to get anyone to go this year. I said to John we've never been to Michigan. Do you want to drive to Michigan to get blueberries? Yes was the anwser so we started planning our trip... (back to now time). So the blogs today and to follow we'll share our trip to get blueberries and the wonders we discovered in Michigan.

Leaveing our house Saturday morning we had an easy drive as we got to Illinois.


Chicago traffic was not that bad and we were in Indiana!


Getting close to blueberries I could smell them (ok not really!)


After setting up our tent and orienting ourselves with the area we drove down to see Lake Michigan.

Me and large bodies of water, it was ment to be!


Loving our trip so far!

Saturday night we had gotten a small amount of blueberries so john made blueberry pancakes. Oh my were they tasty!

Blueberries blueberries oh how I love you!
More to come tommorrow...stay tuned!