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Galena

Amy Kline
August 5-7, 2015

This year’s epic trip begins by dropping Lego off to be spoiled by Oma and Opa. We know he is in safe hands!
We had a very beautiful drive to Galena. We stopped in Madison at the State Capital to show the kids and were able to go up into the dome. I always forget how gorgeous that building really is, so impressive!


 Once we were in Galena, we celebrated Carson and Grandpa’s birthday by going to Happy Joe’s Pizza (discovered that it was a chain restaurant).  As you can see, Jeff had just as much fun playing the games as all the kids did. Carson got to open a bunch of birthday gifts and just about all of them coincidentally were perfect to take along on a road trip!

The cousins had fun playing outside, playing board games, watching a Harry Potter movie marathon and going swimming. Spencer discovered that he LOVED going down the slide! Carson went down the slide once too. It started raining out but wasn’t lightning, so we had the pool to ourselves for quite a while until it started pouring and the poor lifeguards made us get out. We even saw a rainbow on the way back to the house since the sun came back out.  
Spencer’s first time going down the slide by himself. Within minutes, no one needed to catch him!
Carson was a little more timid, but did a great job on the slide too!
Jeff and I also had the opportunity to sneak into town for a bit. We were planning to go to a small quilt show, but their advertising didn’t state that it was a night time show so we missed it. Instead, we walked up and down Main Street Galena. Galena is a walled town, and can close the gate if the Mississippi River and its tributaries flood. Ulysses S. Grant also grew up in this town and a lot of Main Street and the surrounding houses pre-date the Civil War. 

You can see the walls as you enter the downtown.

Many of the buildings are really really old. Very quaint shops.

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Preparations for the 2015 Epic Kline Road Trip-Destination: Wallyworld!

Amy Kline

We are beginning to prepare for this year’s epic roadtrip. Reservations have been made at campgrounds and hotels, and tickets are already purchased for Disneyland and Universal Studios. All that is left is laundry, and the big job of packing everything into the truck for the cross country trip. Estimated miles we will be traveling ranges from 4600 to 4800 miles, which translates into 75-88 hours in the truck. Are we crazy? Most definitely!!! But BOTH kids can read this year (thank you Mrs. Lusso!) and Jeff is downloading some really fun, geeky podcasts for us. We also have lots of road trip scavenger hunts, license plate bingo, mad libs, and lots more to keep us occupied on the long driving days.

I will try to blog a bit each day that we have internet access/cell coverage, so if you would like to follow along, sign up by email or check back to see our latest adventures!

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Heading for Home

Amy Kline
Today would be a day mostly of driving. We had to stop at Wall Drug just for the tacky kitchyness of it all (plus we promised the kids that we would get ice cream). This place is hilarious. Room after room of stuff, many of them “personalized items”. Here are some examples of just a few things. 
Rocks. A whole room of them. This kind of makes sense because we were in the Badlands which is basically a bunch of weird rock formations.

Personalized mugs. All exactly the same except for the names on them. All facing the exact same direction. 
Wild animal bobble heads. Because you never know when you might need a wacky gift for someone back home.

And furry fake kittens. Because… what else would fill up those 3 shelves?
While I was walking through tacky Americana tourist momentos, Jeff took the boys behind the store where there were more unique activities. The boys panned for gold and pretty rocks, which they absolutely loved. They each got a whole bag full of pebbles and they proceeded to show us each and every one. It was super cute. 

There were a bunch of cigar store statues in between the rooms. This one was Buffalo Bill.

There was also a dinosaur that roared every 15 minutes or so.

Spencer pretended he was a driver on the wagon train.

Carson pretended he was a cowboy on the open range.

The boys also got a chance to ride the famous Jackalope. Exciting!
After we got all our sillies out at Wall Drug and had some ice cream, we started to put some miles on. None of us felt like getting out at any of the pullouts or overlooks, so we just drove through the Badlands on the scenic byway. It was gorgeous, but I think we were all just exhausted and have seen so many rocks by this point that we just didn’t get that excited about these. We didn’t even stop at the Visitor’s Center this time. 

So basically we drove and drove all day and went an hour past the campground we originally planning to stay at. We finally stopped at sunset at an AmericInn in Jackson, MN. We basically just collapsed onto the beds and fell asleep (after watching a cartoon or catching up on Facebook of course). 

This last day was just all out driving across southern Minnesota and up to Hwy 21 back to Oshkosh to pick up Lego, our dog, who was staying with Oma and Opa. We drove through quite a few rainstorms and heard that north of us just got slammed with rain as did some places in Wisconsin. These pictures are of some really low misty clouds right as we crossed the Mississippi River.

We finally made it home about 4 pm. Laundry is started, unpacking has begun. It has been an exciting journey and we can’t wait to plan another roadtrip for next year. Thanks for following along!