Tag: Wisconsin

2025

On Our Way with a College tour of UW-Stout

Amy Kline

It was a fun birthday this year as we began our roadtrip. The boys are so big now, but they still enjoy all the inside jokes and traditions we have from many years of road trips. This dedicated family time is the best birthday gift!

We packed almost everything last night so it was fairly painless to get on the road about 8:15 am. My flowers are all blooming right now, so I took a few pictures so I can compare when we get back home in a couple weeks.

Our main stop today was to UW-Stout for a college tour for Carson. He is interested in doing something with technology and UW-Stout has pretty much everything that he is considering-video or audio tech, animation, graphic design, video game design, coding. The campus was very impressive and they have so many partnerships to help students enter the workforce when they graduate.

When we were organizing for the trip, the only tour on the University’s schedule was 9 am, and there was no way we were going to leave early enough to make that. Admissions was able to set a tour up in the afternoon specifically for Carson.

When we got there, the college had a personalized welcome sign! We watched a presentation about the University and then a student guide gave us a tour around the campus. We talked to a Professor that was just setting up a brand new 3D printer that prints metal and showed us a very intricate gear within a gear that was completely 3D printed. Fascinating! Carson said the whole tour experience was “Cool!” (He’s a man of few words, LOL). If he decides to go to UW-Stout, it looks like he will have a great experience.

We had 4 more hours of driving after our tour and made it to a hotel in Park Rapids, MN which is in the north central part of the state just as the sun set. Tomorrow we are going to the headwaters of the Mississippi River, and also to the Ronald Reagan Minute Man Missile Historic Site.

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Pattison Park Campground

Amy Kline

The crossing from Madeline Island to the mainland was beautiful this time. Calm waters, warm but not hot, and a gentle breeze. Jeff and I went to the top deck to enjoy the view.

We arrived at Pattison State Park by early afternoon and got all set up quickly. Carson and I went off to explore the park. We went to the nature center which had an explanation of tree rings, and also a great display about the CCC that built a lot of the campground and buildings during the Great Depression. Then we went to find Big Manitou Falls, which is the biggest waterfall in Wisconsin at 165 feet tall. It was very impressive! There was a selfie station at “the best place to take a picture in Wisconsin” (according to the sign), so of course we had to take a selfie. The rest of the hike was beautiful too. It is on the North Country Trail, which we have kind of followed during our entire trip. As we hiked back to our campsite, there were a bunch of wet paint signs on the park benches along the way. Of course the first thing one wants to do when one sees that sign is touch the wet paint! Carson learned that it was indeed wet, so he had to wash his hands in the lake, LOL

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Driving Home

Amy Kline

Driving. Many, many hours of driving. The views never get old though. The cool red rocks, the windmill farms, the cornfields. 7400+ miles total. Here are the last couple highlights from the drive home.

  • The last 4 nights of the trip were spent at hotels. We swam and watched TV. Kids loved it!
  • Tunnel!
  • We passed the Continental Divide so many times on this trip.
  • We ate a lot of fast food. We also used fast food places for their free WiFi.
  • “Mom! Why did they spell Come wrong? That’s not how you spell it!”
  • We weren’t far from the other Oshkosh at one point in Nebraska I think.
  • This looks like a major tourist trap. It was in the middle of nowhere on I-80.
  • We saw some interesting vehicles along the way.
  • We missed the hot air balloon night in Green Bay but did see this as we pulled in to hotel in Omaha.
  • Apparently I am a chiropractor in Omaha, though they spelled my name wrong.
  • So much corn! And who said Iowa was flat? Beautiful rolling hills all the way across the state.
  • Iowa had tons of windmills. And lots of semis pulling huge tubes of white metal that we assume will be assembled into even more windmills.