After a friendly conversation with a retired guy who parked his 2009 Highlander next to ours and who had just come from Yellowstone Park we got on with our day:
First: down to the Mississippi River. La Crosse has a very nice river front park to view everything. Considering how far north we are, the river is quite big here. I can't imagine what it looks like farther down stream.
We then browsed at a couple of antique and souvenir shops downtown, and then at the suggestion of the owner of one of the shops, we headed to Grandad Bluff overlooking the town. Not sure how high up we were, but we could see the city, the river, Minnesota across the river and even Iowa in the southwest distance. What a great view!
After getting lunch, we headed toward Iowa to visit Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah. They preserve heirloom open pollinated varieties of vegetables, flowers and herbs, and also have some heritage breeds of animals here are less than 1000 of these cattle left in the country, and the breed was around before Jesus was alive. It was a very cool place, tucked into limestone bluffs in northeastern Iowa., over 500 varieties of old time apple varieties and the 2nd largest (of only 2) herds of ancient White Park Cattle in the country. Not what I expected of Iowa, I thought it would be more flat.
We also decided to check out the Laura Ingalls Wilder Park and Museum in Burr Oak, near Seed Savers. They preserved the home where the Ingalls family lived for one year. Apparently this is the "lost year" because she doesn't talk about it in her books. It was a nice little place that was preserved and is run by a large group of volunteers. There are also museums for pretty much every place that she lived in her life, all throughout the midwest.
After that, we headed back toward Minnesota and on to Albert Lea, where we are staying for the night. We saw lovely rolling hills of farms and beautiful country after coming up out of the Mississippi river area. Here is pretty flat, though. Tomorrow we head for South Dakota!
