Day 28, a second day in Onalaska (La Crosse), Wisconsin

After a careful monitoring of the meteorological profile along our route east we decided to spend a second day in Onalaska.  Severe thunderstorm warnings and prediction of tornadoes were posted for our stops tonight in Illinois, tomorrow in Indiana, and the following day in Ohio.  Our eastern travel has caused us to catch up with a storm front that is moving eastward across the lower great lakes and mid west.  The front is moving pretty fast but there appear to be three sunny days between this front and the one behind us so we decided to give the bad weather a head start and hang out here another day. 

Besides general relaxing, writing and reading, we scheduled three field trips today. In this part of the world every trip is a field trip, usually through corn or wheat. There are more dairy coops and cheese showrooms in this state than there are Duncan Donut shops in Connecticut, or so it seems.   We picked out a small farmer’s coop in Westby Wisconsin on the basis of its proximity to a cute small town and a winery and travelled about 30 miles south of Onalaska for a visit.

The coop was a bust as a tourist destination (small store only, no watching endless rows of cheese blocks on the production line as in Tilimook) but we did pick up a small quantity of Wisconsin extra sharp cheddar and some unique sunflower brittle which Gloria pronounced unlike peanut brittle but excellent.

Westby is a nice little town with the Scandinavian influence apparent in the faces of the residents and the names on the streets.  In Borden’s Café on Main Street the food is a bit unique but good and inexpensive.  There was some stuff on the menu I couldn’t pronounce (or understand). Lunch came with locally produced cottage cheese (excellent) and three cubes of cheese curds and a grape on a toothpick as a garnish.  They also had honest-to-goodness sugar free apple pie which tasted amazingly like apples rather than sugar or grape syrup.  The young people in the café all looked like models on vacation and were bright and polite.  

Unlike the roads that snake around the sides of hills, the nine miles to the vineyard climbed straight to the top of each hill and then plummeted to the valleys like a rural roller coaster.  We arrived at the remote vineyard to find that the website had been incorrect and the store was closed weekdays. The countryside was almost pretty enough to overcome the disappointment.



What does this mean?



Back in La Crosse we tracked down our last quarry of the day, a brewery that boasted the world’s largest six pack and a tour.  We smelled the place a few blocks before we found it and it was not pleasant.  Parking was non existent, and the rough looking guys hanging around near the only on the street parking were not reassuring.  I drove on and took an impromptu tour of the city waiting for Magellan to come back to life with our next destination.

Speaking of our intrepid GPS navigator, she has developed a disconcerting trait (in addition to finding exits too late, and issuing meaningless instructions like “stay on the current road” when the only option is to drive into a corn field).  She speaks to herself.  Frequently after issuing a voice command (“Right turn in two miles on Swenson Road”) she will ask us to clarify our voice command but the only voice in the car was hers. I chalk this up to the many hours the device has been on. Sort of like the computers in The Terminator. Magellan is developing consciousness. Next she will be arguing with herself and criticizing my driving.

According to weather.com we now will have sunny sky at our next three destinations, and the bad weather behind us won't catch up until the evening we are in Scranton by which it should have weakened considerably. More important, I feel rested and ready to take on the challenges Gloria has been researching all day.  Tomorrow on our way to Peru Ill we plan to visit a space and bike museum in Sparta, Wisconsin, the National Mustard Museum in Middleton, Sissy the Cow in Deforest, and whatever else pulls along the way.

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