The 8.5 hour drive from Rochester to Bloomington, Nebraska was easy and went pretty fast. We stopped at Costco in Omaha for our midway stop to walk around. We ate samples, bought some more snacks (they had the Fiber One bars that Colorado Springs and Aurora stopped carrying!), and bought smoothies at the food court to carry out for lunch. Bad idea there. Not two minutes after Four had hers (mind you, she was already buckled in) she dropped it. Okay, I'll get a towel out of the back end to cover that up because I sure can't clean it right now! And a second one spilled before we got to Kansas.
Bloomington is home to Mike and Laurel McDonald, who are Two's adopted grandparents from our church in Kansas. Laurel was her Primary teacher and Two just decided one day that she was always going to sit with them to keep them company. She was going to adopt them. They do love each other dearly.
We had dinner with the McDonalds. Mike had a little bag of polished rocks he bought for Two at Little America because he thought of her when he saw them. She had brought a bag to church once to show him. They also gave her a necklace.
Porch cuddles
{Mike and Two}
{Four, Mike, Two, Five, Laurel, Three, One}
You know you're in Nebraska when there's retired military planes and tanks in the parks.
After leaving the McDonalds, we stopped in Smith Center for a porch pickup of 6 gallons of honey from my beekeeper. Yes, you read that correctly. I have a beekeeper in Kansas. He sells a gallon of honey for $32. I'm out and wanted to really stock up because who knows when I'm gonna drive through next. And one of my forest friends wanted a gallon, too. And small town life in Kansas means you can leave $192 of merchandise on your porch for a customer to pick up and you know that she's gonna leave a check in the door.
We made it to middle-of-nowhere Kansas around 9 and the kids went right to running out their energy. We visited with Charly and Tony until around 10:30. Three was the only one who indicated being tired and wanting to go to bed. The next day was dreary and we didn't feel a need to venture out in the mud to see the farm, so we stayed inside chatting and playing and watching Wonder Woman. When the movie finished around 1 in the afternoon, I noticed that Three wasn't watching or playing in the other room. I went to find her upstairs in our bed.
We had a late lunch and said our goodbyes so we could get home with only a 5 hour drive.
{Three, Four, Charly, Two, One, Five}
We got home and the kids immediately set to work to quickly unload the van all together. I ordered Chinese delivery for dinner and we went to run around the park while we waited for our food.
We stayed with our friends Don and Stephanie Dodds in Rochester, Minnesota. Don lived near us in Kansas and Shad had adopted him as a grandparent during high school years. Don lives with his daughter Stephanie. Oh, he was so excited for our visit and he got cookies and juice boxes and corn dogs and cereals! He just went all out. And he and the kids were so chatty with each other! We left late every morning we had somewhere to go due to chattiness. No complaints, though. Just funny :)
Wednesday morning, I had plans for us to drive around small towns north of Minneapolis to see Swedish heritage. Unfortunately, most places were closed, even though their hours said they were open. Or just the gift shop would be open and all the historical buildings would be closed. Don't quite know what the point of that is, but okay...
I had a creepy crawly gas stop that left me...somewhat paranoid for a good 15 minutes. First there was this ladybug crawling on my face...
...then I put the gas hose back and this beast was there! For some reason I just couldn't walk past it and had to walk around the other side of the van to get back in.
Then there were flies in the van and when one landed on me I definitely jumped and screamed. Drove all tense and cringed for several miles before I could relax.
We arrived safely in Scandia to see Gammelgarden, which had a big "Welcome" sign...and then it was just the boutique and some folk art that were open, not the 12 acres with many historical buildings. Let down. Apparently I was just touring during the wrong season. They historical buildings are only open on weekends right now.
Snagged a Swedish Meatballs recipe
I hosted a German exchange student in high school. Her name was Svea, which is not a German name, but actually Swedish.
The kids got real excited when the recognized the dala horses!
You know you're in Swedish land when there are dalas everywhere.
The oldest church in Minnesota, I think it said.
Little did we know this would not be the biggest dala horse of the day...
{Four, Two, Five, One, Three}
Kirsten the American Girl is the one who started this fascination for me, followed by Jan Brett. I've never actually found any Swedish ancestry on my family tree, and some parts go back pretty far. But I did take an Ancestry DNA test a couple years ago and it says that I manifest 25% Scandinavian DNA. That was such a surprise to me, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. I've got loads of ancestry from all over the UK where the Vikings raped the heck out of everyone. So the fact that some Scandinavian DNA is in me shouldn't be that surprising. And Vikings were a long time ago, so that'd be pretty far back on the family tree, and hard to trace unless you hit gold by having nobility. The test says that I manifest 25% Scandinavian, not that I am 25% Scandinavian. So that means that more of those genes show up in my genetic makeup. Which so poignantly explained to me why I've always felt drawn to Sweden and Denmark.
Dalas on the street signs.
In Lindsborg, which is known as Little Sweden.
Ironically, I couldn't find much of interest to do in Lindstrom. I wanted to eat some Swedish food, so I went to Swedish Inn. Next time I'll just drive an hour south to IKEA and get some real Swedish food because the menu was one I could find in basically any American diner. So we ditched town and moved on to Mora to at least see the world's largest dala horse.
{Four, Five, One, Three, Two}
The Swedish Heritage website recommended going to the Vasaloppet headquarters to learn about this Swedish race. Also closed. Somebody really needs to fact-check hours posted on Google. But cool Viking ship, y'all!
There was a guy working in a garage workshop by the Vasaloppet lodge, so I asked him about Vasaloppet. It's a Swedish cross-country ski race done in Mora, Sweden and Mora, Minnesota adopted the practice. There's a lot of traveling back and forth between the two Moras as people like to support and participate in the races. The guy also recommended we go to the county museum, so we did. That was the one thing we did that truly gave us something worthwhile!
We explored inside the main museum building which had some antiques from Swedish settlement days, dioramas of Native American dwellings, and a whole section of obsolete communication technologies--operator switchboards, various typewriters, rotary phones, photo slide projector, etc, all to show what your phone can do that used to be done by all of those machines. Then we went out to the old schoolhouse.
{Two, Five, One, Three, Two}
Teachers
{Five, One, Two}
Ha! I just noticed the hanging light.
And then there was a caboose! This place just kept getting better and better.
{Two, Four, Three, One, Five}
{One, Five}
{Four, Three, Two, Five, One}
{One, Three, Two, Four, Five}
We drove down to Minneapolis and met up with Mike and Danie Thompson for dinner at a park. Mike and I were good friends at BYU-Idaho. We were in the same ward and usually saw each other in Anne Bailey's apartment because that's where all the action was with her 5 roommates with varying degrees of Chinese heritage. Oh, and all those intermural hockey games where Anne, Mallory, and I were always there in homemade team gear, ready to scream Mike's name. Go Hurricanes! There was also the time when Mike found my camera and took a bunch of selfies (which wasn't a word back then, but we still did it anyway) and I'm preeeetty sure he wasn't drunk, but who can say for sure? And I made him a cake on Valentine's Day for his birthday. Good times! Danie was in our ward, too, and lived on the floor above me, but we never interacted. So it was great to catch up with Mike and get to know Danie.
{Ellie, Mike, me, Danie, Zachary in the corner}
We didn't get back to the house til around 10, so it was straight to bed for everyone. Thursday I had nothing planned, so the kids reveled in Legos, doll houses, talking incessantly with Grandpa Dodds and watching tv occasionally. I did take them out to a park to run around for a couple hours, then finished off the evening with couch cuddles.
{Five, Four, Three, One, Grandpa}
Stephanie was walking a certain distance daily to prepare for a fundraiser walking weekend. Two (who never wants to go for walks at home) got all hoppin' excited and asked if she could go, too. As a mom, I've got two choices at a time like this. 1) Get all sarcastic and throw it back in her face: "Oh, reaaaaally? You complain any time I wanna go for a walk at home and now you're begging to go?" 2) Hold my tongue and let it play out naturally and be a happy experience. "Sure, you can go!" It took some self-control, but I did manage #2. Then when they returned and Stephanie told me how Two was such a good walking partner, pace-setter, and conversationalist telling Stephanie all about how our home is set up, then I laughed and told Stephanie how Two never wants to go on walks and this all just blew my mind.
{One, Stephanie, Three, Two, Five, Four, Grandpa}
Stephanie does letter-boxing which is like treasure hunting combined with stamp carving and journaling. Stephanie and Two stayed up until 10 talking about it. Now we're going to check out some letter-boxing trails in Colorado Springs, one of which is Lord of the Rings themed! Now One is interested.
That park I took the kids to...so much sand in Three's shoes!
We had to get out the door fast Friday morning because we had a 10.5 hour drive to Kansas and stops to make along the way.
Morning goodbyes!
{One, Three, Grandpa, Four, Two, Five}
Five is such a ham!
I'm not tired, you're tired! Four is asleep in this picture, just can't see her behind Three from this camera angle.
Tuesday morning, we left Waunakee and drove to Effigy Mounds National Monument in Iowa. EMNM is another Native American mound site, but these are much smaller than the ones in Cahokia, and many are shaping like bears or eagles. According to the peoples' beliefs, bears are the protectors of the earth and eagles of the sky.
Three was fascinated by all of the butterflies we saw over the course of our trip.
Aerial view of the Marching Bears group.
Two wanted a picture with the owls for Nana and our neighbor.
A group of three conical mounds
We chose a two-mile roundtrip hike and got off to a very slow start. Hazelnuts were all over the ground and everyone wanted to fill their pockets and hands with them. We were stopping every few steps to pick up another nut. Finally I told them to pick one nut each, give it to me, and leave all the rest for the squirrels. We moved faster after that.
{Four, Five, One}
Nuts!
{Five, One, Four, Three, Two}
This is a compound mound. It's two conical mounds connected by a linear mound.
{Four, Two, Five, Three, One}
Beautiful wildflowers
This is the first bear we saw. It's really not much of a mound, but the shape can be seen in the distinction between the grasses. Many of these mounds are burial sites, so the whole area is considered sacred by living descendants.
Then there was a trail of about 17 conical mounds leading out to an overlook at the Mississippi River.
Hello, Frog!
"Mom, it looks like the chocolate river in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!"
{Four, One, Three, Two, Five}
Crossing back into Wisconsin to get lunch, only to cross back into Iowa to drive up towards Minnesota.
A small town used space by the high school football field for solar panels!
The drive north was very scenic. My sister-in-law Tabitha let me borrow her book titled The Most Scenic Drives in America. I drove north on 76, continued on X52 to Lansing, then crossed the bridge into Wisconsin and took 35 up to Lacrosse where I crossed the river again into Minnesota and connected with I-90. Those roads just hugged the Mississippi River! In my opinion, the Iowa side was prettier.
Green swamps
Nearing Rochester, Minnesota, we were given a heads-up about torrential rains blowing east. I'm so glad it stayed north of the highway and we didn't have to drive through that!
