Day 65 Elmhurst, Illinois - La Crosse, Wisconsin 433km

I woke to the smell of cooking bacon. Yum. We had parked our trailer right outside Todd and Jen’s kitchen. I slept in till 8:20am.  Our plan to leave early the next day evaporated the night before when Todd said the kids wanted to get one last skate in before they left at the rink that he manages.  So after Jen whipped up some really yummy bacon and egg bagel sandwiches for the troops we headed out to the rink.  It was great seeing where Todd worked and having all the kids (and Barry) out on the ice.  What a total treat!  We took a group photo, got treated to hot chocolate and chips and watched the kids skate.  

Finners and Watermans unite!

As above plus parents

I couldn’t help but think back to the times when Todd and Dwain and Jeff and I were kids. Just seeing how Dwain and Todd’s kids skate brought me back to sitting in the stands with Auntie Leslie watching Dwain and Todd skate thirty years ago.  So, we had a great visit but it was time to move on.  Chelsea and the boys had a plane to catch, we had La  Crosse, Wisconsin to get to, and Jen and Todd still had a busy day ahead of them getting ready for back to school!  We said our goodbyes and headed west.

Ryan fell asleep right away.  Oh oh!  Something is wrong.  

You know Ryan is sick when: 

a.) he has an accident in the night

b.) he sleeps in until after 9am

c.) he is not talking and falls asleep in the middle of the day

You know Ryan is going to get sick when:

a.) he is drinking foamy, brown hot tub water in a KOA campsite (I called this 2 days ago when he was swimming in the foamy brown scum and putting the scum on his face and lips)

b.) he is running with the herd neither eating or drinking well 

c.) he is just plum tuckered out from all his activity!

So, we made it to La Crosse only having to stop once for possible barfing.  Of course the handy ice cream bucket brought along for just such an emergency is now filled with 15 pounds of rocks and is buried somewhere in the car. Never mind, we can improvise, a Ziplock bag!  We eventually get to a campsite on the Mississippi River with a fevered and moaning Ryan.  We get him hopped up on Tylenol and now he is sleeping peacefully while I type away.  Barry and Jemma went out for dinner and Barry is going to show her the town and Trane Headquarters.  I will do laundry and eat elbow macaroni with some butter and a peach!

Buzzard Billys, La Crosse, Wisconsin

Jemma and me on a dat at Buzzard Billys

Mississippi River, La Crosse

This is Barry again. Jem and I just got back from Downtown La Crosse. We ate at Buzzard Billys Cajun Restaurant. They have everything from shrimp gumbo to blackened catfish to buckets of crawfish. Jem and I had a couple of starters; the alligator strips (real alligator tail) and mushroom caps, and the blackened trio of catfish, tilapia and chicken. All was quite delicious. The ‘blackened’ spices are tasty but salty. The whole lot was a bit of a taste explosion. After dinner we took a little walk around the old town and the along the shore of the Mississippi. Maybe we will hang around for a while in the morning to try and get that photo in from to Trane HQ? We will also see what kind of night Ryan has.