Door County

Door County Wisconsin is known as the “Cape Cod of the Midwest.” Tourists come there from the Twin Cities, Milwaukee, and Chicago to enjoy the cool summers. It is mostly agricultural with cherries being the main crop and a big pitch to tourists.
                        
We camped at Potawatomi State Park across the channel from Sturgeon Bay.
      
We spent a day in nearby Sturgeon Bay where we cruised out the channel into Lake Michigan on an old City of Chicago fire boat.
      
Later in the day we road our bikes around Sturgeon Bay noting the fish sculptures by local artists.
             
             
Later we camped at Bailey’s Harbor on the east side of the peninsula. One day we rode over to Peninsula State Park on the west side where we had one of the most enjoyable bike rides of the trip. We rode the Sunset Bike Trail and looped back via the beach. The trail was hard packed fine gravel that passed through marsh, cedar and maple forests, and cliff communities for a ride of about 15 miles. There were many fun curves and dips.
      
             
      
             

Green Bay

 

Leaving Minneapolis, we headed east through Wisconsin to Green Bay. We stayed at an Indian Casino that had electric and water hookups. The receipt for our site said to come into the casino in case of dangerous weather. We came under a tornado warning, so we went to the casino. The weather became more and more threatening and while outside we could hear a tornado warning siren in the distance. A big blow came and we went inside and got in the bathrooms (safer in a small space than in the big open area of the casino). As soon as we did an alarm sounded in the building and a recorded message from the Casino announced that there was a dangerous situation in the building and to evacuate the building. OH NO, we’re not evacuating the building during a tornado. The crisis passed and we went back to the coach.

We stopped in Green Bay to visit the National Railroad Museum. Again, thank you for your tolerance, Irene. The museum houses one of the rare Union Pacific “Big Boy’s.” Twenty five of these giant locomotive were built between 1941 and 1944 of which only eight remain in various railroad museums. These locomotives are so long that the chassis had to be articulated to round curves. They were used by the UP in the Wyoming Division to haul long freights over the Wasatch mountain range.

       

      

George was intrigued to see a GG-1 electric locomotive that he used to ride behind as a boy on trips to the northeast between Washington DC and New York on the Pennsylvania Railroad’s electrified line.

                                  

He was also nostalgic seeing a sleeping car from the original Empire Builder passenger train of the Great Northern Railway that ran between Chicago and Seattle.

       

Minneapolis/St.Paul

 

Minneapolis grew up around St. Anthony Falls, the highest falls on the Mississippi River.

    

We learned that originally Minneapolis was all about flour mills. Wheat from the nearby Dakotas was shipped in by railroad and milled into flour at Minneapolis. The two largest milling companies were General Mills and Pillsbury Mills, but they merged under General Mills. We visited Mill City Museum and learned all about flour milling. We got a good view of the city and the Stone Arch Bridge from the upper floor of the museum.

     

                          

We were captivated by the Stone Arch Bridge and made it our current theme picture for our blog. It is a National Historic Engineering Landmark, and was built by the Great Northern Railway in 1883. It was abandoned by the railroad in 1965, but was fortunately incorporated into Minneapolis’s Heritage Trail system. It is now enjoyed by walkers and bikers like us.

       

     

Minneapolis has been ranked as one of the best biking cities in the country by Bike Score, the #2 biking city by Bicycling Magazine, and the #4 bicycling city in the nation by the US Census Bureau. Not only are there trails all over town along the rivers, but far out into the suburbs as well. One day we rode a loop on both sides of the river.

                

              

                

              

George needed to see the grand former Milwaukee Road station downtown, so we biked over there.

       

 

On another day we rode Minneapolis’s excellent light rail system from the Mall of America that we’ve heard so much about to downtown. It is huge and has an indoor amusement park.

        

      

We visited nearby St.Paul. Our first stop was the Amtrak station to see the privately owned Hiawatha passenger train domed end car formerly in service on the Milwaukee Road between Chicago and Minneapolis. Thank you for your tolerance, Irene

               

             

From there we were captivated with the beauty and architecture of St. Anthony Cathedral.

      

And of course we needed to see the nearby mansion of James Hill, founder of the Great Northern Railway.

        

After that, a refreshing ride along the Mississippi in St. Paul was in order.

        

        

On another day we returned to St. Paul to the art deco city hall to see the famous 60 ton, 38 ft. tall white Onyx “God of Peace.” It was built just before the great depression, and when prices fell it came in under budget while the quality of materials and ornamentation were better than budgeted.

                               

       

      

                                                        Ornate elevator doors

                             

The Great River Road

At this point we became so busy seeing and doing that we didn’t have time to keep up the blog. The Great River Road National Scenic Byway follows the Mississippi river for 3,000 miles through ten states, but we elected to join at Prairie Du Chien where we stayed for a few days. This picture was taken atop the bluff at Wyalusing State Park at the confluence of the Mississippi and Wisconsin rivers. We would see several such parks along the Mississippi that are built atop bluffs along the river.

     

     

As you may judge from the name, Prairie Du Chien originated as a French community. We learned that the French grew wheat here and shipped it up river and out the St. Lawrence seaway to France until a railroad was built to Milwaukee, thus creating a shorter route through Lake Michigan. In this photo you see the grand passenger station of that era

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Heading upriver, we enjoyed seeing the Corp of Engineer locks. Here a fuel barge enters lock #8. Our next stay was at Perrot State Park near Trempealeau. The big draw of this park in addition to its natural beauty on the Mississippi river was the fact that the Great River State Trail runs through it. Though the trail was not paved it was very hard making for a good ride.

     

     

One day we rode the trail in to Trempealeau and had lunch at Mrs.Sippi’s café. After all, we’re on the Mississippi river.

     

                                       

          

          

While at Perrot S.P. we drove back to La Crosse to visit a high overlook over the city. We visited Riverside International Friendship Gardens and the Riverside Museum which had a lot of river related exhibits. Finally we rode a trail north of town as well as the La Crosse river walk.

        

        

           

Heading north from Perrot State Park we stopped in Winona, MN on the west side of the Mississippi. We parked alongside a large lake and biked around the lake. We also biked towards town to the Amtrak station. George had already been enjoying seeing the railroads on both sides of the river with CSX on the east side and Canadian Pacific on the west side. The Amtrak route from Chicago to Seattle runs on the Canadian Pacific. At the Amtrak station we saw a painting of a famed Milwaukee Road steam train passing through Winona. We also spoke with a friendly Amtrak agent who told us one of the rare domed-end passenger cars of the Milwaukee Road Hiawatha passenger trains was now in private hands and parked at the St. Paul Amtrak station. We put that on our to do list for the Minneapolis area.

       

       

Up river in Wabasha WI we stayed at a motel/RV park. It was quite nice and we were in biking distance of town where we visited the National Eagle Center. This whole area of the Mississippi river is a natural habitat for the Bald Eagle. The center rescues injured eagles and houses them. We heard an interesting presentation about the work of the center given by one of the volunteers.  We later crossed the Mississippi into Wisconsin and drove south, stopping at another lock with the railroad running beside it.

       

       

       

No rain today

We are shocked to hear of the terrible rain and damage back in Georgia. We had a lot of rain yesterday in Tennessee, but no rain today although overcast. We decided to go beyond your planned stop today so as to have a shorter drive tomorrow when we will leave the interstate and travel on smaller roads to Prairie Du Chien.

We have finally left behind the heat and humidity of the southeast. Low 60's tonight and 55 tomorrow night on the great river.

On the Banks of the Ohio

We left home Monday, went northwest into Alabama, crossed the Appalachian spine, and descended into Fort Payne, Alabama. We’re headed for the Great River Road in the MN/WI area and more.We left late in the day and stayed at a nice overnight park in Fort Payne. On Tuesday morning we were set to head north on I-59 to I-24 and our destination of Paducah, KY. Irene wanted to see the National Quilt Museum. Our coach has been performing beautifully for quite a long time which made us nervous. Sure enough when we started up Mont Eagle we had a drastic power loss and topped the mountain doing 25 mph. We figured the worse –the turbo probably failed. First we tried changing out the fuel filters at a TA truck stop just south of Nashville but that did not help. We went to Cummins engine in Nashville but they couldn’t look at the problem until the next day and we could not overnight in their lot. George then recalled a Country Coach owner we had met at Florida Grande RV resort several years back and remembered that he had a truck repair business in Nashville. Bob Link owner of Link Automotive was very hospitable to us and promised to look at the problem the next day even though he had one diesel mechanic out. He also offered us a 30A hookup for the night which sealed the deal. The next morning the mechanic spotted the problem even before we got in the shop: a broken charge air pipe clamp. We couldn’t be luckier to have such a simple fix. Luck was with us except that we were struck with the second episode of RV’er’s woe that night at the shop when George turned on the diesel HydroHot. Instead of lighting it ejected raw diesel fuel from the exhaust. Bob called a certified HH mobile service tech for us but he was not available soon enough. We needed to get back on the road. We figure since we’ll have hookups on this trip we will not need it and can repair it ourselves when we get home. We took one day out of our itinerary, rebooked the affected reservations, and continued on to our original destination of Paducah, KY. George bummed around town on foot while Irene visited the National Quilt Museum which was excellent.                                      Paducah is a pretty little tourist town with nineteenth century buildings and architecture. The Illinois Central Railroad once had a major repair shop here, but it closed in 1950. Also in the 1950's the government built a nuclear processing facility that doubled the size of Paducah.          George spent most of the time sitting on a bench under a shade tree on the bank of the Ohio river enjoying the cool breeze off the river and gazing at the occasional barge tug.          Our destination tomorrow is the Peoria, IL area after which we will enter the Great River Road area.