Day 5: La Crosse, WI to Wall, SD (In Progress...)

Lots of ground to cover today!  We woke up in La Crosse, Wisconsin on the western border of Wisconsin, on the Mississippi.  Our only snafu upon arrival was that our vehicles wouldn't fit in the hotel parking garage, and it was 95 degrees (at 10pm), so there was some finagling and concern until we were able to get a spot to park around the corner.  We also had a very feverish baby girl sound asleep in the back, and a very tired boy who'd tried as hard as he could to stay awake the whole ride, and succeeding, until about 30 minutes from La Crosse.  They both went to sleep quickly, and the tiny one woke up an hour later, the fever having broken, alleluia!

The morning came quickly, but we managed depart exactly as we hoped, at 8am.  (OK, fine, it was 8:01.)  We crossed the mighty Mississippi and right into Minnesota where we enjoyed the rolling farms and occasional collection of wind turbines.


We also collected a cousin Molly along the way who played catch with Danny over (and occasionally on) Mary.

This made the driver happy:
We were working on a deadline, with Betsy's flight to Sioux Falls, South Dakota scheduled to land around 12:30 p.m.  There were storms to worry about, flight delays in Chicago to worry about, and timing of our stops to worry about, but there was no need to worry since it all worked out perfectly.  She only needed to wait for about 10 minutes after picking up her bags.  Perfect!

We had a hungry crew, so we headed over to one of the beautiful parks in Sioux Falls to see the waterfalls and have a picnic.  It was perfect.  Kids ran around, Mary crawled around, parents made lunch and stretched legs and Betsy got her first taste of life on the road.  It was tasty!

After lunch, we had about 4.5 hours to drive to get to our campground in Wall, South Dakota.  There was an enormous and threatening storm on the horizon, but as we seem to be pretty blessed on this ride so far, it passed just to our north.  Now we are passing through some gorgeous hills in central South Dakota, heading for the Badlands.  And praying for dry weather tonight and tomorrow night!