So on Thursday my sister Lovina and her family Flew into Des Moines and we ate a late lunch at Hoq (minus Shannon who had to go back to work) where my brother is working these days.  It was nice to chat about the things in our lives.

Friday Morning Shannon and I headed up to our Hotel in Cresco, Iowa, via a meandering, avoiding highway route through the middle of the state.  Our first stop was in Grundy Center.  We started to play the "Find Premium Gas" game, and ended up filling up at Family Foods, because nobody else in town had Premium.  Then stopped across the street at Park Place for lunch.  The food was ok, their secret sauce was basically thousand island with dill.  The peach pie was pretty good.  Good Crust, and since they were canned peaches (which made me sad), I also thorized, and am probably right, that the secret to their peach iced tea is the peach syrup that comes in the can.  That's pretty much what it tastes like.

Then we moved on.  Driving down roads, through small towns, and generally enjoying the ride. 

We saw a sign for a historical marker, and then quickly turned on to the side road to see the marker.  We passed a small cemetery, but saw no indication of a historical marker after that, and after a mild detour, we ended up at The Little Brown Church in the Vale.

Near Nashua, it is a little brown church (clearly an accurate name).  It has models of the church (Littlest, little little, and then the actual church which is just little).  It was a nice place and certainly a good stop to take pictures.  A bit more driving and we were in Cresco and checked in.

We went on to the campground where the rest of my family was staying and proceeded to spend time with the family.  

The drive back to the hotel, we went the wrong way, ended up what really seemed like some creepy roads, lost phone signal (no more maps) and stumbled our way back to Cresco on this creepy path not knowing if the road was going to end beyond our headlights and because of the hills, sometimes you just couldn't see anything further.  Eventually data returned to my phone and we got back along gravel roads. 

The next morning we went to go get me some decent coffee (the coffee at our hotel was undrinkable).  I was missing my DTFM, and we stumbled upon the Winneshiek Farmers Market and bought some fresh parsley for the meal I had planned for that evening.  We then took a seat at Java John's and I had an ok latte.  Then we waited for the rest of our family to show up to tour the Vesterheim (their website needs some help).  Then some lunch at Mabe's (website also needs help) and the Whippy Dip (suggestions of Josh and Lindsay).

This is where Shannon and I parted ways with my family.  I was on call and needed to be relatively close to a way to deal with a work issue if they arose.  So instead we decided to go to see the Chapel of St Anthony of Padua near Festina, Iowa.

This is a tiny little church that a mother built for her son on his return from the Russian Campaign of Napoleon.  It has a tiny cemetery and a little park right right by it, which is also right next to a river.  We were joined by a couple riding on a pair of ATVs who hung out at the park.

Nice stained glass, a small altar and 2 rows of benches.  It seems like it'll seat 8 or so.   Then we decided that our time was growing short and we'd need to meet up with the family so we headed back to Decorah, stopped by Toppling Goliath's tasting room and I sampled a few varieties and settled on PsuedoSue Pale Ale and picked up a growler and a chalice to drink it out of.

We headed back to our hotel, dropped off a few things for the day, and headed back to the campground where we (well me) were responsible for dinner.  I recruited people to help me assemble hobo packs.  Of course these were hobo packs as I would make them, so they were: 

• A health dot of oil
• Crooked Gap Green Onion Sausage or Graziano Sausage
• Sliced Potatoes
• Fresh Parsley from the Farmer's Market
• Some Salt, Pepper (or smoked black pepper) and oregano

I sent Issac off to prepare the corn on the cob using the Parmigiano Reggiano and Smoked Black Pepper butter.  Cara prepared a salad (which I never got to taste, cause by the time I was done cooking it was gone).  Emily and Brent help prepare the fires for cooking and we monitored the doneness as we did so.

They turned out pretty good.  I was generally happy with the results. 

More chatting with the siblings relatively late into the night, we head back.  This night, we had another experience, we went the right way but saw a family of racoons (mom and 4 or 5 young), a kitten, a possum and what appeared to be a bobcat (or other small wild cat, but clearly not a domestic cat) lounging in the road.

I did something to make me feel better.  I drank some of the PsuedoSue, listened to podcasts and updated my spreadsheet of money, while Shannon went to bed.  After a bit I ended up in bed sleeping.

Sunday morning, the majority of my family headed off to Church and we met up with Joseph, Lovina, and her husband Eric at Magpie's Coffeehouse for breakfast.  We were first again, but I got to enjoy my first latte, which was made from Kickapoo Coffee.  This made me so happy and I was able to create a connection to home and routine by the mere process of drinking this helped relax me.  A bit later they showed up (we thought it would be Lovina, Eric and their kids, but were surprised by the addition of Joseph and subtraction of the kids).  We chatted, ate and had a good morning.  We figured out where to get potatoes for mashing for Joseph's lunch (brisket).  Lovina, Shannon and I headed down to see the Bily Clocks.

We got there a bit early and drove around to find the spillway or the mill, which apparently had been recently knocked down because it was no longer safe to be up (thanks for the info nice lady on her walk).  So we headed over to St Wenceslaus Church (oldest Czech Catholic in the US) and wandered around, headed inside, saw the old pipe organ that Antonin Dvorak played the time he spent there.  We wandered around the old cemetery, where we found many metal crosses (which we later found were done because there was someone there that worked in that method).  Then when the museum opened up we headed over and went in to tour around.

We listened to their walkthrough on the clocks, which I've gotta say are pretty amazing.  Lovina had quite the look of fascination on her face looking at them.  I really wish we could've taken photographs. 

We then ran back to share lunch (with a quick stop again at Toppling Goliath to pick up chalices for Josh and Nathan) and then back to the campground.

We took, yet another way there, and drove by the Laura Ingalls Wilders Museum and headed into the road where we were stunned by a road closed sign.  We decided to risk it, and headed towards the path where we should go, eventually running into what closed the road.  A bridge...being rebuilt, not exactly the easiest thing to get around.  So we turned around, and drove down a gravel road.  After a  bit of a detour, seeing a bald eagle getting attacked by a little bird (while it was chasing other birds in that flock), almost going off the road because I was watching the eagle, we ended up back on the other side of the bridge and cruising back to the campground.

We had a good lunch (Brisket over Mashed Potatoes) and took some pictures, then after a bit of chatting we headed home. 

This started the "Find Premium Gas" game again, We stopped by Klunders  (decent pie) and then basically chose our route based on where we could fill up my car.  We ended up in Waverly, and then took Highway 20 over to I35 and home.

The road home was long and boring, I really enjoyed the drive on the small highways, this way, my speed kept creeping up.