Day Five: Out of Chicagoland and Into Just Land

There hasn't been much to see on today's drive. As soon as we left the Chicago area, all there is is farm land. There are a lot of farms, but not really as many dairy farms as we would've thought in Wisconsin. Most of the farms look to be corn and wheat. We did see some "happy cows" (that's for you mom!) in the middle of nowhere, but that's about it. There were a few cool rock formations along the way, but not much more than that. They do have some fun names though, like Menomonie.
We looked through our "Best Road Trips" book and found a cute little place called the "Norske Nook" with AMAZING pies!! We each got a slice of pie (didn't have anything for lunch in order to save room for them) and still didn't finish all of it. That means we now have dinner too!! Yum!! (Yes, it deserves that many exclamation marks!!) And it was in a cute Norwegian town with all kinds of quilting places too. We also took a small detour that according to the book was supposed to have all kinds of large roadside attractions, but apparently they shrunk or something. We did see a large mouse in front of a "cheesehaus," a beaver or something like that, some whales jumping out of a pool, and a very angry looking bull. We have also seen some great water towers, like the one with the giant pumpkin, the one painted as a rose, and the one in Loves, Wisconsin with a heart on it.
The weather's been great. It has been sunny the whole time so far. Who would've thought that it got this warm up here? It's about 85 today and tomorrow is supposed to be hotter with heat indexes into the 100s. Can't wait to get to the real heat down in the South.
Oh, and Dawn started driving. I finally gave up the wheel to let her experience the open road. She's doing a great job by the way. This afternoon, we crossed over the Mississippi and into Minnesota. OMG! It was so cool!! The scope of our trip is getting to us. A-ma-zing! We did see a sign for a drive-through liquor store. I'm not sure how they can get away with that...
Anyway, we had planned on going to the Minneapolis Sculpture Graden today, but after all of the driving we did, we decided to find a place to spend the night and go tomorrow.

States Visited: Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Wisconsin (7/50)
Provinces Visited: Ontario (1/10)
License Plates Seen: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming (45/50)
Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Quebec (5/10)