Luckily, the alarm went off this morning. Otherwise, I would have slept through the time to leave.\u00a0 Sascha finished the job by demanding to go out and look for squirrels.\u00a0 I got moving and took my shower.\u00a0 From there, it was time to finish packing.\u00a0 Rich got moving, too.\u00a0 Wow, even Rick got up.\u00a0 Just in time to put him to work.<\/p>\n
Sascha took one look at suitcases on their way to the car and started dancing.\u00a0 Then the barking started.\u00a0 She never barks!\u00a0 I think she has forgotten all about motion sickness in the car.\u00a0 She just loves to go.\u00a0 Rick had to put her in the house since she wouldn\u2019t shut up.\u00a0 I was afraid she would wake the neighbors.<\/p>\n
We got the car packed.\u00a0 Everything found its place in the back or in the back seat.\u00a0 Only later did I realize we forgot to pack the travel cooler.\u00a0 Or maybe Rich didn\u2019t bring it up so I wouldn\u2019t try to shove it in.\u00a0 The new Subaru just doesn\u2019t seem to have the same room as the Honda CRV.\u00a0 I miss my CRV.<\/p>\n
I gave Rick a hug and a kiss.\u00a0 I tried to give Sascha a hug, but she was too excited and barking to get near.\u00a0 I managed to get a pet or two in though.\u00a0 We got into the car and headed out for the great Western states.<\/p>\n
First stop was for breakfast.\u00a0 We got up to Richmond and stopped at the American Caf\u00e9.\u00a0 I love this little place.\u00a0 Food is always good.\u00a0 We got coffee and Rich took the wheel for the first leg.\u00a0 This gives me a good few hours to work on the right arm out of the window.\u00a0 Once the temp gets too warm, I have to roll up the window and give in to the air.<\/p>\n
For those who aren\u2019t aware of it, we have road rules for the car when we take trips.\u00a0 Over the years, we have devised a set of rules to create peace and harmony between the passengers.<\/p>\n
Rules are:<\/p>\n
We only ran into traffic just outside of Janesville, WI.\u00a0 There appeared to be the remnants of a chain reaction accident with about 8 cars involved.\u00a0 The single lane traffic was gawking at the cars and multiple police officers.\u00a0 There was no blood.\u00a0 So why did we have to crawl at 10 miles per hour?<\/p>\n
As we passed through several exits, Rich voiced a puzzle that he saw forming.\u00a0 Is it a requirement that all Wisconsin exits have to have at least one cheese haus?\u00a0 I thought about and watching the next couple of exists.\u00a0 Apparently, they do.\u00a0 And it is correct to say cheese haus.<\/p>\n
Construction was minimal and didn\u2019t slow us down much.\u00a0 We played with the new EyeSight feature in the car.\u00a0 This is an adaptive cruise control feature that looks for obstructions and controls the speed of the car for you.\u00a0 Rich loved it.\u00a0 I hate, but I like the cruise control.\u00a0 So I guess I\u2019ll live with it.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s how it works.\u00a0 You set the cruise control.\u00a0 You can determine the length of the distance between you and the obstacle in front of you.\u00a0 Rich goes for maximum at 3 bars on the graphic.\u00a0 I got for minimum at 1 bar.\u00a0 When you drive up to an obstacle, the car regulates the speed so that you don\u2019t approach too quickly and keeps you the distance you want from a car or truck.\u00a0 So you come up on a car at 70 MPH and that car is only doing 60 MPH.\u00a0 Your car throttles back your speed to match the car in front of you.\u00a0 Once you go around, it speeds back up to 70 MPH.\u00a0 It won\u2019t let you get closer to the car in front of you based on the distance you set.<\/p>\n
Sounds cool, but if you don\u2019t pay attention, you can find yourself going 60 MPH for a while.\u00a0 You also can\u2019t apply more gas, because your car totally ignores you.\u00a0 It forces you to pass to regain speed.\u00a0 I hate a car that\u2019s smarter than I am.\u00a0 Of course, I can see where this going.\u00a0 A car that drives itself to the location you designated.\u00a0 Can I take a nap until we get there?<\/p>\n
We made it across the great state of Minnesota without incident.\u00a0 Rich had to have his 2:00 coffee.\u00a0 About 2:00, we were in the middle of nowhere.\u00a0 Every exit was blank and the signs indicates that you had to travel 10 miles north or south to find the town.\u00a0 Finally, we saw signs of life pretty close to the interstate.\u00a0 We found the tiny town of St Charles that was close by.\u00a0 We drove through town and found the Coffee Cabin open.\u00a0 It was fairly busy, too.\u00a0 Rich ordered coffee and I took a short break.\u00a0 I came out to find that he had ordered a sandwich also.\u00a0 No harm.\u00a0 I was driving from here on out today.\u00a0 The place was decorated in log furniture and plaques about cowboys and cowgirls.\u00a0 Funny thing was, this place was located on Route 14.\u00a0 This is the same Route 14 that runs just south of us at home and we take to work every day.\u00a0 We need Coffee Cabin on our Route 14.<\/p>\n
Back on the road, we continued to listen to blues music and ride with the windows down.\u00a0 The temp never got over 82.\u00a0 Lucky me.\u00a0 Now I was working on the left arm.\u00a0 We\u2019ve been down this stretch of road several times.\u00a0 One of my favorite town names through here is Blue Earth.<\/p>\n
Without anything interesting happening, we made it to our destination for the evening.\u00a0 We stopped in Brandon, South Dakota, which is just short of Sioux Falls.\u00a0 The location was perfect for easy off and on with food available.\u00a0 We got checked in and went down to Tailgater\u2019s for dinner.\u00a0 Rich got the Land and Lake.\u00a0 This was a steak and walleye.\u00a0 Turned out to be so-so.\u00a0 I found that surprising for South Dakota.\u00a0 We\u2019ve had some really good steaks here.\u00a0 Well, on the way back, we\u2019ll have to hit the cowboy bar in Mitchell then for good food.<\/p>\n
So I finished typing up the blog du jour.\u00a0 I\u2019m going to stretch out, relax, and read before it\u2019s time to get some shut eye.\u00a0 Hope tomorrow goes as well as today.<\/p>\n
We are headed for a stop at Rapid City to eat at Firehouse Brewing.\u00a0 This is one great stop that we never miss.\u00a0 Guaranteed good food there.\u00a0 Rich will drive in the morning so he can enjoy a couple of beers.\u00a0 I\u2019ll have beers, too, but they\u2019ll have root at the beginning of the name.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Luckily, the alarm went off this morning. Otherwise, I would have slept through the time to leave.\u00a0 Sascha finished the job by demanding to go out and look for squirrels.\u00a0 I got moving and took my shower.\u00a0 From there, it was time to finish packing.\u00a0 Rich got moving, too.\u00a0 Wow, even Rick got up.\u00a0 Just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,12,13,14,15],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2591"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2591"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2593,"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2591\/revisions\/2593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zurekbrau.com\/blogs\/richsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}