Goodbye To Watertown, Such Sad Parting

We spent our last evening in Watertown with family at my one of my cousins homes.  Her daughter, son-in-law and dad provided us with a Walleye fish fry complete with all the trimmings.  Deep fried with a breaded coating this fish is absolutely great.  Flaky, tender, white fish that isn't fishy and taste just as good as Halibut.  We stuffed ourselves and visited with all of the family members.  Our host went to Jenkins Living Center and brought my 93 year old cousin, her grandmother, to have dinner with the rest of the family.  It was a great time and there were tears in the eyes as we parted for the evening knowing full well that Mia and I were headed back out onto the road first thing Sunday morning.

We got up to a beautiful sunrise over a farmers field that had early morning dew rising up.  A quick breakfast and I hooked up the trailer and we pulled out.  On the way to the freeway we stopped at the local Starbucks for coffee for me and tea for Mia.  We drove onto the ramp to Interstate 29 at 7:48 am.  Our first stop was a rest stop (too much coffee).  As we prepared to use the rest room a convoy of National Guard weekend warriors appeared and parked behind us.  I could not resist the picture.

We moved further down the highway and connected with Interstate 90 and began our journey east towards Minnesota.  I-90 in Minnesota isn't to great for the first 50 miles.  It gets better but it was pretty bumpy in my right lane.  Of course, I was being passed like a dirty shirt.  But I didn't care as we had all day.  Our objective was Hayward, Minnesota and we managed to make it by 2:30 pm.  We are currently resting from the trip 293 mile which had only two rest stops and a stop for lunch. 

Tomorrow we wander into Illinois and I think we'll stop at Davenport.  The next day we should make Crawfordsville, Indiana which is just a couple of miles from where Mia's family came from.  We thought we might spend a couple of days in and around Waveland, Indiana.

Originally, I had thought about making a trip to Dunn Center in North Dakota where my grandmother on my dads side of the family was originally from.  Her parents are buried in the cemetery there but after looking online at information provided regarding the homestead we decided to skip it.  We might see a gravestone but the homestead has long belonged to someone else and it appears that it is part of the oil fracking that has been going on in North Dakota.

There you have it, another day in the books.  I am tired and looking forward to a nice shower and bed later.  The family gave us some Walleye to take with us and we are going to fix it for dinner with a little butter and lemon.

Hope all is well and thanks for stopping by.