Wednesday June 13th: Marquette, MI to Sioux Falls, SD

In the morning Alex asked if we could "do whatever the GPS says today?"  So we did.  We plugged in our destination and did whatever it told us.  I usually don't do that, I prefer to map out my route ahead of time and just use the GPS  as a back up or to find restaurants, etc along the route.  But we did it and it was fun!  We took a different route down out of the UP than I had planned and ended up on some highways I hadn't driven in years, some very pretty ones.  Saw a ton of deer and we are pretty sure we caught a glimpse of a bear crossing the road far ahead of us on Hwy 70 in Wisconsin in the National Forest area east of Eagle River.

We stopped for our picnic lunch at a park we found on the GPS near Chippewa Falls.  There was a mama blue bird with a nest full of babies chirping away just above our picnic table!  Alex and Maya got out some energy on the playground and we hopped back in the car.

We had started looking right away the day before for different license plates and once we got on the interstate we really started collecting a lot of states which Alex got really excited about.  Between license plates and trying to get semi's to honk their horn it kept them both busy for hours in Minnesota!

Which was a good thing because once you get south and a little west of the twin cities Minnesota is not very interesting.  Alex had been keeping track of all the animals we were seeing.  About a half hour west of Wausau, WI we started seeing predominantly cows.  Lots of cows.  By the time we were half way across Minnesota Alex's animal list ended with: cows

                                                             more cows

                                                              more cows

                                                            more cows

                                                             more cows

                                                             more cows

                                                              more cows

you get the idea!

We stopped for dinner in Blue Earth, MN at a country kitchen because there was a need for a bathroom right then too.  The average customer age in the place was about 75.  Ours was one of two tables that did not include someone wearing overalls.  The other table lacking overalls was also clearly from out of town.

We made it to our motel just on the east side of Sioux Falls around 7:30pm.  The motel had a small water park (a really nice salt water one, no chlorine!) so the kids got in about an hour and a half of swimming/playing, we rinsed everyone off and went to bed!