I had nature-based ideas for the next phase of our trip but we had a set amount of time to get across the country due to work, closing on our new house, and, most importantly, the well-being of the creatures we were traveling with. Spending in the neighborhood of 10-12 hours in a car can be challenging as a human, and it’s definitely not ideal for cats and dogs. With that in mind, we skipped Madison (which I thoroughly enjoyed on a college road trip) and the Apostle Islands—I’ve bookmarked the latter for a future trip. If you’ve been, please let me know if it’s amazing as it looks!—and headed to fulfill a promise we’d made to Bella before we even left: Eat. Cheese. In. Wisconsin.
The Dairy state is home to over 100 cheese factories that produce 600 varieties of cheese. We weren’t there during any of the 13 annual cheese festivals, but that didn’t stop us from attempting to count ALL the cows (we failed) or eating our fill of cheese (we succeeded) at Marieke Gouda.
After that, we were off to another thrill (this one a surprise) for our little one: Nickelodeon Universe at the Mall of America in Minnesota. It’s worth noting that if you’re road tripping with pets, things require more planning. We'll be diving into tips, tricks, and considerations for pets in next week's post, appropriately titled "How To Road Trip with Pets." Because we had the fur babies with us, we took turns going with Bella. Her favorite coaster was Pepsi Orange Streak followed by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Shell Shock. All in, we spent about a 1/2 day at Nickelodeon Universe, though Bella would have been happy to spend a week.
Minnesota marked the halfway point in our journey. Though I’d driven cross country two times before, I had forgotten that Bloomington would be the last city we saw for quite awhile. That afternoon, we headed away from the known world and deep into the Badlands of South Dakota.
We hope you'll come along on the next leg of our road trip.
Happy journeying!
Hozzászólások