from saint joseph, michigan to austin, minnesota

on day three we crossed our first time zone, the mighty mississippi and 4 state lines.

in the morning we got up to see the girls off to school, and tom and jule off to work. after that we showered, loaded up the car, walked the dog, and got back on the freeway. we decided to try and make it to madison, wisconsin for lunch. we got turned around a couple times going through chicago, but we made it to madison around 2 or so and stopped at the marigold kitchen where we enjoyed grilled ham and cheese sandwiches, tomato soup and then on our way out: espresso's to go. when we got back to our car we discovered we had gotten a parking ticket 2 minutes before we walked up. bugger!

when we crossed the border from wisconsin to minnesota i played an hour or so of prince to commemorate the occasion of rolling over the soil of the state where his royal purpleness was born. we were making good time so we decided to press on past dakota minnesota which was our projected destination and stop instead in austin, minnesota, home of hormel and more importantly: SPAM!! the odor is enough to turn your stomach.

we were about 7 miles from austin on the freeway when the phone rang and it was our friend/realtor in seattle, whose name just happens to be austin! we were thinking that it was so funny that we were stopping austin, and we were planning on sending him an email when we got there to tell him where we were, but he called us first! freaky. his ears must have been burning.

by the time we made it to austin i was totally wiped out, it was a long 475 mile haul. we ventured out into "downtown" austin for dinner. pickins were pretty slim, we ended up at a bbq joint which was pretty decent. back at our holiday inn home for the night we vegged and and i was too tired to even attempt to formulate a blog post, so from now own i think we will lag a day so that i can write them the day after for maximum reflection.

i wish i could have taken a photo of every single beautiful, new, old, falling down, faded, red, white, yellow, weathered, barn that we drove by in wisconsin and minnesota, but we would have to pull over about every 15 minutes to do that, and when we are road tripping i think we both get bitten by the go go GO bug, don't stop... why would we ever stop? we must GO!

we are going to slow down for the scenic loops in the badlands and i think we are going to go ahead and make a detour through yellowstone. at this rate we might end up in seattle a day early, or maybe we will find something interesting to do in montana.

from jak:
we are rolling across the country in a box with wheels fueled by magic dinosaur juice