Our Tour de Midwest, A Soliloquy in 3 Parts; P3

From Rochester, accompanied by Dale's mom we drove out to Minneapolis to stay with Dale's Aunt Bugs, Uncle Eric, and cousin Betsy (but sans cousin Max, unfortunately :( ) in Plymouth. We had so much amazing food (can you say fried walleye sandwiches on the lakefront on a gorgeous sunny day?) & awesome company...among didgeridoos, Westies, al fresco capreses, Jucy Lucys, and long talks about anything in particular, we had an amazing time and were able to finally recharge our batteries...thank you times a million, Plymouth Peterschmidts!

Although Dale was very sad to see her mom go home, the following day we made it through several tornado warnings over to Milwaukee to stay with Jimmy's cousin Chloe, who is attending a very prestigious art school in the city. We stayed in her very cool house which was relatively close to the downtown area, and had our first real experiences with cheese curds & Milwaukee beer (a combination that is so good you will cry). Chloe was the awesomest tour guide ever, and we had two days of art museums, weird anime pizza places named after sexual organs, jazz in the park at sunset, swimming, scary movies, furniture moving, a beautiful downtown and creepy dolls...thank you so much, Chloe...we'll see you in a week!

Currently in the AMAZING city of Chicago, with updates to come!

Our Tour de Midwest, A Soliloquy in 3 Parts; P2

From steamy St. Louis, we made it up to Fort Madison, IA to stay with Dale's supermodel 2nd cousins Charlie & Becky Rump, along with their supermodel daughter, Katherine. During our stay, we had a beer at Faeth's (the bar/convenient store/gun & sporting goods store/liquor store in downtown Fort Madison...God Bless America :) ), made a stop at the Fort Diner for some lunch, went out to Farmington to visit with Carolyn & Steve Kokjohn  (Charlie's sister who with her husband runs a gorgeous camp and horse property for those of the equestrian mindset), saw the old house on the hill, and gave the Mississippi a what-for. Behind the 1950's "Glass Magic" fiberglass boat that Charlie keeps in perfect condition, Jimmy got up on water skis for the very first time just as the sun was dropping behind the bank on our last evening...we were sad to go the next day, but say thank you a million times over to the Rumps for showing us a perfect time.

From Fort Madison, we had an extra day before we had to make it up to the Twin Cities to Dale's family, so we made a little pit stop in the tiny town on New Auburn, Wisconsin to stay at the "lake cabin" of our good friend Kelly Buntman's family. That is in quotations because I'm not sure if thats quite the correct title for a castle sitting upon a pristine lake full of fish and fun motor-powered water fun...in any case, the Buntmans were more than gracious and awesome to host us for a night & we had an amazing day with them, as you can see:

Sad to say goodbye, we made our way back west to the Twin Cities, where there is a very large population of Dale's extended family...also, Dale's mom flew out to meet us for this section of the trip, which was the best thing ever :) We had an awesome couple of days staying with Dale's Uncle Kurt, watching some IT Crowd and scary movies, eating some pickled green tomatoes, drinking some wine & whiskey, and exploring St. Paul :) From there, we made the trek over to Rochester for the Sunday family dinner, where there was a large conglomeration of Peterschmidts and Rumps all together for Kurt Rump's & Craig Peterschmidt's (more of Dale's second cousins) birthdays, as well as a surprise kitchen shower for Kurt Peterschmidt to celebrate his new move! We had way too much of Jan Rump's amazing cooking, played some Frisbee, and loved every second of it...what an awesome day :)