I got started on the road trip about quarter to one in the afternoon. I’d spent the morning running errands and battening down the hatches around home, figuring that I’d be gone for up to a week.
I took East River Road through the U of M campus, through St. Paul to Shepard Rd., and eventually on to Hwy 61. Very busy road once I hit the highway, complete with construction. This isn’t really what I wanted from the trip, but I figured I’d put up with near interstate conditions in order to get out of town a little more quickly.
I stopped in Hastings an hour into the drive to get some lunch at the Busted Nut. While it wasn’t a chain restaurant, it was kind of a cookie-cutter bar. Plus I was hungry and it was there.
I’m not planning to see much in Hastings. It’s close enough to home that I get down here somewhat often, plus we’ve got a flickr outing planned for Hastings next month. So the basic plan is to get at least to Red Wing before going into tourist mode. I’m hoping the traffic will have thinned a bit by that point, too.
Leaving Hastings, I missed the turn for the Great River Road, staying on 61. No biggie, since I wasn’t really planning on stopping along the river in this stretch anyhow.
I got into Red Wing, and traffic was still pretty thick. The only things I’d really planned on seeing was the Red Wing Shoes building and Red Wing Pottery. I saw the sign for the latter after I’d passed it, and the boot factory doesn’t really seem to encourage tourists, so I completely missed it.
 |
| Mississippi at Frontenac |
In Frontenac, I finally stopped for the first sight-seeing. There was a nice view over the river, and I shot the first of many panoramas I’d end up taking along the river.
 |
| Lake City Marina & Mississippi |
Hitting the road, I stopped again at the Marina in Lake City, since there was a parking lot, a historical marker, and a breakwater that let me walk out into Lake Pepin a bit. Shot another panorama from there.
 |
| Wabasha-Nelson Bridge |
Downriver a little further, I hit Wabasha. The downtown itself was pretty dead on a Saturday afternoon, but there was a pretty view of the bridge across the river once I walked past the condos or apartments or whatever’s been built there smack dab between downtown and the river. There were also a few kids throwing rocks up in the air near the bridge, so I didn’t stick around too long after getting hit with one.
The next town on the river was Winona. I didn’t really have anything I wanted to see there, and traffic had picked up again, so I just pushed through town.
 |
| World’s Largest Six-Pack |
I hit La Crosse, WI, right at 5pm, and pulled up to City Brewery just as they were closing up the visitor center. Dangit, I’d missed the last tour of the day, but for once there was something on my list that was easy to find, since City Brewery straddles Hwy 61. I walked around and took some photos, thinking about whether I wanted to stay in La Crosse for the night so I could visit the brewery again in the morning, or whether I wanted to push down the river. I double-checked the sign, and they weren’t open on Sundays, so that clinched it.
Leaving LaCrosse I got lost twice on the way out of town. Once was just because I panicked, and the other was because I followed Hwy 61 when I’d meant to get onto WI-35, which is part of the Great River Road.
I stopped a couple times along Wisconsin 35, looking at the river, and taking pictures, but there wasn’t anything too exciting, and I ended up in Prairie du Chien, WI where I got a hotel, and had dinner in a bowling alley with a couple folks who had just been dropped at the same hotel after their truck had broken down. They’re more or less from Wyoming, but have “no fixed address,” and weren’t really on any schedule either, so they weren’t too upset about it, and were pleasant to talk to.
To Day 2.