Barn Sour

We woke up on the western edge of Minnesota, but the boys were determined to make it to Chicago TONIGHT! So, today was just "go, go, go"!

Before leaving Pipestone, we headed back to the monument visitor center so that the boys could get their Jr. Ranger badges (and I could get my picture of the sign!)

Our next stop was the one that my dear husband has been looking forward to the whole trip. He was totally giddy when we figured out that we could squeeze in a visit to the...

Yes, Virginia!  There is a SPAM Museum!

The boys didn't understand why we would ever want to visit this place, that is until they found the station where they could play computer games with the Knights Who Say "Ni"!

Check out spam.com to play the SPAMalot games at home!

SPAM packers at work

Here's how to tell how fresh your SPAM is



We drove a little more than two hours on small highways to reach our final destination before getting to Chicago. Effigy Mounds National Monument is located right along the Mississippi River near Harpers Ferry, IA. This monument preserves mounds (burial and effigy) built by ancient people groups of the Upper Mississippi region.

Even though it's hard to visualize the mounds from ground level, I'll post some pictures anyway.

Burial mounds

The mosquitoes were fierce, so we practically ran up the trail through the woods to see the closest effigy mound.

Little Bear Mound

By the time we finished it was almost 6:00PM, but the boys were still insisting on pushing through. So that meant dinner (A&W, that frosty mug sensation) in the car again. We took US-18 east to Madison, WI, and then picked up I-90E there. True to form, as soon as we crossed the border into Illinois, we hit road construction. 3100+ miles behind us and we get caught in the worst traffic of our 13 days on the road, less than 100 miles from Chicago. It took us almost an hour to crawl from Rockford to Elgin, but everything was wide open on the Northwest Tollway the rest of the way into the city. Yeah! We finally made it to my brother-in-law's place just after 11:00PM. We don't have anything scheduled for the next couple of days -- time to hang out with family and do absolutely nothing. Well, almost nothing -- we still have to eat!