On Sunday 5 August we left Chicago in a rented Buick SUV and travelled to Milwaukee WI along Lake Michigan. We visited the Harley Davidson Museum. Milwaukee has a great lakefront with beaches and tiki bars. The August weather was sunny and hot.
We stayed in Tomah WI for the night and ate Mexican take out in our room. Tomah is the home of cranberries. WI is the cheese state, hence we saw lots of dairy farms and maize growers. We tasted 8 yr matured cheddar and fried cheese curds, the state speciality.
The local hamburger chain in these parts is Culver's and the char grilled beef patty is definitely superior to MacDonald's.
We crossed into Minnasota; the state of lakes. And farmland. We followed The Great River Road along the Mississippi River. We visited Minneapolis and the Mall of America. It was the biggest mall in the US until recently when the Mall of Prussia in Pennsylvania added on a bit. Mall of America does have a huge Nickelodeon theme park in the centre, though.
We spent the night in St Cloud MI and went to Famous Dave's BBQ - the chain hails from Hayward, WI and is popular all over the Midwest. (We had a Famous Dave's on Route 22 in NJ when we lived there but it was a rarity.)
We crossed into North Dakota and headed to Fargo. As it turns out, the movie Fargo (one of Neil's favourites) wasn't actually filmed here but in Brainerd, Minnesota and the more recent TV series was filmed in Canada. You can see the infamous wood chipper from the movie in the public library, though. So not much going on in Fargo really. Highway 94 heads due West accross the state and we stopped in Jamestown too. It's a 1-horse town without a horse so all we could do was eat a Hardee's hamburger and head on out. We followed the Native America Scenic Byway to Mobridge for the night. The only restaurant, a Pizza joint, closes at 8 pm, so this time we had Subway in the room.
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