On September 12, we headed north from home, driving our camper and pulling our Honda CRV, headed to visit our youngest daughter, son-in-law and grandkids. We had originally planned on a full month away from home, visiting family and doing a some exploring in Wisconsin. However, the trip was scaled back a bit after I was given the opportunity for some more hours at work revising training material.
Unfortunately a large portion of the quickest route – 12.5 hours driving time according to Google Maps – takes us through Illinois. Not that I have anything against Illinois, but it’s certainly not an interesting drive.
We decided this time to try to miss Illinois for the most part and take more than our normal two days for the trip in both directions.
The accompanying map shows our routes from the point where we crossed over into Missouri from Arkansas, about 12.5 miles south of Branson. 
The red line is our route on the way to Wisconsin, the blue line, our route home. The darker lines are where the routes were the same, going and coming.
Our first campsite was at Harry Truman Lake at a Corps of Engineers campground. On a Wednesday in the middle of September, it wasn’t very crowded – in fact, there were very few other campers. Our second night was a commercial campground east of Des Moines, Iowa.
We made it to Wisconsin on our third day, staying at a campground near our daughter’s home – there’s no place to park the camper at their house.
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Dane County Farmer’s Market in Madison;
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Our grandson, Utah, waiting his turn for karate sparring competition;
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Our granddaughter, Ciera, in her room;
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Peddler Troll carving in Mt. Horeb.
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Norway Building, modeled after a twelfth century Norwegian church, built in Norway and transported to America for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago
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Lake Michigan at Sheboygan
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USS Cobia, WWII submarine at the Manitowoc Mariner’s Museum;
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My grandson and me at Olbrich Botanical Gardens, Madison.
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Ciera reading;
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Jessica and Ciera;
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Geese in flight – almost time to head south.
On our trip home, we took 5 days; stayed at three campgrounds and crossed the Mississippi River 9 times, but several of those were in the Davenport, Iowa area.
Photos are all by Karen – I haven’t got around to working through mine, yet.
