Anne Boleyn died in Wisconsin

At about this point in our drive through Wisconsin, Anne Boleyn had about three hours to live. We enjoyed the view along the scenic Great River Road, which curves and weaves along the Mississippi from LaCrosse, WI and into Minnesota while listening to the tragic tale (on CD) of a rather witchy queen doomed to have her head chopped off. It was fun. And pretty. (The view, not the head chopping.)

Our trek up the GRR (short of Great River Road, of course) started in LaCrosse, WI, home of the world's largest six pack. Here it is. If you look at the bottom of the middle can, you'll see Marcie leaning up against a sign describing the sight.

Don't worry, moms, we only drank one of the beer from this six pack. But one beer holds 114,700 gallons, so you do the math. This, combined with the cute restaurants, music shops and bars, was enough to make Amanda declare that she is moving to LaCrosse.

Then we continued our merry way up the GRR, to Lock and Dam No. 4. Home of the "Best BBQ by a Dam Site." Thank goodness for that. All the BBQ we've had by Dam sites in our lifetimes have sucked. This is our creative attempt to catch the roadsigns and the Pabst Blue Ribbon sign dangling above one of the billions of bars (a slight exaggeration, but only slight) in Wisconsin. We meant to count the PBR signs, but ran out of fingers and then ran out of toes and then just decided to drop the counting because there were just too many bars with PBR signs.

This is Pepin. 878 people live there and there are about 2.5 streets. Clearly the roadsigns to EVERY establishment in town is necessary.

Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of Little House in the Big Woods, was born in Pepin. They celebrate her birth every year in September with a festival aptly named "Laura Ingalls Wilder Days." They also claimed to have a pickle factory, which Marcie and Amanda hooped and hollered for about four seconds until they realized it was merely a bar. Can you imagine the photos that would have come out of a pickle factory visit?!

The drive up Hwy 35, or the GRR, was pretty. The Mississippi followed along the road to the west and the sun hit it beautifully, making the water look like silver.

Huge bluffs soared into the blue sky along the east side of the road -- a very cool contradiction to the more level lands and water across the street. Here Amanda documents the experience on film so ya'll know were aren't making this stuff up. (Car's still doing OK, too. Like the river, it glistens silver in the sun.)

Now we are in Minnesota! (It's the first time since Tennessee we've remembered/had the camera ready/weren't on a bridge when we came into a new state.)

And to rectify that, we did a U-turn on the highway to get the "Welcome to Wisconsin" sign. But it mocked up by saying "Welcome to Prescott," which we clearly didn't go through first because it neighbors Minnesota.

P.S. So far we have liked Wisconsin the best. Trolls, mustard, pretty things to look at, cheese, PBR.