We stopped in Minnesota to visit with Dana’s Aunt Jane, Uncle Steve and his cousin Gina. 

They had never seen Anna Grace before.  AG loved meeting them and she seemed to think Gina was a lot of fun.

S

She also liked sitting in Aunt Jane’s lap. 

We had a great visit and hope we can convince them to come visit us in Florida. 

The next day we loaded up the car again and headed to Wisconsin.  We stopped to take a boat ride to see the Wisconsin Dells.  I took photos but they didn’t turn out.  Suffice to say… it was fun but AG was a wild woman on the boat.  And when she got off the boat?  She fell and skinned both her knees!

When we left Wisconsin we had the 3 hour Chicago nightmare.  I have always been of the opinion that it is a waste of time to take the by pass when approaching a large city.  It is much quicker to just drive through Atlanta than it is to try to go around.  This explains why I ignored the bypasses and drove straight through Chicago.  At one point it took us 1 hour to travel 2  miles. By the time we got to the other side I was in serious need of a nerve pill.

We rushed through Indiana and Ohio.  Our next tourist stop was in southern Kentucky.  We were going to see Cumberland Falls and Cumberland Gap.  Because of holiday traffic (this was the weekend of Labor Day)  traffic was crazy and we only had time to see one of them.

We chose Cumberland Falls.

The Cumberland River

Cumberland Falls.

From here we headed to my mother’s house in North Carolina.  We stayed there for the weekend and early the following week, Dana and his Dad arrived.  They had left Washington one week after we had and drove as quickly as they could.  We rested for a few days, visited with my grandparents and then headed to Florida.