My Mother In Law Calls Me Domesticated...

Day Three: Backward Day of the Great Adventure

We started the day with cleaning the car which was filthy, like I mentioned.

This was from the windshield!

Yisrael polishing the bumper

Have you ever gone 400 miles in the wrong direction and not even realized it?

Well this is what made us realize that we had been going west instead of east for 400 miles: THE ROAD ENDED!


THE END OF THE ROAD! haha

When we left the hotel Yisrael had out Madison, MN into the gps instead of Madison, Wisconsin! Whoops!! And we were having so much fun exploring and enjoying the ride that we didn’t notice until the road literally ended. We got back on track and saw a lot of MN countryside! Along with Windmills!

So much corn!

Beautiful skies!

Travel photography class in action!

Cool water tower from a town called Cosmos!

kisses for the Missus!

Lunch on the road Grimes style!

We even found the Walnut Grove! Another piece of my childhood! We went to Laura Ingalls Wilders dugout home and I walked in Plum Creek. I was in heaven!! I told Yisrael he could just leave me there and I would live there forever in the prairie. Many days when I was little we would play Little house with the wagon outside.

The dugout!

Prairie lands!

Plum Creek!

Yisrael in front of Plum Creek!

The roads were so horrible it was ridiculous! They said it was because of the snow every winter. They call summer - construction season. Stupid bad roads!

THE ROADS WERE SO HORRIBLE!!

We then drive through the night through Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois. We arrived an hour outside of Chicago around 4am and found a crappy little hotel in a town called Belvediere.

As always, blogging a few days late! Lol I am still going to blog by days so it will be separated! SO here goes:

Day Two: Car Day of the Great Adventure

This day started with continental breakfast at the hotel. Then we got dressed and waited for Tron (that is the guy selling us the car’s nickname, weird I know.) He arrived and we all climbed into the car and rest drove it to the bank to buy it and then to Tron’s house to drop him off. The car was in worse condition than Yis had thought. Tron has owned it about a year and treated it like crap. Everything wrong with it is pretty much from not servicing a car properly so Yis should not have problem fixing them. He was frustrated with the guy for not being honest with us when he knew were flying 2000 miles to get the car! But anyway we bought it and talked about it and decided it was the car he has always wanted and he can truly make it his own. This is a forever car for the Grimes. It’s a car for Yisrael’s to drive and for his little collection! Haha

Here are some pictures of the car:

After some frustrating times getting around the city (so confusing! No signs at all!) We looked for a car wash but couldn’t find one that was under $30!!!!! That’s another thing, the car was completely dirty when we got it. The guy had not even tried to clean it! Craziness. We went to wamart for a cooler and sandwich stuff. We then made sandwiches in the parking lot because that is how the Grimes roll! Then we drove around some more and we finally found Ikea and the Mall of America.

We had never been to Ikea and it was wonderful! I love all of the designs, but the store was so huge and you had to go through the entire store before you could leave.

Travel Tip: I suggest not bringing your children! It’s so long!

Mall of America was awesome! Every time you went up another level you were surprised that was yet another level above that! It had 4 levels in all. With a amusement park in the center of it all! It has 3 roller coasters and tons of rides for kids of all ages. We did not ride anything though!

We did go to the American Girl store, which was like I was walking into my childhood! I was disappointed to see that Kirsten, my favorite, was archived! Yisrael was freaked out by all of the dolls, but he dealt with it while got my fill of my childhood loves! Haha I also had to go to the Dollar Tree in the Mall of America. I love that place!!

We had Panda Express for dinner at the Mall which we had never had! Yummy!

Then we closed the mall down and headed back to the hotel!

(After we got back to the hotel we found that someone had pulled into the parking garage shortly after us in a Uhual and part of the parking garage had collapsed on the vehicle! Just missed it!)