Weekend Road Trip

As I posted last week, my aunt, mom, sister, & I took a road trip last Friday around SE Minnesota & SW Wisconsin. It ended up being so much fun & we found a bunch of cute little towns along the way!

Our first stop was Winona, MN. My sister & brother go to school here, so it's no place new, but we went up to a look-out called Garvin Heights. You can see all of Winona from up there.

 From there, we crossed over into Wisconsin & drove up to Nelson, WI. They have an awesome little creamery in town, so we stopped for brunch & to refuel on coffee.

 The yummiest blueberry lemon poppyseed scone

Continuing on our trip, we headed through Alma, WI. The houses in this town were basically built right into the bluffs. From the road by the lake, they look like they're built right on top of each other because the streets are so steep to drive up to the second "level" of the town. If you kept going all the way up the bluff, there was a cute little park & a huge overlook/death trap drop-off.

 Dirty shoe!

It was supposed to be less humid on Friday. So not the case. We all got a nice tan from the hot rays!

 Kim & Hannah climbed down part of the rock to a landing. I much preferred solid ground.

 No big deal, just pretending to die.

The next city was my absolute favorite & I highly recommend it for a day trip if you live around the Twin Cities, SE Minnesota or in Wisconsin: Stockholm, WI. A little Swedish town with a population of 66, but with tons of cute locally owned shops, restaurants and little ice cream/coffee places.

 A little shaded cafe area. I noticed some of the wait staff dressed in traditional Swedish dress.

 My favorite part: All over the village they have community bikes, little community book shelves, and, in a lot of the stores, community umbrellas to share. You just take one if you need and return to any store! The sign below says: "Stockholm Blue Bike Project. Free community bikes. Enjoy a bike trip in our village or into our park. Please return to the bike racks when done."

We then drove up to the Prescott, WI area & crossed back into Minnesota, drove down to Red Wing, MN for lunch. Highly recommend The Brickside. Very good food! Unfortunately, there really weren't any cute shops downtown. It was all old thrift store type things. We also went to see the Villa Maria in Frontenac, MN and drove around some of the old Victorian lake houses in back of the property. Very pretty place to drive!

We headed down to Lake City, MN.

Some bad-ass bikers graciously took our picture after they saw us struggling to use the camera timer on the hood of the car....

And finished by driving down to Wabasha, MN for some ice cream for dinner! I also got a "Hot Rod" pretzel. It has chocolate, caramel, sea salt, cayenne pepper, &, I think, chili powder. I haven't tried it yet, but it looks delish!

All in all, it was a great Friday trip! 200+ miles driven & fun little cities found!

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