What a time! We went down to the LaCrosse, Wisconsin area for vacation again and it was amazing. The driftless is such a wonderful place filled with fun hikes, neat amish things, and, reasonably priced lodging and food.
I think this is the third year we’ve skipped the north shore. Far too many people. The costs were disproportionately high compared to what we received. I’m happy we found a new place for our fall trips!
Overall, this year was a lot like last year. Drove to Pikes Peak State Park in Iowa, visited a lot of Amish bakeries, swam a lot, hiked a bit, and, enjoyed the good weather.
Biggest conclusions this year: 1) we actually only like one Amish bakery located in Iowa. Next year I think we’re going to stay nearby, 2) the day of the dead celebration surrounded by farm fields seven miles east of the tiny town of Viola was amazing. How lucky we were to find such a place to have fun. It was surreal.
The Amish items were still fabulous deals. An entire homemade apple pie for $10, 40lbs of honey crisp apples for $18, and so on. We were lucky we were able to find so many wonderful things to purchase!
La Crosse is an interesting town in of itself. The town is only 50,000 or so people but the metro area is 170,000, so, the services, lodging, and, restaurants the town offers is disproportionate to it’s size. We love visiting the La Crosse area!
Until this year, I had not realized one of the reasons why I like the La Crosse area so much – it’s because it’s another place that has the “this was something important at one time” feel like the South East of the USA and other post-industrial areas of the US I’ve visited. I really like visiting these types of areas because these places were once far more important than they are now and they have all the evidence to prove it.
Once again, we were too early for the fall colors and the fall colors occurring weren’t great due to the drought. Instead of turning beautiful shades of yellow and red, the leaves were just crumpling and shriveling up. Oh well, not a huge deal since everything else was so awesome.
Enjoy the photos!