A Beautiful Day: Menomonie,WI

You wouldn’t believe it, but this posting is the first one on my new laptop. Yes, yes, yes…I have managed to download live-writer to the Win 8.1 and it seems to work. But if certain things should look different in this posting, it is because Microsoft has managed to make the new version of live writer totally different from the one I used on WIN XP, and not only different, much much worse to use with certain features totally gone missing. How do they do that – messing up good software with all kind of crap? I had another great traveling day west. Weather was outstanding and once I was past Chicago traffic wasn’t bad. But Chicago….oh my.  Something went wrong along the way and I got myself snagged onto I-90 through the thick of it. And mistake #2 happened when traffic was divided into “Thru traffic” and “Local traffic” I happened to be in the “local” line and couldn’t get over to the right lane. So here I was whisked away into the dark and unexplored inner makings of this nastiest of all cities. However, I was smart enough to pull out again at first opportunity, take the overpass and ran back to where I had come from. Of course, that did take some time and I got more and more ticked off by all the tollbooths. You drive 2 miles and dang…there is yet another tollbooth. When I saw the sign to I-57 MEMPHIS I knew that I had to take it and get the h**** out of the tollbooth mania. My calculation proved right. I had gone several miles south on I-57 when I hit the good old I-80 west. I was really relieved at that point. But hey…I made et another mistake. Instead of just following the I-80 to the intersection with I-39, I took another tollway the I-355 up north. What now followed was one tollbooth after another. It was horrifying.  3 tollbooths before the end I ran out of cash and just followed the main stream through- without even bothering to stop. I swear that highway has been made so slow because of traffic has to stop every few miles. How can a traffic authority possibly be so stupid to create such a nonsens. Things got a whole lot better once I was out of Illinois and into the beautiful landscape of Wisconsin. They have great roads in that state, for sure. I love going through there. I was just 70 miles from Minneapolis and had no intention to stay overnight in that big city melee, so I stopped at Menomonie,WI for a stay in that very nice Motel6 we already had explored when going east in March. The town doesn’t have any local diner, at least I didn’t find any, so I chanced a visit at a new Denny’s for supper. Had myself a great Caesar Salad (oh so healthy…) and a Sundae Ice Cream (not so healthy but really good) The place was reasonably busy and the servers attentive enough to refill my soda. This Denny’s is sure different from the rest of it, less stuffy and more hipp with a mainly young group of patrons coming through the door.   I couldn’t but notice a grossly over-weight young couple sitting not far from me. They could have done better by eating a green salad, but nope…..breaded chicken, onion rings and a huge dessert --- it all disappeared inside their protruding bellies. What a sad sight, indeed! Anyway…that’s all for tonight. Tomorrow I will be going through North Dakota and be kind of near the Canada border, but without crossing it just yet. Hang just in here for some more news from the crazy driver.