Northern Exposure--Day 29

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY BEAUTIFUL BRIDE. Today was Joanne's birthday and also our last day in Wisconsin. We have had a great time in the land of milk and cheese but it is time to move on. We have been camped at the Briarwood Campground in Fairchild, Wisconsin. If you were going to mark on a map where "the middle of nowhere" was you would put the pin in Fairchild, Wisconsin. This is a really small town and the campground is right on the edge of it. They main thing to do around here is to ride the trails on a big four wheel ATV. The area is crawling with ATV trails. A major part of the park is full of trailers that are here for the whole season. During the week, like today, there are three couples at their trailers. Everyone else packed up and went back to their real lives until next weekend. Also, over the weekend we had several RV's show up pulling trailers loaded down with ATV's. Since we don't own an ATV, and have no intention of ever owning one, we enjoyed watching these folks go out all excited and then come back in dragging their tails all covered in mud.

We are actually located about 30 miles southeast of Eau Clair, Wisconsin. (I would have pronounced it Ew Clair but have been informed it is a French word and is to be pronounced Oh Clair.) Just north of Eau Clair is the town of Chippewa Falls. On Sunday we drove over to check these towns out. As it turned out they are just another couple of towns. Nothing really special about them. I did have to admit that Chippewa Falls had a neat little park in the middle of it's downtown. It is a vacant lot between two buildings and they have painted murals of historic highlights of the town. They also had a big outlet shoe store that we had been seeing advertised on local TV. We checked out the shoe store but didn't see any bargains.

Today, as I mentioned, was Joanne's birthday. To celebrate I drove her over to Osseo, at about 15 miles away this is the closet town with any business district. This gave her a chance to go to the laundromat to take care of all the cloths that have piled up over the past three weeks. On our way back we stopped at McDonald's for lunch. Unfortunately, I did not have enough cash on me so she got to buy her own birthday lunch. After returning to the coach for a little rest time, and to replenish my cash supply, I did take her back into Osseo for dinner. We went to Moe's Diner, which is almost world famous, according to their sign. This is a nice 1950's style diner and we had a good meal, served by a young lady wearing a poodle skirt while 1950's music played in the background.

Tomorrow morning we will leave Wisconsin thus ending this portion of our current adventure. We will move on to Minnesota, the land of my dear brides birth. Looking forward to meeting up with RV friends, attending another rally and then moving up to Duluth to visit with some of Joanne's relatives. Again, I want to wish my beautiful bride of almost 20 years a Happy Birthday. It's been a great ride so far and looking for a bunch more to follow. (Here she is at Moe's Diner waiting for our food to be served.)