The Grotto Run

 A few weeks earlier the wife and I were back in Galena IL staying at Chestnut Mountain Lodge. It's kind of our place, the place we go to escape home and our three kids. That's not bad to say but everyone needs to run away from time to time. So anyhow I picked a tourist pamphlet and they had a picture of the Grotto and the story behind it. Unfortunately we had no time to head up north to see it but now I had free Sunday..

Just a little breakfast for Jim and I before a three hour ride west to get to roads that aren't straight and that requires a lot of coffee to get there. :)

 The banks of the mighty Mississippi River with Jim

 ME....

 These kids were just hanging out on the boat launch but they were having a good time playing with crayfish. All Jim and I thought about how cool it was seeing kids doing this. My  kids only seem to care about gaming and not getting dirty or sweaty.  

 

The Chestnut Mountain Lodge runs Alpine slides in the summer and is a ski resort in winter. This was the first taste of speed I got when I was a kid here back in 1984ish. Me and my Dad would race all day and one of us would always get burned from the track. Even these days I still push it and get burned.

This was back in 2009 and it feels just like road rash and showering with rash will make you scream. 

 Unfortunately or maybe not Jim and I grabbed bummer sleds and it was super slow and he didn't get the true feeling of how fun it is. 

 Next stop was the Dickyville Grotto in Wisconsin. Grotto info~~~~~~

 Here's Jim moon walking across the Grotto entrance! OK, he's not..

 It reminds me of something that should be around the Day of the Dead down in Mexico. Up close it's just loaded with color.

Looking at the whole place as art is the only reason I came and it was really interesting. Rolling back to my house at 8:30 at  night and 420 mile for the day felt great. We found some great roads that I didn't even knew live in northwest IL. Thats one big thing the GPS can do, You can ad-lib your route and something a lot of anti-GPS bikers will never know what they are missing out on.