Trekking across our great country!

Today is the 4th of July, and we will celebrate our country's birthday by driving across it. We will touch on or drive through 5 states: Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and tomorrow-- Minnesota! We're on our way to Birch Villa Resort again, in Cass Lake, MN, and this is the blog journaling our travels. This is our 4th year going to Cass Lake, and our 3rd year at Birch Villa. Everything went smoothly this year as we prepared to leave, and we were able to set out on Friday morning as planned, by about 10:50 a.m. We left our new dog, Jolie Belle, home with our house/pet sitter, Lillie L. She will be in good hands.

After stopping to drop off Jared's car in Lombard at Beth & Bill's house (he's coming home early with them), we had lunch at Culver's. We stopped for gas in Wisconsin Dells and paid $4.03/gallon. We arrived in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, by about 6:30 (WI time). This year we are staying at the Best Western Trail Lodge & Suites. We loved our huge room! The kids hit the pool while we waited for some pizza to arrive for supper. We found Jeff & Jim's pizza to be quite good. After supper we were all quite tired and even though we had planned on going to see fireworks, we settled for watching them out of our hotel window.