What better way to negotiate the fact that you aren’t doing ANYTHING at all interesting for your vacation for the year than to take off for someplace for a day to forget the fact that you aren’t going anywhere truly interesting? So, on Saturday, that’s exactly what we did — we packed up the car, tossed the kid into the carseat, and headed northeast to the promised land of Decorah.

Our pilot, Captain Yolanda. Landa offered to drive there, which is terribly nice considering that at least half of route is exactly what I do every day for work and, contrary to local belief, it is BORING AS HELL.

Keston, as usual, had the best seat in the house, complete with front-view mirror, bottles of sustinence, and toys hanging from the ceiling. Unfortunately for him and us, he did not fall asleep until we were 5 minutes away from our destination. DOH!

Along the way, we stopped at the Charles City wind farm for a photo op. Aren’t they posing nicely?

Once we got to Decorah, we headed to Luther College’s campus, my alma mater, to explore a bit and try to meet up with my college roommate and his family. (Unfortunately for them, his youngest got stung by two bees and they had to take off early.) So, we wandered around for awhile and enjoyed the view.

We then headed to Dunning Springs, a local natural spring with some beautiful scenery.

You’d practically have to TRY to screw up a good photo at this location.

Yolanda and Keston looking happy that they are out, absorbing some good ol’ fashioned nature.

We stopped to pose a bit, too.

Keston was fascinated by the water and probably would have played in it had it not been the typical freezing temperature typical to springs.

Oh, for the want of an DSLR, but I tried my best to capture something interesting.

We then headed up to Phelps Park, a park and scenic overlook across the Oneota Valley and the lower part of Decorah. We stood for awhile, admiring the view, peoplewatching the couples making out in the niches and the artist drawing an incredibly detailed pencil sketch of the river.

We then got asked to take a picture of a couple girls, and they returned the favor for us.

Keston loved playing with the rocks that made up the walls, laid in a herringbone style.

What? I’m just playing!

We then headed downtown to check out some of the shops. We then tried to hit T-bock’s, a very popular local sports bar (where they serve the infamous peanut butter cheeseburger and Erma burger), but it was stuffed full, so we ended up at the 2nd best place, Mabe’s Pizza, where we had a large half-and-half chicken BBQ and Deluxe. It was lovely.

After finishing up with Mabe’s and hitting the Co-Op for some things for Kes (rice ice cream and rice cheese), we hit up the Whippy Dip, the best ice cream stand known to man, and had some sweets before heading home.


Thankfully, Keston fell asleep not 5 minutes after starting to drive and slept all the way home, so that was a big blessing. Yolanda and I spent the rest of the trip talking about religion and philosophy (have I said before that I love the dickens out of this woman?) and we got home without incident. All in all, not a bad day! Now on to the rest of vacation, which involves….WORK! More of that later!