Day 2 Minneapolis to Prairie De Chien (330 Miles)

We headed out to pay homage to Prince at Paisley Park which was great, purple everywhere and a tour guide named Marshall who was so clearly so in love with Prince it was quite moving.

With Eoin driving everyone was a little on edge but it all worked out ok despite Mike being the navigator. While Minnesota with all its lakes (over 10,000 they say) was very nice the towns were all boring. Grand Rapids (voted 47th best small town in USA- who votes on this stuff) was very disappointing although Judith in the coffee shop was a star and told us to give the Judy Garland house thing a skip. We were happy to hit the Wisconsin state line and everything was better there. We were on the Mississippi, the towns had saloons and pie was everywhere, Vic was in heaven.

After Eoin forgot to take a picture of the machine gun for sale in  the small town of Savannah all was not lost when we found a rock band in the biker bar next door. The lead singer was all action and energy and someone bought the bar a round.

We stopped at Trempealeau for a late lunch and some beers and then after a slight scare got a nice motel in Prarie de Chien where we were greeted by Kathryn who loved God with all her heart . We met all the locals at various bars around town but the music in The Tavern was the business.  There was the usual fight over who was going to be pretend to be the pilot and who was to be the doctor but we got over that eventually. Becky, aka Gary Busey, in Frazier's Old Faithful Inn, sorted Vic out with Vodka Cranberries and all was good although Pete's was closed so many of us went to bed hungry.

The sleeping arrangements resulted in Mike sharing with Frank and Vic and Eoin together. 'Twas all grand except Frank never did resolve his issues with the Air Conditioning in America and Mike took to the sauce to deal with Frank. He was always going to do that irrespective so really the AC was a red herring.