april 5 continued...

We started our journey home on April 4^th. Last night we stayed in Crawfordsville, Indiana at the Comfort Inn Suites. It seems the hotels are just turning into another hotel into another and we’ve really stopped wondering where we are and just living in the moment.

All of us are sad to be going home. We are enjoying all the traveling, we all wondered what we could do to make a living traveling as we have. Julia continues to be an excellent traveller and has listened to the a Brian Doerksen CD about 30 times over and now I’ve let her use my MP3 player so she has come variety.

Crawfordsville is a great little city and we would live there. We all felt very safe unlike the bigger cities here in the states.

From Crawfordsville we traveled through covered bridge country and saw some gorgeous covered bridges with much history behind them. The back roads were amazing and windy and hilly and green and just plain lovely!

We’ve been through all kinds of weather today and I must say temperature wise I would head straight back to where we came from! We are surely going to be cold when we reach home. We were all freezing cold at +9 and +10 degrees!

It started to rain as we looked at covered bridges in Rockville area. At 11:19am we left covered bridge country and entered Montezuma IN. We are now officially on our way home.

We stopped in Leroy IL at Jay’s diner for something to eat and perhaps get some trucker coffee for Chris to keep him awake! I was very tired and wanted Chris to drive coffee perks him up!

For a while we kept up ahead of the rain and if we would stop it would reach us. We did just seem to always miss the bigger rains that have been threatening. There are a few weather warnings for severe thunderstorms and snow and perhaps even ice. We want to get a head of it if we can.

We didn’t get a head of some weather and are starting to feel somewhat at home as it has started to snow. Then it started to rain, then ice pellets then it suddenly stopped all within 25 miles. the weather is currently just fine and the roads never were bad enough to stop or crawl along even. Chris is driving, I am sitting in the back and Julia is sitting up front snapping picture after picture. I shall post what she took, it should be interesting!

We entered Wisconsin sometime this later afternoon our 8^th state. We are continually getting a little lost and taking the wrong turn as Jacklyn is not a good navigator (I told Chris this a long long time ago) and really not paying attention to the road signs and to which way we should or in our case should not be turning. After a couple wrong turns and then correcting them, we were well on our way to going the right way home!

We have noticed that people in the states of IL, IN, IA, WI, and KY have all started planting their gardens. How lucky they are for it to be warm enough to plant! The soil here looks so nice and fertile (for lack of better word). Because it’s so hilly there is very little flooding except along the Mississippi River in some places.

When passing through a mid size town in Wisconsin called Fennimore, we unexpectedly came across some Old Order Amish folks driving their buggies. Even in Amish country we didn’t see this many buggies all at once! From what I’ve read in Amish books, these looked like the young people going out for their young peoples night called “singings”. It was really neat to see them all going down the road.

The wind has been very strong and the truck has not been doing well on gas at all. If only we could harness the gas inside the cab to help! J

The gas prices have continually gone up the farther north we go. In the southern parts of the states we were in such as in Ohio, the gas prices hovered between 1.86-1.99 a US gallon now in Wisconsin the price is 2.09 a US gallon. It’s still cheaper than in Canada. (at least I still think so, I haven’t kept up with the gas prices this week in Canada)

As we drive we are currently on the border of Wisconsin and Minnesota in a large city called La Crosse. We have been super impressed with the landscape of Wisconsin.

Side note: It has appeared to us that each state has its own style of barn, however in Wisconsin we have noticed that there really isn’t a style (at least in the parts we have been traveling in). The barns are big and of course because we are in “dairyland” there are plenty of dairy farms.

We stopped in a little town called Kickapoo and bought some Wisconsin cheese curds and some Wisconsin Mild cheddar cheese. The curds are good and taste like Bothwell cheese, but don’t tell the local folks that!

We plan to travel as far as we can today to avoid traveling too much tomorrow. As we get nearer home, some of me is excited to get back and some of me is not. I’m sure it will be nice to have my own room back and who knows after sharing in such tight quarters lately I may even banish Chris to his own room! But I’d better not get a head of myself for fear I may have to get my own room tonight because I have typed out how nice it is going to be!

We entered MN at 7:09pm. We are driving right by the Mississippi river and seeing the barges going right along the river. It looks so “historic”! On the one side of the interstate 9yes we have to drive on these blasted things, we have avoided them long enough) is the Mississippi River and the other side is a high wall of rock and trees. It looks mountainous here and on top of some of those high high rocks are houses! Oh what a view those must be!

We stayed in Monteicello MN for the night.

April 5 pictures

Equine Affaire (but not too much so you horsey people wouldn't get too bored)

We left Columbus at 4:23 pm april 4^th after checking out of our hotel a day earlier than we had thought. the Equine Affaire was very good and we saw lots. We didn’t see as many clinics as we had hoped. The times of the clinics and the distance between the buildings was more often easier said than done. We also found out through some reliable sources that some clinicians were just not worth seeing. So we also adjusted our schedule to fit that.

The EA hosted many, many booths of very interesting stuff. Lots of horse tack, lots of horse nutrition and a slew of other interesting things. We walked miles and miles (see Monica, I told you you should have come! J). The first day we went home exhausted but happy, and much more knowledgeable about what to bring. A bottle of water in the fair grounds was 3.00 and a dough pretzel was 4.00. Those were the cheapest and by golly these cheap Mennonites were not going to pay that much! We found out later that the Expo grounds govern how much these concession stands charge and they are not allowed to charge any less. Sad but true.

We met up with Paul & Robyn Dyck who were exhibitors at EA with their product, Equifacesaver. Monty Roberts was there at the EA and endorses their product and does a demonstration with it. It was cool for us to see as we have see their product since the beginning and for someone so famous to endorse it and demo it was really kinda cool. For those of you who are unsure of who Monty Roberts is I will tell you. He is the original Horse Whisperer. The man who listens to horses. He is 74 years old and has trained horses most of his life. He travels all over the world (but lately mainly in Europe) showing his technique known as “join up”. A training technique Chris and I somewhat use in training and working with horses. We learned some new techniques and can’t wait to use them. The techniques he used and how quickly the results were brought tears to my eyes. Sometimes in life we tend to “talk” too much instead of listen.

At EA, we all enjoyed the breed pavilion and very much enjoyed seeing all the different breeds we read about in Julia’s breed books. To put a “face” to some of these breeds was really neat for Julia. She couldn’t get enough of the different horses! She has a truck load of pamphlets and information I’m sure she will go over and over when she gets home.

As the weekend came closer the crowds grew and grew. We were so thankful to have gotten there on Thursday. The crowds on Saturday were bonkers and that helped to make our decision to leave a day earlier. That and the impending weather warnings in the areas we planned to travel.

We watched the Extreme Cowboy Race and really enjoyed seeing it in person as we’ve watched it on Tv only a few times. Little did we know we would be having dinner with the founder and host of The Extreme Cowboy Race, Craig Cameron. Him and his crew are good friends with Paul & Robyn.

Robyn later took us to meet some of her friends (or family on the road as they sometimes call them) they included Rick and Dianna Lamb (Rick is a famous horseman and Dianna is involved in television and has acted in some movies.

We went to dinner with Paul & Robyn and their friends on Friday and had a lot of fun. We felt honoured to be having dinner with these fine folks. We shopped (more like window shopping), visited some more booths and walked and walked. Saturday was just making sure we didn’t miss anything and to say goodbye to Paul & Robyn and the others we had met. Brandon winter fair doesn’t hold a candle to EA, both in quality and price. We are so glad to have went and maybe next year Chris will be a participant in the Extreme Cowboy Race!

Equine affaire Pictures

April 5

Hello! We are alive and well and in Crawfordsville Indiana. we checked out early from Columbus and decided to tour some historic covered bridges here in Indiana. They even have an annual covered bridge festival in a town not far from here!

The Equine Affaire was AMAZING! We met up with our friends there and spent some time with them and went out to dinner with them and some of their friends.

When I have more time I will surely write more and post pictures of the affair and tell you about the famous people we got to rub shoulders with. :0)

We must get off to breakfast and get going if we want to get to a hotel before tonight before dark!

Please pray that the weather holds up for us to get home. It's been so amazing weather wise and we really want that to stay till we get home, There are a few warnings around the area, but so far not exactly where we are traveling.

Till later,
Jacklyn

April 1

Well we are coming home tomorrow. The trip sucks....

April fools!

We are back in Columbus today and staying at our original hotel, the Best Western. It's nice, cheap and will do for us.

Amish country was amazing and indeed my dream came true. I left my heart in Charm OH and would have moved there in a heartbeat! The life is so much slower, nicer, friendly, and beautiful. I'm sure it's not always that nice, but it was wonderful while we were there.

We went to the local cheese factory and bought some authentic Swiss cheese. It was so yummy! I would love to go back for more. We then headed out the back roads again to tour some more Amish countryside and look for some covered bridges. We went through Walnut Creek, Sugar Creek and Berlin Counties. It was so wunderful gut! (as the Amish say)

We really wanted to see a covered bridge so we were told there was one in Mohican Park west of Charm OH. And there was a look out point over a gorge. We said sure what the heck, it was on the way to the Caverns. We drove through more hilly country and ended up at the gorge. It was amazingly deep but not as open as we thought. Nonetheless still really nice. From there, we headed to the covered bridge and took some pictures, but first stopped at a fire tower. We noticed you were able to climb the tower and Julia and Chris practically flew out of the truck when it stopped and began the climb up. Of course, Julia asked if I was coming....Uhhh, yeah, be right there. I thought ahh sure, why not. Thus began the climb up. Long way up and this would only be the beginning of the steps for the day.

We then made our way to the Ohio Caverns, (going through the back roads) which were about an hour and half away. The country side was again very hilly and I was wishing the roller coaster ride would stop already, but Julia and Chris looked forward to every hill that could possibly make their tummies go whirly!

We went through many small towns which were so quaint and so close to the road as you drive by. There is not a lot of wide open spaces here as in Manitoba or Northern Minnesota, here the houses are close to the road, and close to the towns.

We arrived at the Caverns at 3:30pm and started our hour long tour in the caves at 3:45pm. I was a little apprehensive (OK a lot apprehensive) of going down underground with no way to get out quickly and the thoughts didn't end from there. But, I went for it and glad I did! The Caverns were amazing and the pictures don't really do justice. We started off the tour by going down about 30 steps and we ended up being about 30 feet underground. The caves are thousands of years old and the first people to enter them was back in 1800's. Some of the crystal formations are said to be over 200000 years old! Amazing! We were not allowed to touch any formations at all. The signs all over said it was forbidden. We did get to touch one and it felt cool to the touch and smooth. The formations turn black over time when touched so that was why. There was a crystal that was thought to be a good luck formation a long long time ago and it was touched often, it also was very black on top from the touching. Chris asked me later in the day if I felt claustrophobic at all since I was so scared before (notice I went from apprehensive to scared? :)) I said, no not really, we kept busy enough that it didn't feel so bad at all and the best part was I could breath! (that was one of my concerns too) I did kinda feel a little freaked out when he lights when off and it was PITCH black. PITCH black. You have not seen pitch black till you have been in a cave with no lights. (excuse me while I have the chills again) So if that wasn't enough, the tour guide shortly after that told us we were 103 feet underground! WHAT???? Then I had a little freak out internally, we continued on and all was good.

The tour ended shortly after that and the hardest was yet to come, 60 steps. 60 steps doesn't sound too bad until you've walked a mile, and then climbed up them. Can you say out of breath? Our legs were rubbery already from climbing the fire tower. Then when you emerge from the caves after climbing 60 steps, you have to walk 1/2 mile to get back to your vehicle. Goodness, it was our day to exercise that's for sure.

After the Caverns, we made our way back to Columbus (hour away) to find a hotel. We had only booked our hotel for tomorrow check in time 3pm. We wanted to get an early morning start to the Equine Affair so we thought to get a hotel in Columbus. Since we didn't want to pack up and check out from another hotel we thought we'd come to the hotel we are booked for for Thursday. Yesterday there was no room to be had at the hotel, but we thought we'd give it a try anyway. We prayed all the way to the hotel and low and behold a room! Hallelujah! We were so happy!

We went to eat at the hotel restaurant and then Julia went for a swim. we are sitting watching animal planet and heading to bed.

Thanks for all your great comments and emails. I read and smile at them all and feel the love and prayers.

We are looking forward to tomorrow's events.

See ya tomorrow!

Jacklyn

April 1

March 31st

Well, here we are in Amish country. In the heart of it. We are staying at an Inn in Charm OH. It's a beautiful Inn called Guggisberg Swiss Inn. It's a Swiss inn in the heart of Amish country. The parents of the Inn own the local cheese factory and the local Swiss Restaurant that also serves Amish food! So funny.

We toured the real back roads of Amish country today and saw many buggies go by. Buggies and kids on bikes, people walking, it's so cool. The pace is soooo much slower here. You hardly hear traffic and most of the time only hear the hoof beats of the horse on the cement as the Amish tour by. It's amazing the homes of the Amish, barns, large houses, houses with garages that park buggies, small barns which house horses etc. We have really enjoyed the Amish country so far.

After talking to the hotel clerk here at the Inn, we learned that the recession has hit the craft shops hard and some are suffering. She said they are a bit nervous coming into the summer with the recession as it is.

Today was a more relaxed day and we only focused on seeing the Amish country. We actually were done traveling at 6:15pm today. It's nice to just sit back. The roads in this area are very hilly and my stomach was doing flip flops on some of the hills while Julia and Chris were laughing at me. Did I mention that I don't even like roller coasters? The truck is doing very well on the hills and we are still happy with how it handles. We are so happy to have the cover on the truck box to make sure our stuff stays dry (or dryish, there are a few leaks in the cracks of the wood) and to put our stuff. The temperature here hovers around 10-18 degrees C. Amazing! In fact, when it now goes down to 9 we get cold now! What we will be like when we come? :)

We have to be very careful with the Amish buggies around here, we decided to stop touring around before it got too dark as some of the Amish don't have lights on their buggies. We made this decision after hearing there are quite a few buggy/car accidents in the area. We will stay in the hotel and wait till morning to get going. Early to be, early to rise, and we're in the perfect area to do this!

As we look out from our room, we only see lightly flickering lights in the houses of the small town as the lanterns are lit in some homes for light. There are regular folks living among the Amish, but the majority is Amish. Some Amish have solar lights, some have generators and some have gas lanterns. It all depends on how strict their sect is. (I read a lot of Amish books)

Tomorrow we are off to tour just a bit more of the country and then off to the Crystal Caverns by West Liberty OH. Then to Columbus again.

We haven't shopped much, just here and there.

Well, here's to an early night for us.

Jacklyn

March 31

March 30/09

Yes, we are still here. The day has been very long and we finally stopped in Columbus OH at 9:30 after two wrong turns on the interstate. The first wrong turn took us miles to correct and was extremely frustrating. Who invented these stupid interstates anyway? And the second wrong turn didn’t take so long to correct at least that one we laughed about. I can’t say that much for the first wrong turn though..But we are here and I will continue!

(The following was typed by Julia as we drove she copied it from the paper we sue to jot notes) We left Best Western at 7:57 am. We also went to Wal-Mart in Fairview heights. A woman in Wal-Mart (cashier) Told us Folks seem to stay away because they are Remodelling the store. People are looking at us FUNNY when we talk as do we smile when they talk. the trees here are in full bloom and the grass is GREEN! they have started there spring MOWING! VERY NEAT! There are Beautiful purple blooms on some trees. We’ve seen nothing like that before! Occasionally we are seeing beautiful things and oil pumps in the fields. They appear old fashioned looking! The Terrain is still flattish and the temperature is consistently between+5-10 degrees C.

(typed by Jacklyn, notes written throughout the day)We entered our 5^th state, Indiana at 10:30am. We are heading to Evansville IN which borders Kentucky. Then we plan to travel into Kentucky and drive around looking (and dreaming) at the beautiful horse farms.

We stopped at a rest stop just past the Indiana border and got some brochures and such, but most only pertained to Northern IN and we weren’t going there. So we just collected them, used the facilities, and left.

We finally needed to fuel up again so we stopped in a little town off the interstate called Poseyville. I pronounced it as Poseyville as in “ring around the rosy, pocketful of posies...etc” and Chris pronounced it as “Posseville” We didn’t ask the locals how it was actually pronounced but I think my way sounds much better! Anyway, Poseyville (however you want to say it) is a farming small town. With at least 3 implement stores and people driving their lawn tractors. It is a very pretty town and for a small town it was bustling! The local big nice restaurant is even called the “Feed Mill”.

We have been seeing many robins here in IN. I saw the first two in IA but now when the windows are down and we are stopped somewhere, you can here them singing! It is wonderful and just like summer in Steinbach. The daffodils grow wild here in IN and it’s truly beautiful to see.

We arrived in Evansville at 11:40am and entered into KY State at 12:00pm. Unfortunately there was no sign to be found that we entered KY, so we missed out on that one! The temperature in KY is 14 degrees and fluctuates between 14-15 degrees. It’s wonderful outside! We stopped for lunch at Culvers in Owensboro KY at 12:47pm. After our lunch we headed out on the back HWY’s hoping to see horse farms and such. We didn’t... I was disappointed, but the scenery was still very nice. The trees looked dead all around us and later we would find out why. I think we happened upon Redneck country in the backwoods and it was neat to drive through the hilly landscape. Despite the MANY MANY dead possums on the road! J

Our next destination was Louisville KY to see the Churchill Downs. The famous horse racing place where many famous horses have raced. We entered Louisville at 4:00pm and navigated our way to the Churchill Downs. The place was amazing, even for non horesy people. The Assiniboine Downs don’t hold a candle to these downs that’s for sure! We thought it would be so nice to tour the downs and such, but we only had 20 minutes before closing. Admission to the museum was costly so we just toured the gift shop, bought some small inexpensive memorabilia and went on our way. We met a local KY older man who told us the most wno they’ve ever had was 6 inches. He also said he had been at the windiest corner in WPG back in 1979 and Edmonton in 1984. He was super impressed we had driven all that way. He did mention the reason the trees were all dead though. There was an ice storm in KY in January which was declared a state of emergency and people were without power for up to 3 weeks. He said he was without power for 6 days. It was debilitating to the state and would answer our questions as to why the landscape looked the way it did. Good to run into locals sometimes.

We were so happy to just have gotten there and seen the history! We left Louisville at 5pm. As we headed out of the city, the 16^th largest city on the USA, I commented to Chris, that the area once again didn’t seem to good. He just said, oh Jacklyn don’t worry about it. It wasn’t until later that I told him I saw the police putting a man in handcuffs and his shirt was ripped open as if he had been in a fight. He was yelling at the police too. All Chris said was oh. But we got out of there safe and sound. It’s all part of the adventures.

We passed a sign in Carollton KY, saying this site was of the fatal bus crash back in 1988. I looked it up and found this link . It’s not often you see signs paying tribute to such a devastation.

We came into the outskirts of Cinncinati around 6:38pm and entered OH at 7pm. We had decided in Louisville KY that ahh what the heck, let’s just head to Columbus as it was only 2 hours away. Yeah well, we didn’t estimate correct and when all was said and done it was a little over 3 hours.

So here we stay in Grove City a suburb part of Columbus at La Quinta Hotel. After going through a few rougher parts of towns, I played it safe this time and asked the hotel clerk if there are any places we should stay away from. He mentioned some areas and we think our hotel that we booked for the duration of our stay is in the area. We are looking to see if other hotels are available today closer to the venue we plan to be at and hopefully at a reasonable price. If indeed our hotel is in one of those areas, we really don’t want to stay there but paying over $120 a night? The clerk said the areas aren’t too too bad, but just cautioned us. Some may call it adventure, but not us. We will find out today when we drive by the hotel we booked if it’s the area he mentioned.

We are about 2 hours away from West Virginia (didn’t we say in Louisville we were 2 hours away from Columbus too? J) and plan to go to see the mountain there. Can you just here us sing “Country roads, take me home, to the place, I belong, West Virginia, mountain momma, take me home country roads....” I’ve only had that song in my head since Friday before we left. Maybe that would cure it!

We will also be touring Amish Country too. Can’t wait!

Here’s to no wrong turns on the interstates today and many happy trails to you!

Jacklyn

March 30

March 29th

So today is another day of full travelling for the Friesens. Today I decided to jot down notes as we go so we can remember more. It will sure be nice to look back at!

We left Charles City Super 8 Hotel (or was it Motel? I'm not sure, but by golly it was the cleanest hotel I have ever been at!) We saw beautiful landscapes and it started to get hilly.

Chris started us out driving this morning *GASP* (I let him drive?) yeah, I did. It was all good. We turned back onto the HWY to Cedar Falls and headed out!

Many many beautiful barns graced the landscape and it was nary a farmhouse you saw that didn't have a barn. we only saw two overall in 2 hours of travel.

We came across many lovely horse barns where i quickly turned green with envy!

The back highways were slushy this morning after a blanket of snow fell in the area. We navigated them just fine being from Manitoba and all you know! We travelled through Black hawk County one of the bigger county's in IA.

The pictures of the barns don't do justice to the scenery, *sigh* they will have to do.

We also saw a round barn, in fact by the time we stopped for the day we had seen at least 3. They are so cool!

We passed through a little town called Amana and it's an old town and most of the houses are made of brick and are beautiful. Amana was also the first place we started to see green grass! It was so neat to see green grass! We then headed on to Coralville IA and wanted to stop and eat, but the wait at one restaurant was so long, we headed back out and drove hoping to find something soon as we had eaten at 7:30 and it was 12:47. Funny how travel can make you hungry!

The creeks in IA are not very full and I'm sure the folks in the Fargo area would love to see their creeks like that. I wondered to Chris is perhaps IA has had some drought in the last couple years and the ground is soaking up the moisture. But then later that day in IL we passed a sign saying there is a flash flood warning.

The terrain started to get very hilly and we would have compared it to the foothills in Alberta.

Going farther down South we noticed that the American accent is much more prominent. In Coralville we noticed there were quite a few businesses shut down but the Cedar Rapids newspaper reports that IA isn't hit as bad as the rest of the country. The recession seems more real now that's we're in the states.

We still hadn't eaten and are driving towards Mount Pleasant and we were really hoping to come across a small town to eat.

AH! We did! We stopped in Ainsworth IA to eat and change our route once again. It was a small town restaurant with small town friendly service and good food. We are currently eating the leftovers as our super in our hotel room after our swim.

We were back on the road at 1:48 pm about 45 minutes later. We thought we'd wait to fuel up as we didn't really need fuel just yet. We are happy with our truck and are consistently getting 19.8 miles per gallon. We fueled up in West Burlington IA just outside Burlington IA. We entered our 3rd state at 2:45 which was Illinois.

The fields there were green and started to grow already! It looked like early May in Manitoba. So neat. The temperature gradually warmed up the farther south we went (really Jacklyn? I can hear all your sarcasm! :)) It also looks like there has been some local flooding and devastating damage to some lower areas in IL. In Industry IL at 3:58pm it was 7 degrees C! And it felt way warmer than Steinbach's 7 degrees! We came to Beardstown IL at 4:38, we drove through many small towns down the back highways and started to notice that the land was getting flat again. It's too bad, because we really enjoyed the hillier terrain.

So where are we you ask? We are currently in Fairview Heights about 13 miles outside of St. Louis Missouri! I can't believe we are here! We briefly entered Missouri and then turned around and came back to IL. We entered Missouri to take in the Arch, which is the gateway to the West!. We also saw some amazing old places and buildings in the part of Missouri we were in. We crossed the Mississippi River again ( I think that's the 3rd time) and took a wrong turn and ended up in a not so good area of but promptly turned around and headed right back out. We didn't get to see the arch as close up as we wanted, but we were glad to see the arch anyway it is truly beautiful especially in the sunset.

We decided that we wouldn't stay right in St. Louis, but just outside of the city. Which brings us to Fairview Heights. We are staying in the Best Western and arrived here about 8pm and promptly took in the pool. We are done in the pool and getting ready for bed. We plan to take in the free Continental Breakfast and then head out to KY. We hope to travel the back HWY's of Kentucky and see many wonderful horse farms and such!

So we've been through MN, IA, IL, & MO so far. We will see what the rest of the week brings!

I have posted a link for today's pictures. But thought I'd post just a few here too.

Thanks for your prayers of safety and for thinking of us. We truly appreciate it.

Till tomorrow,

Jacklyn

PS- yes there are some blurry pictures, which we took. Just think how fast we are going! :)

Here are the links for the pictures.

March 28

March 29