Back from our roadtrip!!

Dear all, last night we returned from 10 days and around 1600 miles on the road. We (my sister Flien, Lucas and I) had a totally amazing time. Wisconsin is beautiful!! Lucas was as always an impeccable passenger who enjoys commenting on the countryside full of Bobbies, tractors, and 'boos' (cows). My sister and I took turns driving so we managed to cover quite a bit of ground.
The first day I drove around 5 1/2 hours up to Minneapolis to meet Flien at the airport - how is it that when faced with a choice of 2 terminals you have a 95% chance of picking the wrong one? Anyway, after some panic we got to the right place at the right time, and then we all drove over to the amazingly comfortable Doubletree Guest Suites hotel - 2 tvs!, pretty crucial when travelling with a 2-year old. (We were at this stage still mentally preparing for the camping ahead.) Minneapolis is a cool city which I'd like to visit again. I took the scenic route up along the Mississippi river, that was a beautiful drive as well. Americans not having passports makes a lot more sense when you see the wealth of vacation and natural beauty options available here. We visited the Children's Museum in StPaul (spot Clifford the big red dog) and had dinner and drinks in a supercool place with a playroom for little ones. How forward thinking is that! The next day we had a very long drive across northern Wisconsin to a place called Three Lakes in an area known as the Northwoods. There are lakes everywhere (many more than 3 but maybe it was named by Tarzan) and also, ummm, lots of woods. Stunning. The motel I had chosen via the internet felt as if it had been untouched by anything as modern as the world wide web and even getting mail seemed an unlikely event. (The room was extremely well-equipped but the feel of the place was totally rural.) Jeff and Linda, the hosts, had recently moved up from Milwaukee and seemed a tad out of place and extremely eager to please. The first night Jeff built a campfire (this involved vasts amount of petrol, and now I know the real reason the US invaded Iraq - campfires) and we sat around and listened to their life stories while they questioned us on life in that enormous space called abroad. "You must be pretty fluent in Dutch huh, having grown up in Dutch and all." The second night we were invited to a "cook-out" which involved Jeff emptying out a can of lighter fluid onto a barbeque and then throwing on chops which were nigh inedible as they tasted like a zippo. Still, they were so friendly and the area so stunning and the weather so benevolent that inspite of our desire to start the rustic camping aspect of our trip we decided to stay an extra night. A good decision it was too as the day we finally left it rained all day whereas the day before we had burning bright sunshine. On the local lake beach we met some friendly people with their kids, and as we got talking about geography we were told that "I love Holland, especially Bruges". We decided to let this one go as the speaker in question might have been to a school with really old history books. And to be fair, how many of you know the capital of, say, Kentucky, or indeed Wisconsin before I moved here?
Our next stop was Door County, a little stretch of land jutting out into Lake Michigan much the way Cape Cod does into the Atlantic. There are many similarities between the two resorts, and I don't feel the need to see pink wooden slatted houses or quaint antique shops for a while to come. We had booked a camping site in a State park which was truly gorgeous. Lucas who had feasted on cable tv for 5 nights was much dismayed when he spotted the first tent and realised what was ahead of him: "Noooooo", he screamed, "noooooooot". "Hoooooooome, hooooooome." It was hilarious, and of course by the time the tent was up and he had made friends with the neighbours he was fine. We saw beautiful sunsets and took Lucas for a long bike ride through the woods.
On Thursday we took the steamship SS Badger across Lake Michigan, a 4-hour trip covering 60 miles. Lucas was completely hyper and ran around the boat for pretty much all of the trip, finally conking out some 30 minutes before we docked in Michigan. We got talking to a steward and were much surprised to learn that there are 60 men working in the hull, shoveling coal and operating gauges. We had kind of assumed that the 'steamship' nomenclature was either historic or referred to some computer-assisted operation. The campsite we had booked here was mainly full of RVs (caravans and motorhomes) and so we found ourselves lone tent campers in a 'rustic spot' with an enormous amount of space around us. In spite of the space and natural beauty we decided halfway through our first full day that we were going to honour our reputation of fair-weather campers, and as by then it had already rained most of the day and the tent was getting wet on the inside we packed everything up and drove down to our next destination - Holland, Michigan. While I took Lucas to the railway station to watch non-existent trains Flien went to visit the Holland Museum where she found herself the main attraction within no time as all the volunteer guides realised there was a person from the real Holland among them. Apparently Flien was followed around by a bevvy of old ladies who excitedly watched her every move and peered over her shoulder as she desperately tried to write something complimentary in the guest book. After a comfortable night (minus the compulsory viewing of Spongebob Square Pants that accompanies staying in hotels with Lucas) and a couple of dips in the swimming pool we got up early to visit the Dutch Village, an outdoor museum that re-creates parts of The Netherlands. I have to admit that we went there ready to think it was an abomination but the interior of the Friesian farmhouse was so authentic that I found myself in homesick tears. There were lots of little cobblestones and canals and windmills but it was all just the right side of kitsch, and the museum displays were informative. Lucas, dressed up in his Dutch football shirt, enjoyed the slide coming out of the enormous wooden shoe - OK I have never seen one of those in the real Holland, I admit.
A long drive and 3 states later we found ourselves mid-afternoon in the Illinois Railroad Museum where Lucas was so freaked out by the horn of the steamtrain that departed just as we got there that he spent most of the next 2 hours clinging to me, demanding to be taken to the shop. We did manage to persuade him to take a few short train rides and it was definitely worth the detour.
Today is the last day of my holiday - tomorrow is the first day of semester at UW and the first day for Lucas at his new preschool. He will have the same teacher and some of the same classmates but he'll be in a new building and it will be the start of a new experience for him.