All the Roads

Day 8 Pepin & Green Bay Wisconsin First day hitting the road with my brother found us meandering country roads in Wisconsin to 90's era R&B. Just what you'd expect from a van full of Filipino American kids driving through America's heartland. The last time we went on a road trip together 11 years ago we only meant to go to Pittsburgh from Baltimore but ended up in Youngstown, OH just to cross another state off the list of states he'd visited. THAT was a long day. I'm sure New Edition traveled with us then as they did on this first day of the second week of this road trip. We left Minneapolis and headed straight for Pepin, WI, former home of Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the Little House books. I am 100% sure I was more excited for this stop than anyone else in the van. The kids and I have read the first 2 books in the series multiple times and I think the next 3 or 4 books at least once. Others have Comic-Con. I have this little house in the *sort of* bi...

Day 7 It was a bitter sweet day. My brother Jeff flew in to Minneapolis from Seattle to be my road partner for the second week of travel because Pauly had to go home to work. We'd been having so much fun and in a weirdo van-shaped travel bubble for the entire week that it seemed impossible that "work" was an actual thing and that Pauly had to leave us. The only possible thing that could have kept us all from a weepy goodbye at the airport was an aquarium inside a shopping mall. Enter Mall of America. Jeff arrived the day before to do a little sight seeing and karaoke around Minneapolis. We met him at his hotel and proceeded to have lunch at the Mall of America before bringing Pauly to the airport. Paul sat in between the kids in the backseat where I heard them taking turns telling him, "I'm going to miss you, daddy. Don't go!" We walked into the Mall and there it was - a freaking aquarium inside the mall. We could see the stingray pool below us from t...

Day 6 From Theodore Roosevelt National Park to Fargo? Yes, Fargo. Had the children not been with us I'd have been on the hunt for a used car lot and a wood chipper. But since they were with us I tried to find a place less William H. Macy-ish. I had planned on bringing them the Hjemkomst Viking Ship at the Historical and Cultural Society of Clay County to learn about the Nordic and German homesteaders who settled in the area. Unfortunately, by the time we reached Fargo the museum's visiting hours were almost over. We headed instead to Bonanzaville , a surprisingly informative and engaging museum housed in 41 historic buildings from around North Dakota. Let me tell you I was seriously impressed by this museum! 100 Years of Women's Suffrage Bonanzaville invites you to the time in the US before women had the right to vote. You are assigned a name, a short biography, and voting tokens. Then you walk through different decades in the display where you are asked, "Can you...

Day 5 & 6 As much as this is a home school trip for the kids, it is also an opportunity for me to visit almost all of the states I haven't been to yet. To qualify as having been to a state, I have to have either stayed overnight, driven through it, and/or eaten a meal in that state. Layovers on flights don't count. After this trip, I will have one state left: Alaska. That is how we landed at Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. And I'm so glad we did! TRNP was a complete surprise and amazingly cool. I had no idea what to do or where to go in North Dakota and I picked this place based on the reviews of the Badlands Overlook. The last time we drove through the Badlands 5 years ago through South Dakota, I was the only one awake. I had to decide whether or not to wake everyone up in order to see the view or let them sleep. Remember, Ruby was only 2.5 years old back then and we'd been on the road for a few days. She was having a rough day so I decided I...