We continued along the banks of the Mississippi River to La Center, MN, crossed into Wisconsin to the town of LaCrosse, and then crossed the mighty Mississippi. We had to dodge quite a bit of construction as they are in the process of building a new bridge, but we made it through with only one casualty, Bruce's camera, which jumped out of his pocket. Actually the camera survived the event, and even though externally damaged it seems to still take pictures just fine.

After leaving LaCrosse we continued south along the east bank of the river, then turned east again and started climbing out of the river valley. It's been quite a while since we've had climbs like this and we certainly felt the quads and hams on this stretch of road. We passed through checkpoint in the little town of Chaseburg, then started the real steep climb. After reaching the top of the hill we passed through farmland that has quite a large Amish population, and passed a couple buggies as well as several Amish farms; what was most noticeable was the lack of powered mechanical equipment. The rolling hills started here and continued all the way into Viroqua, this gave us a taste of what Pennsylvania will bring.

We're camped at the county fairgrounds in town, and it's another $10 night so we have lots of choices. Bruce has some college friends come into town from Eau Claire, so he's staying in a motel tonight, but we'll likely eat dinner together. I'm in the library typing this up and will be uploading on one of their computers.