South Dakota road-trip (days 7 & 8)

It;s our last day at the Battle Creek Lodge and we wake at a reasonable time and have a leisurely breakfast of French Toast. After chatting to the lovely hosts and some of the other guests we load the car for the trip home and check out.

Glancing at the odometer we have done 1240 miles so far this trip. We leave Keystone and pick up the highway to Rapid City where we stop and fill the tank and I gave the windows a wash to remove the bugs.

We then get back on the I-90 heading towards Wall, our previous stop-over. Our first destination today would be the Badlands - the park ticket we purchased being valid for the entire week - on Sunday we had seen the beautiful Badlands at dawn, dusk and during the blazing heat of a late summers day, today it was more overcast and we saw yet again another set of stunning hues. We do love it here!

Driving west to east we stopped at many view points, some we had used on our previous trips and some entirely new ones, all felt new in the overcast light. We were delighted to see some Longhorn sheep taking in the stunning scenery and others running along the roads.

Driving out of the Badlands we stopped at the shop and visitors centre for postcards and souvenirs before picking up the I-90 heading east again towards the Missouri River. Getting ready for some lunch we stopped at Al's Oasis on the west bank of the Missouri River for another 5c coffee and grilled cheese sandwich each. These 5c coffees that we get in South Dakota are actually rather good and include free refills! Als is a strange place with some 'interesting' clientele.

Crossing to the east bank of the Missouri we again stop at the Chamberlain rest-area to take another look at the fantastic 'Dignity' statue that we had seen the dedication of on the previous Saturday. We got to get much closer and had a really good look at this impressive edifice.

About eight and a half hours after setting off from Keystone we arrived at Sioux Falls, first stopping for fuel and then on to the Super 8 - when in South Dakota and all that! - for the evening. We crashed out in the hotel and had a decent enough coffee from the lounge. It was not that late but although we were quite tired we thought we should do something. Brew-pub it is then, Victoria located the Hydra Beer Company about 15 minutes drive away and we headed over there.

The Hydra Beer Company has a metal aesthetic and we shared a lovely flight of Hefeweizen, Hexenbiest V1 (a nitro coffee brown ale), Unholy Vanilla Stout and Morning Star Berliner with a generous helping of the free popcorn and pretzels and a chat with a really nice bloke we met in the bar. We bought a bottle of Morning Star Peach Berliner to take home with us before heading back rather tired to the Super 8 where we crashed for the night.

Up for breakfast we went down to the lounge and had a passable repast but the most disgusting coffee we have ever tried before again mounting our trusty Honda for the last mere 450 miles! First stop was the post office to post the last handful of postcards (Jasmin likes to have one from everywhere we go!) and then on to the I-90.

First stop was a McDonalds somewhere in Minnesota so that Victoria could start her day with a decent cup of coffee and myself a Coke, our next stop would be an hour or two later when we stopped at the rest area just outside Austin to 'lose' the aforementioned coffee and cokes from earlier.

The weather was pretty miserable by now with quite heavy showers as we crossed back over the Mississippi and into Wisconsin, the last fuel stop at Tomah and then heading back to Madison. We were getting hungry again so stopped at Wisconsin Dells for a pretzel and coffee before blitzing the Disney Store for some goodies - Cheshire Cat, don't ask!

The last 50 miles back into Madison to unpack and crash out with a lovely Chinese take-away and Deadwood season 3.

2084 miles all told, what an adventure, bye bye South Dakota, you certainly have a lot of geography!

Our first week in Madison

Wow, this blog post is long overdue but we seemed to have crammed so much into the past five weeks.

We moved from Sutton in Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, UK to Middleton, Wisconsin, USA and here is how it went.

On Saturday 23rd April we kicked off our leaving celebrations by enjoying dinner at Pie Minister in Nottingham with my parents, brother and close family friends Anne & Don. Then it was off to our favourite bar in the UK - The Junkyard - for a night on the beers with many friends and family who stopped by. Thanks to: Mum, Dad, Andrew, Anne, Don, Ollie, Emily, Richard, Sammi, Ady, Helen,
Matt, Mike, James, Steve, Lesley, James, Anne, Neil, Andy, Louise, Clare, Andy, Pete, Nicola, Tom, Tara, Katrina and Craig for the send off.

Rather worse for beer, we were dropped off at home by friends Steve and Lesley for our last night in our house in the UK.

The next day -Sunday - we had a final visit from Steve and Lesley then chums Dave and Heather popped round with Nathan and then it was off to Manchester airport with Mum and Dad. We stopped at The Wagon and Horses in Stalybridge just outside Hyde for a rather splendid dinner before being dropped off at the hotel airport and goodbyes with mum and dad.

Our flight was American Airlines 55 from Manchester to Chicago O'Hare due to leave at 12:30 and we awoke on the Monday to a message from American letting us know we were delayed two hours so we had a rather more leisurely morning and made our way over to check-in. Whoops we were over our luggage allowance on both cases, so after a quick reorganisation just one case was over and we paid the $100 excess baggage fee.

We got air-side and had a drink and light bite before making our way to the gate, what a lovely surprise the flight was only at about 60% occupancy so was an easy boarding and we had our row of three seats to ourselves.

 The crew on the flight were excellent and a real credit to American Airlines. After a very smooth six hours we touched down at O'Hare and were quite quickly through customs and immigration and picking up our baggage before entering the terminal building and boarding the bus to Hertz to pick up our car.

After the lovely experience with American Airlines service the shenanigans with Hertz were rather a disappointment, we had booked a Toyota Corolla and they first tried to get us to upgrade to a Dodge Charger, then a Nissan Juke, before trying to fob us off with a Mazda 3, a lot smaller than a Corolla. We dug our heels in and after about an hour finally got what we had booked and paid for.

Apart from a dent on the passenger side the Corolla was a great car and we eventually held onto her for four weeks. Leaving O'Hare we entered the Freeway to Madison and realised that we were on the wrong road so ended up adding about 20 minutes to our journey by going via Milwaukee rather than Janesville. Arriving in Madison we soon found the American Inn off Odana and at 2130 local time - 0330 body-clock time - we crashed out in bed for the evening for our first nights sleep as non-immigrants!

Our first day in the USA and we had some stuff to sort out, first of all bank-accounts, so over to Chase on Old Sauk and High Point and we were soon the proud owners of a checking account and a savings account. Now time to find a bed, we looked in a couple of places before finding the perfect bed in Steinhafels which we paid for and arranged to have delivered to our apartment the next day, leaving our phone number just in case they had issues. We had a lovely lunch at Barriques in Middleton before checking out our local Costco for the bargains.

We then popped to pick up some essentials, namely bedding, but that is an entire other story that I no doubt shall relate one day! We made our way back to the Americinn ad were soon crashed out, only to be awoken several times by a party of unruly school children who were running up and down the corridors until the early hours of the morning.

Next, day, Wednesday our first task was to check out of the Americinn and pick up Social Security Numbers from the office on Odana before driving over to Deer Creek to get the keys to our new apartment. We had received an email from Steinhafels to say our bed would be delivered between 1400 and 1600 so we were all on schedule.

Only having a couple of suitcases it was quite easy to unpack here and I drove to a local sandwich shop to pick up us a 'Sub'. At about 15.45 we decided to call Steinhafels to enquire where the bed was - it was not coming the driver could not find us and had not wanted to make an international phone call to contact us - arse! We cancelled the bed and gave them a flea in the ear.

We drove over to Target, picked up a air-mattress, bedside lamp, two patio chairs and a patio table. The first night in our new home would basically be camping. That evening we ordered a mattress from Amazon for Friday delivery.

To console ourselves we had rather a lovely dinner at Hubbard Avenue Diner in Middleton before retiring to blow up the air-mattress.

Thursday morning and my first task was to pop into the office for a short daily team meeting and to introduce myself to the folks I shall be working with. I was back home just after 10 and Victoria and I were going out to buy furniture. Having checked their website but unable to place an order due to a UK credit card not being accepted for an on-line payment, Slumberland seemed very good place. We were soon selecting a new sofa, bedroom chair and console table for delivery at time unspecified and the prices in the store were much better than the on-line deals - bonus!

We also took the opportunity to check out some local supermarkets, both Wholefoods and Metro Market are very good, the latter especially has a great selection of British foods available.

A very nice chap came from Charter connected us to the internet, woot! Unfortunately they don't provide a wireless access point so we stopped at Best Buy and after seeing how much they charge, instead decided to go 'wired' for a few days and ordered one from Amazon.

That evening we walked into the centre of Middleton stopping at Capitol Brewery for a beer. It's great to sit on the terrace there and enjoy the live bands.

  On our way back we stopped at the delightful Hubbard Avenue Diner in Middleton for supper, the staff are great, the décor straight from the 1950s and the food and brews fantastic. As you can see Middleton is rather lovely.

Another surprisingly comfortable evening on the air-mattress and I again dropped by the office for the days team meeting and after we were out to do errands again. We badly needed supplies so went to Metro Market on the east side of town where we phoned our shipping company. Our furniture was due to arrive the coming Monday and we needed to ensure that all was running ok. Well, to cut a long and fraught story short they had lost our pallets, our furniture and belongings had done 5000 miles from the Uk and about 100 miles away in Janesville had gone missing. Arse! and Arse! again. After about an hours calling around it was located with the wrong tracking numbers and even better it would not be coming on Monday but tomorrow - Saturday. Also when we got home our new mattress had arrived from Amazon, things were really starting to come together.



That evening we ate at our local bar, World of Beers, yes my local is a proper brew-house with about 50 beers on tap and over 500 bottles of world beers to select from. They also do a rather splendid giant pretzel that we shared for supper with a kale salad.

Well Saturday came and our truck arrived promptly just before 1000, Work colleague and all round great guy Jeff arrived with his daughter Lily and we soon had it all inside. The bed was assembled and we had a proper place to kip for the evening.

Jeff and his wife Debra invited us for dinner that evening and we had a lovely time with some splendid food and drink discussing the differences between our UK existence and our USA existence that just a few days in the states had uncovered.

To be continued...

Madison and home....

Our Madison Adventures continue...

Our time in Madison is coming to a close but we still have a little more adventure to share.

Still awaking rather early, we had a light breakfast and set off on the short journey out of town to Sutter Ridge Pumpkin Patch where we had a great time exploring the farm, playing the barnyard games and marvelling at the 'problem solving' goats. We then took the 'Hay Ride' to the pumpkin patch where Jasmin and Victoria selected a couple of pumpkins of their own.

Fortifying ourselves for the day with an apple cider doughnut we drove on to the small town of Cross Plains where we had our first open house viewing of the day, a really delightful little house built in 1948, well within our price range. The house was lovely, but, a bit further out of town than we wanted and the bedrooms were on the small side.

We then drove into the centre of Middleton and had a lovely coffee and shared a bite of lunch at Barriques Victoria and I shared a feta and hummus wrap while Jasmin had the soup, all very tasty, we plan to have many more lunches here.

It was now time for our next open house viewing on Friendship Lane in Middleton. This house had a lovely garden but the rest was horrible, as I write in December seven weeks later this place is still up for sale and knocked down by $30,000. Still not interested.

As we were in Middleton and Victoria seems unable to pass either a Michaels or Bath and Bodyworks without going in we dropped onto Greenway Station to check out both and also popped into the World Market store on the site. They have a European foods section and we were delighted to find that we can buy Rich Tea biscuits.

Time to go to our final house viewing at 6206 Camino Way, from the outset we were not sure about this one, not really the right location for us and a few things going against it. But wow, this place is perfect and I note that it is still on the market. If we were looking to buy straight away then this is the property we would go for. The realtor 'Barb' was a great help and I think we will contact her again when we do come to look.

That's enough house hunting, we now had another mission to enjoy a beer on the Memorial Union Terrace and watch the sun go down over Lake Mendota.

It is rather a lovely view, but there is a lot of building work taking place at the moment and rather spoils the terrace, hopefully, we can have some good times here next year.

After watching the sun go down we took some photos on State Street, I quite like this one looking up towards the Capitol building.

It was time to leave the city and head back towards our apartment. Unfortunately, I got rather lost trying to get back and the 20 minute journey took well over an hour and I was quite tired and grumpy when we arrived. I cheered myself up by picking up a pint of frozen custard (peanut butter cup flavour) from Culvers, I suppose we shall never find out what a Butter Burger is!

It was our last night and I was certainly ready for bed and was soon sound asleep.

We had a light breakfast on the left-overs in the fridge and the pumpkins were put up for adoption! Our final drive into Middleton and we enjoyed having another look around the locale that will hopefully be our home before checking out the apartments at Deer Creek.

These apartments are lovely and the site has great amenities. Another bonus is that they are situated a five minute walk from the office. Of all the apartments seen so far I think that this is where we would most like to stay and we have already started the process of applying for one.

It was time to head back to O'Hare, we made sure we paid all the tolls this time and were soon in the massive roadworks around the airport and had a 45 minute excursion in heavy traffic to fill up with gas so that those gits at Hertz did not charge us a fortune to fill it.

At the airport we dropped off the car and were soon at the terminal and checked in, then joined a 45 minute queue to get through security. Once air-side we browsed the shops and had an evening meal at Wolfgang Pucks before boarding our American Airlines flight back to the UK.

The food on the way back was nowhere near as nice as on the way out, but after watching Inside Out we all got some shut-eye before landing back in Manchester at 0630 and driving home to catch up on some sleep.

Autumnal Madison Adventures

So, following on from where we last left off.

It is Friday and I was still suffering really badly from jet-lag so am awake well before 0300 and don't feel like I have had any sleep at all - uuurgh!

Today I have a meeting in the Madison office with my prospective new manager and then will be meeting up with the team members for their quarterly review, this is really quite exciting and even though I have met them all before I am really quite nervous.

We had been warned that the it can take a good 45 minutes from where we are staying to get to the office as it is the other side of town and roadworks on the Beltline are causing lots of delays so we set out with plenty of time to spare and of course arrive well too early. So, we stop for a while to kill time then I drop Victoria and Jasmin off at a Classic McDonalds and I drove to the office to meet Ben.

I have a really good couple of meetings in the office and Jeff sorts out my Illinois Tolls before driving back to meet Victoria and Jasmin at Starbucks. They have had a great time, spending a good couple of hours browsing art and craft supplies in Michaels after their breakfast and then doing a bit more shopping at Greenway Station. After meeting the girls we drive into the centre of Middleton to take a look around. It really is lovely, very reminiscent of old films. We espied a new apartment complex in Middleton Station and as they have a viewing board out and we decide to take a look, these are really lovely, but a bit pricey.

There are also some lovely apartments to rent a short walk from the office so we go back to Deer Creek and make an appointment for a viewing on Monday. We have one final set of apartments to check out but they are unimpressive and the agent is a disinterested arse-hole. I cannot name and shame as I have forgotten the name of the complex!

We make our way back to our AirBnB stopping for a not-shopping session at Target. The idea being to get an idea of what we can buy that we usually buy at home. Of course we have to pick up some goodies, including speciality M&Ms and a 1l bottle of Sailor Jerry for about £10.00.

Back at the apartment I take the opportunity for a couple of hours kip before we go out that evening. We ready ourselves for the evening entertainment and I drive down-town for the first time. I get completely lost going around the Capitol so dump the car in the first available parking garage.

It is chucking it down as we meet colleague Jeff and his son Ogden in the Coopers Tavern, it is packed in there so without getting a drink we regroup in a bus-shelter as we decide where to go next. The Heritage Tavern is a few minutes walk away and actually right next door to where we parked our car, we head in there, it will be a good hours wait for a table so we settle down at the bar for some cocktails. After the first round we are joined by Debra, Jeff's wife.

After another round of drinks we are seated and orders dinner. I have a fantastic gnocchi with wild mushrooms from the specials board, as do Jeff and Debra. Jasmin has the Hickory Nut Pesto Soba and Victoria the Market Green Bean Risotto. Ogden, the only non-veggie had the Pork Schnitzel. It was unanimously agreed that the meals were all lovely and we found the company excellent. After some fantastic deserts and more drinks we say our goodbyes, head out into the rain and find the car for the drive back to our AirBnB.

Having had late night and a little sleep this afternoon I managed a lie in and did not wake until about six am, yes, that constitutes a lie in. We have a packed day today starting with another trip back into the centre of Madison.

We park the car at the same place as yesterday evening and visit the must see farmers market that is set out around the Capitol. This is great, lots of stores selling delicious fresh local produce, street entertainers, political agitators and what not. We have a great time browsing the stores and purchase pastries for tomorrows breakfast and some Wisconsin maple syrup to take home for our porridge and pancakes (not at the same time). After our lap of the Capitol we headed down State Street stopping in the Michelangelos Coffee House and enjoy a splendid mocha each and share a egg and cheese croissant. The atmosphere is somewhat spoiled by the drug deal taking place on the table behind us though!

We continue up State Street and drop into Anthology that was recommended to us by Debra, I pick up a great scratch-and-sniff pumpkin spiced Halloween card for Victoria and a set of vintage button badges to put away for Jasmin. By now we are ready for a comfort break so pick up a smoothie at Jamba Juice while we avail ourselves of the facilities. Continuing up State Street we get as far as the Memorial Union Terrace before heading back up towards the Capitol.

Nearing the Capitol we head west towards Monona and notice that the 306 West apartment building is having a open house for viewings. These apartments are really stunning, however, they are right at the top of our price bracket and would be miles away from work involving a drive through town and past the university every morning.

Heading back to the Capitol we stop for a coffee at Starucks, thankfully free of drug dealing and then do a half loop of the farmers market to get back to our car. Victoria and Jasmin are keen to visit Jo-Anns craft store on Odana. We have not eaten since Michelangelos so grab a drink and some fries at Burger King where we are served by a lovely chap. I drop Victoria and Jasmin at Jo-Anns and head over to Pegasus Games over the road. After about 30 minutes browsing the shelves I head back to Jo-Anns to find that Victoria and Jasmin are still making their selections. Ten minutes later I am in the queue to get fabric cut. Half an hour later I leave the girls in the fabric queue and go for a snooze in the car. Twenty minutes later Victoria joins me, another 20 minutes later Jasmin has finally been served. Yes, it took over an hour and a quarter just to get the fabric cut and paid for!

Rather delayed we head back to the AirBnb for a lot shorter time than we had expected. I had hoped to be able to get a short nap but 40 winks was all I got. This evening we would be meeting my future boss Ben along with his 10 year old son Arnun and Arnun's friend Nate at Trienen Farm. I had been here before a couple of years ago, but tonight in the Corn Maze they would be hosting Zombie Apocalypse 2015.

Meeting up with Ben and the young chaps we fist went to the pumpkin catapult where Arnun was very nearly on target and then we entered the 'Fox and the Grapes' maze at about 1800. We would have one hour before the zombies were released. A great time was had by all as we navigated the maze, finding each marker post and picking up the next section of the map. Arnun and Nate battled each other with corn, Arnun adopted a pet corn and finally just as we were completing the last section the Zombies appeared. Aaaaaargh!!!!!!!

Jasmin has never been good with clowns, so was totally freaked out when she came face to face with a Zombie Clown and had to take some time out to calm down around the bonfire with a generous portion of apple cider donuts.

We finished off with some snacks before heading back to Madison, stopping on the way at the China Inn on Cottage Grove Road. Jasmin had been wanting a Chinese take-away in the US and this place did not disappoint. For less than 20 dollars we had a lovely feast of freshly cooked food and there was plenty left over for the next day. Tired and sated we retired for the evening.