Excursion to Pike's Peak, IA

We took the car and drove to the southwest border of the state, about 100 miles from here. The Mississippi River forms the Western border of Wisconsin. It's a big, slow-moving river, important for shipping (barges) and historically significant due to it's early years in the explorer, pioneer, and steamboat days. Rivers were the only means of traversing the impenetrable wilderness of the upper Midwest until about 1850. We drove across the Mississippi to Iowa, where we visited a state park overlooking the huge river. It was picturesque, but quite buggy. We explored the hiking trails there, Both Avinash and I came home with a wood tick aboard, which we did not discover until Sunday, whereupon we had to extract the awful things - including some attached flesh. They're pretty disgusting. At least it wasn't a deer tick, which carry Lyme's disease.

I'm off tomorrow, and plan on spending the day doing household chores. There is a roofer coming to look at the roof of the house and the garage - last year we had some hail damage. Perhaps we may need to make an insurance claim and get some repairs done. I'm hoping that I can get the garage re-roofed out of the deal, because it needs it and I was planning on doing it myself with my dad's help this summer. It would be far nicer to have it done and paid for by insurance.