Ah, vacation.

Well, I'm back from vacation. We spent a week away visiting friends and had a great time, arriving back home late Saturday night.

We traveled 600 miles NW to the beautiful hills of south western Wisconsin to visit our best friends. Byron (known around here as BEG) and Jeana were our best friends here in Columbus until they deserted us moved up north a couple years ago to be closer to his family. No one in the past 9 years has influenced me and my family more than these guys.

They live on a 103 acre farm between Gays Mills and Boscobel Wisconsin in a beautiful rural area of rolling hills and valleys. There's not a building within probably 3/4 of a mile of their home. He's got about 60 acres or so that he can farm and they're planted with corn and soy beans. My girls had a ball exploring the farm, walking through the 8-10 foot high corn near the house, venturing up the hill past the grain bin to the 'flower patch' (a concentrated area of the wildflowers that are scattered all over the farm) and following the 'tractor path' up to the big 40 acre field on the hill, probably a 1/2 mile or so from the house.

We spent Sunday and Monday inside, mostly, due to the heat. It was about 95 and humid, thank goodness for AC even in little rural farm houses. I spent part of Sunday getting a tour of the property inside the air conditioned cab of Byron's new 70 horsepower, 4WD, turbo diesel Agco LT70 tractor (His doesn't have the bucket on the front like that one in the picture). It's a pretty cool piece of machinery. I sat in Laura's seat while we took the tour. Later, Byron let me drive it and bush hog part of a field. Actually, he talked me into it because I was a little intimidated by it, but it was as easy to drive as my minivan. the property looked quite different from when we saw it in March of 2004 right after they bought it. It was cold and brown then, the old barn was still a pile of rubble, no grain bin and nothing but weeds. He's slowly making improvements and hopes to sell last year's bean crop in the coming weeks.

Monday afternoon and evening we made a side trip to Mauston to visit Maria's cousin. We had a nice time, and she and Maria talked stamping and scrap booking, their 13 year old daughter entertained our girls and I watched TV. On the way back, we drove through one of the worst storms I've ever driven through. Our diagonal path pretty much matched the diagonal of a severe storm system moving across the state and we were in the thick of it for most of the trip. Our 1 1/2 hour trip up turned to a 2 hour white-knuckle-watch-the-white-line-because-you-can't-see-farther-than-30-feet-wipers-at-full-tilt-40-MPH trip back. It was exhausting, but we made it OK.

We also made a couple of side trips to Iowa. On Tuesday everyone ventured over to Pike's Peak State Park, just up the hill from McGregor Iowa and overlooking where the Mississippi and the Wisconsin rivers merge. The view overlooking the rivers is amazing. Even hundreds of miles from it's end in the Gulf of Mexico (some 600+ from the Ohio River!), the Mississippi with it's islands and branches is still 1.5 - 2.5 miles wide up here. On Thursday, Byron and I spent the day exploring. We started by heading to Lansing, Iowa to get gas. Gas in Iowa is pretty cheap actually, and the mid-grade is significantly cheaper than regular due to the ethanol subsidies. We headed to another overlook to get a view of the river again and then to Genoa WI to watch a barge go through the lock. If you like big machinery, this is a really cool way to spend a couple of hours. The lock takes 9 barges at a time, so the 15 barge and tug we were watching had to be split in two. Driving 9 barges into the lock would be kind of like putting your car into a garage only an inch wider than your car and maybe 2-3 inches longer. Oh, and to match the inertia of that barge I think you'd have to do it at 100 MPH or something. Amazing. If you're a fan of big machinery and horsepower, it's a cool way to spend a couple of hours on a sunny day.

Maria and Jeana spent Wednesday and Friday night scrap booking at a scrapbook store in Boscobel while we kept shooing the kids outside watched the kids. It's one of their favorite things to do and they're already planning a get together in Milwaukee in October. Plane ticket and convention tickets are already bought.

Byron's dad loaned us his 'Mule', a 4WD little mini-truck, and we took the girls around the farm on Friday while they were gone. We had the four girls in the back (his oldest at 3 and my 6, 8 and 10 year olds. the new baby was with Jeana) and him and me in the front. That little truck is quite capable, climbing small steep sections that I wouldn't have tried pretty easily, making the girls scream with delight. We explored nearly every area of the property from the top of the hill to the abandoned section of township road that runs through the woods along a little valley, my favorite part of their place, stopping to pick flowers and a couple of wild raspberries along the way. The girls had a blast, except when a rather scary looking big black locust landed in the middle of the bed between the four of them. It took a minute to realize that the screams of delight had turned to terror, but we stopped quickly and Uncle Byron bravely extracted the beady eyed monster from the truck and exterminated him.

Later that night, after everyone was ready for bed, we hopped back in the Mule to go star gazing. It was a beautiful, clear night and we hoped to see some shooting stars and maybe a satellite or two. We headed out a little past 10:00 PM, when the last vestiges of light were on the horizon. We ended up on the top of the hill and waited as it got darker and darker and more and more stars appeared. Once you get away form the light pollution of civilization, the number of stars visible is simply astounding. You can actually see the denser areas of the Milky way spread across the sky like a mist. We found the little dipper, the North star (we think) and Mars (we think). We did catch a shooting star or two, but couldn't find the satellites sometimes visible just after sunset. By the time we got back to the house at around 11:00, the sky was filled with thousands and thousands of stars. For city dwellers like us it's a sight we rarely can see.

Each evening after the kids were in bed we stayed up playing cards and laughing. Then after the ladies went to bed, Byron and I would talk about church stuff for an hour or two. There's a couple of posts brewing in my head from our late night discussions. Byron's my best friend and it's sad he's so far away. I'm just glad he's got internet now so we can at least communicate a little bit, though it's not quite the same. A finer fried and mentor a man cannot ask for.

Do you have a friend that you'd drive 1,200 miles round trip just to go see? Maybe they're not that far away now, but if they were you'd go. I hope so. Most friendships, even pretty good ones, can fade with distance. This one will never be that way.