Well, we finally made it back to the States. It was time to leave Portugal because if we stayed longer we would be considered residents for tax purposes.  Something we need to avoid.  And, with vaccines now available, it gave us the chance to get vaccinated so that we could finally visit family and friends.  Flew into Chicago, and immediately drove to Monroe Wisconsin. (At the very south end of the state)  Why Monroe? We had been looking for a quieter place to stay while we waited for the vaccinations to kick in, somewhere with good hiking trails and at least some outdoor dining options.  It seemed nearly everyone was looking for a remote place to get away for a vacation, and many other places we looked at had extremely expensive housing options.  In Northern Minnesota, for example, you could rent a 600 square foot, run-down lake cabin for 5,000 USD a month.  But in Monroe, we found good housing options as well as good hiking trails.  And we were able to get our initial vaccination the day after we arrived.  Tim felt minor aches and pains the next day, Deb felt fine. Pretty much the same for the second shot.

Our Monroe apartment sat on the town square, and was a comfortable place to hang out for 6 weeks. Two major state walking trails run through the town, and we also found that the town had many wonderful houses.  Monroe was a major cheese making city, and seemed to have a relatively wealthy group of homeowners.  A few of the homes are shown below.

The trails were nice- simple, but pleasant for walking.

So, between walking around the town, and the trails, we managed to keep ourselves occupied.  We made a few trips to Madison to meet with Tim’s family.  And, after we were fully vaccinated, we headed up to Madison to stay with them a while.  So nice to know that we’re now about 90% safe from serious covid issues. We’ll still be a little cautious, but it feels great to have that security.

As always, Mike fixed some excellent meals for us. In photo below, you can see our cousin’s son Peter, who came for the afternoon as he now lives in Madison.

We had a chance to do some shoe shopping (nearly impossible for Tim in Portugal, as they don’t have large enough shoes).  Mike also put Tim to work on their front porch, which was a fun change of pace.  It’s been a long time since we’ve had the chance to do any sort of serious home project.  And this one was fairly easy, if time consuming.  We replaced all the porch railings and banisters, as well as rebuilding the support underneath.

We visited the botanical gardens. It provided a pleasant day of walking, and had a nice lunch afterwords.

In the botanical gardens, we spotted these fish, and their rock circles.  Turns out they were trying to attract mates- thanks, internet.

We enjoyed walking around Madison’s neighborhoods.  Lots of interesting homes and gardens.  The following house is the Harold C. Bradley House, a Prairie School home designed by Louis H. Sullivan.  Used by a fraternity of the University of Madison since 1915.

We even found this strange pyramid in the woods in one of the parks. Apparently it was an art project done by a school decades earlier.

We had a great time in Madison, but it was time to move on-wards to the Twin Cities.  The AirBnB housing market was fairly tight for some reason, but we found a nice place in the milling district on Minneapolis, just south of the river.  We were able to walk around Minneapolis, including taking a visit to the Gardens of Salonica, the Greek restaurant where we held our wedding rehearsal dinner 25 years previously!  We chatted with the owner, who even remembered us! 25 years, hard to believe time flies so quickly. If you go there, try the Mousakas, a favorite of ours from the time we were dating.  Gardens of Salonica

A view from the stone arch bridge in Minneapolis, looking over the river. 

After a week in Minneapolis, it was time to head to North Dakota to visit Deb’s family.  That 10 hour drive is not one of our favorites, but it is certainly better than some of the 25 hour plane rides we’ve had the past few years.  We had a nice time being with family again and so good to catch up.

A picture of the canola fields in bloom.  It’s hard to imagine how much open space there is without seeing it in person.  The scale of everything is a little different there – check out this picture of the machine shed.

And here we are on the deck. Notice the artistic soft focus that was used for the photo. Either that, or Tim wasn’t paying attention and didn’t notice that the camera was focusing on the deck railing…

 

Anyway, after a nice couple of weeks in North Dakota, it was back to the Twin Cities.  This time, it was even harder to find housing- but we were fortunate to find a one week rental of a loft apartment next to the University of Minnesota.  It’s considered student housing. but is much nicer than the apartments we lived in after graduating!  Below is the view from our window.

For our next place, we moved to a small house in St Paul.  It was owned by a plasterer around 100 years ago, who decided to remake it in his own style.  The AirBnB folks who own it now have outfitted it with “retro-modern” furnishings, and list it as the Jetson’s house. (referring to a science fiction cartoon family from the 196os, for those that aren’t familiar) 

The ceilings were intricately patterned, with interesting design touches all throughout the house.  A fun place to hang out for a couple of weeks.  After having our chance to meet up with friends and family for a couple of months, it’s time to move on again.  For the next location, we were looking for somewhere that covid numbers were reasonable, hiking/walking would be good, and temperatures would be lower.  (Our midwest trip ran into unusually hot weather, which makes it more challenging for us to get in our long walks).  We also wanted a place where Deb could pop over to Portugal if she got the call from immigration to do her biometrics.  So we settled on Belgium, which is where we’re currently located. Hope to get a post on that in the next few weeks.  After that, we’re off to Gibraltar, where we’ll hike the rock of Gibralter, and enjoy the nice weather for a month. And see the Barbary macaques monkeys that live on the rock!

On our way!