Back on the road

When we started out this morning, we STILL didn't know what our destination was...just sort of west.  We headed west on State road 21, and I looked at the map and happened to see that there was a green blob named the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge.  I looked it up and found that it has a visitor center and was the place where they first started the Operation Migration to raise the endangered whooping cranes and train them to migrate with ultralight airplanes.

The nice man at the visitor center said that they were having trouble getting the cranes to stay with their nests at their location, so have since moved them further east.  They had put up cameras, and think the problem might have been the huge numbers of black flies that were bothering the birds.

Anyway, they have a wonderful visitor center, which unfortunately had the display area closed for renovation.  They did have a nice gift shop.

They told us there was room to take our motorhome and toad down the road to a viewing platform, so we rode over and were the only people there.  We think we saw one whooping crane in the distance, but every time I caught sight of him and got the camera aimed, he ducked down!  We did see two tundra swans in the distance, one sandhill crane, and quite a few ducks.

The landscape is weird here....it's mostly flat land with a few rolling hills, but occasionally there's a huge outcropping of rock to make a cliff.  I always thought it was pretty flat around the Mississippi.

It was stormy all afternoon.  There were lots of black clouds around, and some of the time we had hard rain.

After the stop at the wildlife refuge, we got back on the road and headed to a campground below La Crosse, WI, which is on an island in the Mississippi River.  There's one black squirrel and lots of chipmunks running around.

We rode into La Crosse to look around.  Part of the waterfront is industrial, but there's a nice park on the edge of the river.

Now, we've got to decide where we will go tomorrow!

Lots of grain storage.  There are some HUGE farms!

This little guy was on the sidewalk where we parked the motorhome.

Lacy purple flowers

Wetlands we viewed from the observation deck.
There's a sandhill crane in the middle of the picture.

Pretty farm.
Picture is not quite centered since I grabbed it while moving.

Storm clouds in the distance.
...a little window glare in the picture.

Raindrops are starting to fall on the windshield.

I had to sneak up on him to get this picture.

Rock outropping at the entrance to the campgound.

Eagle statue in La Crosse.
Apparently, this is supposed to be a great eagle-watching area.

La Crosse waterfront park

One of the bridges over the Mississippi

Our campsite

Sunset from the campground