Great River Road Vacation: Part 2 - Dubuque, Dubuque lalalalalalalalahhhh!

After we left Bellevue, Iowa, we headed north up the Great River Road to Dubuque.

I went to Dubuque as a kid -- to go skiing! Yes, kids in Illinois go skiing in Iowa. With church groups! Ridiculous? Well, I went down the bunny hill like twice, then had lunch, then did the bunny hill again a few times, then decided to try another hill, picked a black diamond hill, ran into some kind of insane ski area, fell on my head and got sent to the hospital. I don't remember the thoughtful decisions that seventh-grade-Mandasaurus made to lead to this, but I'm guessing there was a combination of lack of supervision, assumption about my knowledge of skiing (my knowledge of skiing = zero) and being a doofus seventh-grader.

Thankfully, my bias against Dubuque related to this ski trip is gone! Maybe not for my parents who had to pick me up from the hospital though.

Dubuque is -- surprisingly -- pretty delightful!

We went to the Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium. It's a partner of the Smithsonian and really looks at the Mississippi River from all sorts of angles. We learned about explorers, fish, turtles (too much about turtles), pollution, bugs, how locks work, stories of the river... it's an awesome river, you know. And we saw otters! Swimming in a little otter pool.

We had a blast at the museum, and hope to go back again! (We also spied a water park hotel near the museum and thought it might make a fun weekend trip.) After walking around cluelessly through the streets of Dubuque, we finally stumbled upon Shot Tower Pizza & Pub for cold beers and amazing pizza. Our waitress suggested we take a walk a few blocks to the Fenlon Place Elevator, which is a tiny little train that climbs up a hill where there's a lovely view.

From Dubuque we hit the road -- along the absolutely gorgeous Great River Road. We drove through farmland, along the river, through a town with a casino and to Pikes Peak State Park. Pikes Peak State Park has notably amazing views (the Great River Road is lousy with views) and hummingbirds. B and I could watch hummingbirds all day.

We finally settled in to our hotel in Prairie Du Chein, Wisconsin where (no joke) there were warm cookies waiting for us at the front desk.