Not being Halloween people, we typically leave town the last weekend of October. This being the year 2020, our travel has been minimal and remote. Yet after months of not really leaving our house, and after four mind numbing and enraging years of watching our country be split further in half, the weekend before the election seemed like a much needed time for a little road trip.
Halloween woods at Pikes Peak State Park
About once or twice a year we like to get down to the driftless region of southwest Wisconsin. This year we rented a little tiny house on a ridge just outside of Viroqua. We passed several Amish farms to get there, and from our perch we caught sunsets and moonrises over newly harvested corn fields. The cabin was tidy and cozy, filled with rag rugs made by the neighbors and tea making supplies that we put to good use.
We ate two meals at the Driftless Cafe in Viroqua, both of which were incredible and made from ingredients from regional farms. Beet, spinach and mushroom cannelloni. Roasted pork with spaetzle in a curry broth (our favorite). Colorful and perfectly bitter salads.
On Halloween, we took a winding drive down to Pikes Peak State Park in Iowa. This is where the Wisconsin River flows into the Mississippi. While everyone else trick-or-treated, we had the woods largely to ourselves. We stopped in Prairie du Chien in Wisconsin and strolled around St. Feriole Island Park. We made it through most of The Queens Gambit on Netflix. All in all, a perfect weekend, a calm before a very tense week of refreshing FiveThirtyEight’s live blog.
Overlook at Pikes Peak State Park in Iowa. Where the Wisconsin River feeds into the Mississippi.
