{"id":4011,"date":"2013-10-04T10:17:14","date_gmt":"2013-10-04T15:17:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/?p=4011"},"modified":"2013-10-01T19:25:27","modified_gmt":"2013-10-02T00:25:27","slug":"upper-midwest-trip-day-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/2013\/10\/upper-midwest-trip-day-7\/","title":{"rendered":"Upper Midwest Trip Day 7"},"content":{"rendered":"

The day started out with a bit of a letdown \u2014 since US 63 has not been signed around Rochester on US 52 yet, I’d have to come back at some point. Otherwise, though, it was a very scenic day on both sides of the Great River Road and then back into Iowa.<\/p>\n

Route: US 63, Route VV, WI 35, US 10, US 61, MN 316 and back, US 61, MN 43 to WI 54 to Route M and back, MN 43, I-90, US 63, IA 9 to V18 and back, US 63, C66, V25, Airline Hwy, US 218, IA 58, Viking Road, Hudson Road, IA 58, US 63<\/p>\n

My last remaining, drivable gap on 63 this trip was between Lake City and Red Wing. I stopped at Frontenac Golf Resort, which I wrote about in a separate blog post.<\/a><\/p>\n

When I got to Red Wing, I had clinched US 63 in Minnesota (as signed in July), and now it was time to close a gap on US 61. First, I crossed into Wisconsin again. WI 35, the Great River Road in Wisconsin, was a very pleasant drive. There was a visitors center in Prescott related to the Great River Road.<\/p>\n

The US 61 bridge over the Mississippi River is in the midst of being replaced, so I averted that potential de-clinched area. I even had time to double back and drive all of MN 316.<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS
\nFun with fractions!<\/em><\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUSMN 50 doesn’t quite end at the same intersection as MN 20, but you can see it from there. The US 61 intersection is in the background.<\/em><\/p>\n

On the south side of Red Wing, MN 292 parallels US 61\/63 and serves a prison. Minnesota has little state routes serving state facilities all over the place.<\/p>\n

I left US 63 behind for the time being at Lake City and continued down a very scenic US 61 to Winona. There’s no way this river-hugging road can be expanded to four lanes, although it needed it at times. The Mississippi River bridge at Wabasha was closed, leaving a gap for me in the bridges from St. Paul to St. Louis.<\/p>\n

\"OLYMPUS
\nUS 61 in southeastern Minnesota, south of Lake Pepin<\/em><\/p>\n

At Winona I took the time to follow MN 43 through town and cross the river, then followed 43 the other way down to I-90. Winona to La Crosse will have to wait.
\nI got onto I-90, went west, and picked up US 63 again south of Rochester to follow all the way to Black Hawk County. Within that was one self-detour, going west on IA 9 to V18 since I had not been on that piece of road since the North Tama game at Riceville in 1996. Because of all the construction and traffic lights in Waterloo, I skipped that part of 63.<\/p>\n

And that’s the end of my July vacation. I went to the Upper Peninsula for the first time, clinched I-35, 99% of US 63 in Wisconsin, added 34 counties in five states, and saw the north ends of five significant US routes.<\/p>\n

Blog posts will resume Tuesday.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The day started out with a bit of a letdown \u2014 since US 63 has not been signed around Rochester on US 52 yet, I’d have to come back at some point. Otherwise, though, it was a very scenic day … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-trip-reports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4011"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4029,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4011\/revisions\/4029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}