We're off!

We're off!

We started yesterday morning and motored south to Mineral Point, Wisconsin, where Laura lives. This is the first leg of our jouney which will culminate in Christchurch next week.  So it is going to be a slow start.  lolly laughed yesterday morning as we got underway and I said, "2.4 miles and only 15,000 to go."

Mineral Point is our favorite small town anywhere.  About 20 years ago, while returning from a visit to my sister's place in Galena, Illinois, we stopped here for lunch and walked around town.  Something of an artists' colony, there are many galleries along the streets.  First settled by Cornish miners in the mid-18th century that had come to dig the lead and zinc out of the ground, there are many of the original stone, miners' cottages around thetown with a focus on the row of building along Shake Rag Alley.  We loved the town and its ambiance on first sight.

About five years ago, our daughter Laura working for Lands' End moved from their Stevens Point facility to their headquarters in Dodgeville.  We suggested she look for housing in Mineral Point as it was nearby (seven miles) and we had found it so charming.  So she moved from Point to Point and has been here ever since.  She started in an apartment in an old bank building, later moved to a little frame miner's cottage on Cedar and recently took up abode in a small house outside of town on a farm.

We have visited her many times since that move and the charm of the town just grows on us more and more.  We have come for the Cornish fest in the fall and had a delicious Cornish dinner, have been a couple of times to events at the Shake Rag Arts Center and have for the past few years made this our Thanksgiving spot.

Laura is already prepared for Christmas.  She put up her tree and decorated her house so we could have an "early Christmas" before we left.

Here are some more shots of her new house ready for the season.