Don and Donna, relatives on my mother’s side, were on my list of people I wanted to visit in the US from the very beggining! They live in a little town called Alma Center in Wisconsin. Their daughter Jenny with family also lives right by. By coincidence my uncle Olaf with family were visiting the same week. Quite the Norwegian invasion, suddenly we were 7 visitors at once! Our hosts handled it without trouble and claimed there could never be too many Norwegian in one place. We were impressed!
Visiting the farm were my great grandfather's brother, Gerhart Arntsen Ullerud, first settled down. Me, Sanna, Hayley, Whitney and Donna. We got a ride on the back of a tractor!
Our first day there we all went to the “House on the Rock” a couple of hours away. It had started with a man who decided to build his house on and into a huge rock. Spectacular enough itself but he also collected all kinds of things. Today there were massive collections of pretty much all things imaginable. Our feet hurt after hours of walking, there was so much to see! Dolls houses, enormous self playing orchestras, weapons, puppets, model boats – you name it! The most amazing thing was the massive carousel put together with all kinds of different wooden figures. And not a single horse!
One of the smaller (!!) carousels with all kinds of dolls and wooden figures..
A lot of impressions! Me, Olaf, Andreas, Lena and Amalie taking a little break.
One of the perfect little rooms in one of the MANY dolls houses..
We also visited Action City in a town nearby. Gokarts, Lazer Tag and a whole bunch of games kept us busy and happy for several hours. Lazer tag especially was great fun, despite a couple of injuries. That’s what you get for getting too excited and ignoring the ”no running” part. Another day Scott was going fishing from his boat and was nice enough to let us tag along. We set off down the river, nuts and beer and fishing rods. Although we didn’t catch any fish we definitively enjoyed the trip. No wonder guys go fishing, the perfect excuse for doing absolutely nothing while having a beer!
Holding on to the girly side of fishing with Haylee's pink rod!
And yeah, we did catch fish. Or at least the fish caught Scott! ;)
The annual Strawberry Festival was going on the weekend we were there. Everyone told us it was nothing to get excited over but we thought it was fun to see! There was a fun fair, a beer tent (that Scott, our excellent guide, took us to!) a parade and the coronation of Miss Alma Center (!!). The Queen and the two first runners up go to different parades every Sunday and wave down from a float, representing their little town. We watched the parade from Jenny and Scott’s house right on the main street. There were old cars, floats from the nearby villages and a lot of candy! Sanna was more than happy to run around collecting it! Jenny and Scott had a party the day of the parade so we got to meet a lot of relatives and friends I have heard about and recieved Christmas cards from since I was a kid!
Parade and a Bud Light? Yes please!
Little kids collecting candy that was being thrown out, they had to fight Sanna for it!
Don and Donnas three girls at the swimming pool!
The new and old misses of Alma center doing their duty..
One of the other floats and the strange kind of sideways wave.
We feel like we have really experienced a lot of different parts of the US. The actual real deal at people’s homes and visiting their favorite places. I think we get so much more doing it our way, thanks again to everyone who made it possible! We appreciated a little break from the cities in the Wisconsin countryside – then we felt ready for finishing it all off with one of the biggest of them all: NEW YORK!
