Appleton Wisconsin to Des Moines Iowa

In a nutshell:

Huge air show in Oshgosh - as we left Appleton, we saw cloud pictures in the sky made by the airplanes.  This must be a huge deal as there were so many cars - incredible! Here's a smily face - there was also OSH22 written in clouds.

Drove to our first stop: The pink elephant.  To get there, we drove through small roads surrounded by corn fields - you know... exactly like in horror movies!  As you can see, it is indeed a big pink elephant!  We continued on our merry way
after taking a couple photos. 

Our next stop was 1.5 hours later: Dickeyville - The Shrine of the Grotto of Redemption.  I don't know what to say about this place... It is spectacular - the priest who created this truly was an artist. It was worth the little detour for sure!  You can see the grotto here.  There was also a water fountain and other Shrines all depicting the life of Jesus.

There were even a couple bird motels with house sparrow nests in there. 

In Dubuque, right at the border of Iowa and Wisconsin, on the mighty Mississippi river we stopped at Eagle Point Park .  It's an amazing park with great views of the Mississippi river.  If you know what you are looking at (which we didn't) you could see 3 states: Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinois.  

In the parking lot, park, we were "lucky" to see a  real live soap opera.  Some teenagers/young adults fighting and throwing things, swearing, baseball bat, pushing, shoving, the whole shebang - it was a sight. I could've gone without and be happy...

After walking in the park for a little, we continued on to our last destination of the day: Des Moines.  We arrived at our hotel, registered and went out to our car to get our luggage.  Brought in the room and were leaving for dinner at the Zombie Burger when 3 police cars showed up.  No idea why but it didn't give us a good feeling.  Dinner was good - similar to The Works but all zombie related names and decorations.  We also stopped at a chocolaterie - we bought some
chocolate and fancy cotton candy.

We drove downtown a little to see and came upon this gorgeous building - the State Capitol - wow - it's a beauty! 

Birds of the day: Pelicans, cormorants, chickadee, goldfinch, turkey vulture, Canada geese and a few birds of prey - I suck at recognizing them so birds of prey it is.

Farm animals: goats, sheep, dairy cows, brown cows, black cows, cows cows cows and horses.

Roadkills: lots of raccoons, skunk, and non-identifiable animals

Weird things for today: 

Gas station name... who ever thought of that??

Lady's waxing place... really?  Hilarious!