Biggs Cross Country 2017: Day 40 - Evanston, Rotary, Eau Claire, Wis

Our day today opened with a hot, sunny, muggy morning. My morning walk took me a few blocks through downtown Evanston to the shores of Lake Michigan. Nice beach, beautiful tree lined streets, lots of churches, beautiful old homes. After a nice continental breakfast in "The Grand Parlor", we headed over to Rotary's headquarters, just a few blocks away, to enjoy a personal tour guided with Greg Franks, who works in the Club/District Support Department.

Our tour was fascinating! Rotary owns the building but occupies the 17th and 18th floors. Great views! We saw the Board room, RI president's office, John Hewko's office, historical displays, statues of Paul Harris and much more.

After Rotary, we drove about 3 miles over the Presbyterian Home where Cousin Dave lives in their nursing home. Even though I'd left massage, he didn't know we were coming so it was quite a surprise. He's just turned 80 and getting feeble. The nurses tell us that he has bouts of confusion and they have to watch him carefully. We visited for about a half hour and hit the road about noon, with 300+ miles to get to Eau Claire.

We planned a route to take us by Oshkosh, the home of the largest air show in the country and a museum run by the Experimental Aircraft Association. We didn't have time to go through the museum but we poked around a bit.

We finally arrived at our hotel in Eau Claire at 8:00, As we drover across Wisconsin, the landscape changed from commercial development, "clean" industry, lots of malls, COSTCO, etc etc all the way from Gary, In to Milwaukee. As we turned west from Milwaukee it became a mix of farmland (more corn!) and forest, rolling hills. Beautiful farms, silos everywhere!