Scoping out Galena

Saturday, Sept. 4, was one of the most beautiful summer days so far this year - very low humidity, a too blue sky with fabulous fluffy cloud formations, sun, good friends, and a trip to Galena, Illinois. The four of us set out around 9:00 AM on Labor Day weekend. Traffic, surprisingly, was not too contentious - especially west of Madison. The scenery in the western part of Wisconsin is picture perfect - rolling hills, pastures, livestock grazing, bright red barns, and that too blue sky. Along the way, Linda gave us a brief history of how Galena protects itself from possible flooding. First there is a very large berm. If that doesn't work, Galena has built a 12 foot wall with very heavy steel gates. In fact, you pass through those gates when you enter the city. I almost felt like I was entering a less glitzy version of OZ.

Being Labor Day weekend, and Galena being a tourist attraction, there was nary a parking place to be had. We drove through the entire city, even looking behind the main street. We ended up parking clear on the far side of town. As soon as we all got out of the van, we must have heard our stomach's growling at the same time because all four of us chimed, "Let's go to lunch!"

A friend of ours had recommended an Italian restaurant, Vinny Vanucchi's Little Italy. She said the garlic bread is amazingly good. OMG, she could not have been more accurate. The garlic bread is not only all you can eat, but it totally surpasses Mamma Mia's (formerly, my favorite garlic bread). After stuffing ourselves on great Italian food, we rolled out of the restaurant and began scoping out the town for a possible Learning in Retirement special event trip. Every other storefront seemed to be an eatery of one kind or another. We visited several of the gift shops, stopped to taste (and of course, purchase) some wine made with Illinois grapes. Trolley tours of the town are available almost every hour on the hour, too. Linda was enticed by the fabulous smell of caramel corn, so we had to check it out. Here we found (and sampled) caramel corn of almost any flavor you could think of. I bought a bag of Maple caramel corn -- delicious!!!

Around 4:30 (just when our feet were about to fall off) we headed home with great information and great memories of a wonderful end to summer.

Since I forgot my camera (and we have not yet figured out how to get the pics we took with Carmen's phone off of the phone) the pics below are from the Internet.

Downtown Galena

Vinny Vanucchi's Little Italy

Galena Flood Gate

Click here to see a picture of the Galena Flood Gate