A whirlwind trip to Dubuque, Iowa

This past weekend, Noah and I made the 400 mile trip to Dubuque to help celebrate Great-great grandpa Roy's 90th birthday. We left on Thursday after school and arrived late Thursday night to Grandma Alice & Grandpa Bob's. Amazingly, with most of the construction in Chicago completed, we were able to make the trip in just over 7 1/2 hours, and that included our dinner stop! (I was expecting the more typical 8 1/2-9 hour trip...)

On Friday, we were able to spend the day with Uncle Bryan, cousins Steve, Brendan and Aidan and Great-great grandpa Roy, seeing the "sights" of Dubuque. Grandpa Roy kept up with all those boys - they were done sightseeing before he was! Since Bryan's boys had never been to Dubuque before, we wanted to show them some of the things we did growing up. We went to the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium (which actually is fairly new - not something we did growing up...), Shot Tower Pizza (one of my Dubuque favorites!), the Fenelon Place Elevator (aka the 4th St. elevator), and Julien Dubuque's grave, which I haven't been to in ages and I don't think Noah has ever visited. It was a beautiful day and we had a great time just being together - something that doesn't happen often enough since we live so far apart.

Here are some pictures from our day of "sightseeing."

The Sights of Dubuque