Saturday, May 28, 2011

Root Beer and Hail.

The weather around the Minneapolis and St. Paul area has been pretty crappy lately. We've had tornadoes level some areas of  town, and the local news has been predicting rain all this holiday weekend. This morning my friend John calls me and says' "If I don't get a ride in soon I'm gonna go crazy". I told him that I had nothing I needed to do, and that he should come on over.
 We decided to go for root beer. 100 miles from my place in Prescott, in the small town of Augusta, WI, is a little, old fashioned, drive-in restaurant. Tep's Drive In. We had been there for root beer once before, but no one thought to bring a camera. We tried to go back again at the beginning of last year, but they were still closed for the season then. This time we were better prepared, we had a camera, and they were open!


We parked in a spot serviced by a car hop, but we ate at a table. Both John and I ordered the same thing. We each had a bacon cheese burger and a root beer, and we split an order of chili cheese fries.


I almost forgot to take the required blog food photo! I remembered after the first bite.

After lunch, we stopped in front of the Augusta High School to get our picture with the school mascot, the Beaver. This is not just an ordinary beaver, it's is huge!


We then headed back on Hwy 10 to Mondovi, WI, then down WI 37 to WI 35 at Alma. We gassed up in Alma and took WI 35 back to Prescott.

About 10 miles from Prescott, it started to rain. It was a light rain at first. 5 miles from home it was a down pour, with dark blue-black skies and strong winds. John and I passed another motorcycle rider going our direction. I felt sorry for the guy. There was no windshield on the cruiser style bike, and neither the driver or passenger had on a helmet. The driver was using his left hand to shield his eyes from the heavy rain. Abot 2 miles from home the weather changed again. Now the skies cleared and the sun was shining. As I made the last turn to go home, I noticed hail on the side of the road. John stopped at my place to stretch and dry off a bit before heading home to St. Paul.

As soon as we pulled into my garage, Nancy came out to check on us. She told us we had just missed the hail. She managed to snap a few pictures during the storm.

2 Very nice hail pictures gone AWOL........

It turned out to be a good ride. 225 miles round trip. It would have been nice to miss the rain, but I'm just glad I missed the hail!