Tri-state vacation day

The girls and I took my mom and step-dad on a Tri-State vacation today.
From Dubuque, we traveled to Galena, Ill. for some history. We had visited Galena earlier this week for a shopping excursion. Today, we ate a COLD picnic lunch in Grant Park before touring the President Ulysses S. Grant home.
My step-dad Bob has been immersing himself in Civil War history recently, so the tour proved most interesting. Although Grant graduated only 21st in his class of 39 at West Point, he proved a battlefield -- if not a classroom -- genius by becoming the first Union general to initiate coordinated offensives across multiple theaters in the war.
All that history made us hungry, so I drove us north to Wisconsin and Cuba City, the famed CITY OF PRESIDENTS, where the fine folks at Weber's Meats hooked us up with beef sticks, sausage and -- hey, it's Wisconsin! -- cheese curds. Mmm... CHEESE CURDS...