DeForest (Madison), Wisconsin

Let's see...current statistics:

Total Workforce: 164.6M (as of February 2020)
Jobs lost in April: 20.5M
Unemployment rate: 14.7%

Do you know what they call an economist that uses decimal points?  Comedian.


So here we sit in Deforest, WI.  We're fine.  It's  a bright, sunny day and windy - Laramie, Wyoming windy.  Sunny 57.  If you can hide from the wind behind a wall, it feels like 52 - we're told. 

We're here waiting to go farther north.  Minnesota has decided to keep all its campgrounds closed.  Consequently, we'll move a couple of hours further north on May 17th.  Hoping - unrealistically, of course - that Minnesota will open some of its campgrounds, and we can get into Burlington Bay Campground, Two Harbors, MN on the 18th.  If not, we'll spend a couple of additional days at the next campground before doing one long day into Voyageurs Natl Park on May 20th.  Start our quarantine then.  That's the plan.

Donna and I went to Woodman's Food Market, today.  Nice place to buy food.  Noticed all the signs limiting how may meat packages, can goods, soups, etc, you can buy per family.  I thought federal guidance was to only visit a grocery store every two weeks thereby requiring you to purchase two weeks worth of food when you went to a grocery store (not that we can do that with the limitations of our trailer, of course.)  So how does one buy two weeks of groceries when you can only get 2 of this, 1 of that, 4 of these cans, 2 of any specific type of soup, 1 each of this other thing you may want, etc?  I figured it out.  You buy chips, crackers, cookies, and ice cream! No limits what-so-ever on those items.  If it's on the shelf or in the freezer, you can buy all of it you want.  And Woodman's was well stocked on those items this morning.  We broke down and bought a box of cauliflower crackers.  Yep, cauliflower...cheese flavored cauliflower.  (We're weird like that.)  The box fits in the trailer, too! 


Back to Deforest.  We've been here before.  Spent several weeks here in 2017.  More single-family homes now.  Subdivisions have expanded to replace corn fields.  The town added a large athletic field and a privately owned gym since we were last here (also replacing corn fields).  Diesel fuel at a Kwik Stop across the street is $1.699/gal.  They've paved most of their prairie trail now.  No new pictures - yet.  I posted some from 2017 (below) to give you an idea of the walking/bicycling trails in DeForest.  While it's late spring here now, the trails are still just as pretty & enjoyable as they were in 2017.

Well, I think that gets you up to date.  Thanks for dropping by and checking up on us.  I'll try to get more current pictures next week.  Until then, be safe.  David