It is early June. We have been on the road for 10 months now, and our RV is parked in Oakdale, just a few miles from the Mississippi River in west central Wisconsin.
Our ideal travel schedule is to stay places 1-4 weeks at a time, meaning we will typically have 1-5 travel days a month. In the month of May we “broke camp” 3 times to take the RV in for service. We did a rental car road trip that involved 6 days on the road away from the RV. And we moved the RV to new campgrounds 8 times, covering 6 states (IL, IN, OH, IA, MN, and WI). This adds to a whopping 17 travel days in May, the most we have ever done.
This is why we needed a recovery weekend. So on Friday, we took the whole day to rest, putter around the campsite, and recover. Saturday, we took advantage of the 70-degree weather to go out to breakfast, visit the Farmers’ market for some homemade soap and fresh asparagus, check out the local souvenir shop with several dozen kinds of fancy Wisconsin cheese (including some smoked gouda that we purchased), and re-stock the larder from the local Walmart.
We waited out a brief shower at lunchtime, then got on the motorcylce to explore the Amish countryside around us. It was our first time on the bike together in over 2 months, so we planned out a 2-hour backcountry tour. It turned in to a 4-hour expedition, to the point that my wife was singing the Gilligan’s Island theme song by the end, changing the words to “a two hour tour.” Indeed, it did feel for a while that we were permanently lost on the county roads in the middle of dairy country.
The pictures below highlight the day, from the successful attempt to find a “happy place” kind of restaurant to the unusual traffic on rural Wisconsin roadways.
The walls of the breakfast place looked more like Cabelas than any other café we have ever been in. 
And the variety was striking. 
The front desk featured a school of mounted fish and the specials of the day: biscuits and gravy or country fried steak. 
Amish tables at the farmers market sold baked and canned goods and homemade soaps. Some of the non-Amish vendors were also selling Amish products. 
Gorgeous hand-stitched quilts hung by the buggies to catch the eyes of passing motorists. 
Proving cheese never goes out of style, this shop is celebrating 50 years in business. 
The inside screamed to me, “get out while there is still time.” I was happy to escape without breaking anything. 
But Ellen was in her element here, although I was unable to convince her to buy this wrap that she tried on. 
The motorcycle ride was filled with iconic farm scenes like this one, with dairy cows and corn crib silos around every corner. Near our campground are the rectangular bogs where they grow cranberries. 
We saw about a dozen Amish buggies along the way, and one farmer preparing his field with a horse-drawn plow.