I’m sure I’ve mentioned it here before, but I’m not a huge fan of the road trip.  In this case the acorn did indeed fall far from the tree.  My mom loved a good road trip, and she packed us kids into whatever vehicle we had at the time (ranging from a car, to a conversion van, to a motor home) and drove us across country nearly every summer.

I loved those trips!  Especially the ones in the van or motor home where I could sprawl out in the back with a good book while my mom did all the driving.

Here’s the time we got a flat tire on the road in 1980.

That’s my mom in the white pants, my bff in the short shorts, and my mom’s bff in pink.  LOL, just look at all of those perms!  Curly hair was all the rage in 1980.  My brother is changing the tire.

On that particular trip we went from Florida to California, stopping in New Orleans and Las Vegas along the way.

But these days I definitely don’t love being in a car that long, and I really don’t love being the driver.

However, now that Mr. Q and I are both retired, we’ve been thinking about the potential for future road trips.  After all, we can take as much time as we want to get somewhere.

We just haven’t quite managed to talk ourselves into it yet.  But, recently the parent of one of Mr. Q’s friends passed away and the memorial service was being held in La Crosse, Wisconsin which is about a 2.5 hour drive straight down the Great River Road from us.  So we decided to turn it into an overnight getaway, and sort of a road trip test run.

We got really lucky with the weather.  We had two gorgeous sunny days in the 70’s, which made it perfect for driving my VW bug convertible with the top down (and lots of sunscreen on).  The route from St. Paul to Lake City is rather bucolic, mostly farmland and a handful of small river towns like Hastings and Red Wing.  From Lake City to La Crosse the scenery is gorgeous.  The road runs right between the river on one side, and towering bluffs on the other.

We decided to splurge on a special place to stay since we’d only be there for one night.  So after a bit of googling, I found Hatchery.

This is a small boutique hotel in the historic fish hatchery building right next to the Mississippi.  It is listed on the National Register of Historic places and is located in Riverside Park.

After a two-year historic preservation project, the six room hotel was opened about 9 months ago.

As you may have guessed, having only six rooms, Hatchery does not have a front desk.  Instead it operates a bit like an Vrbo or Airbnb.  They texted us a code for the outside door, and another code for our room door.  Also, as expected in an historic building, there is no elevator and all of the rooms are on the 2nd floor.

But it was easy enough to let ourselves in and make our way upstairs, where even the hallway is pretty cool.

I love that wallpaper.

All of the rooms have a different look to them, and are themed with a historical fairytale character commissioned from a French artist.  We chose the Jean de La Fontaine room.

According to wikipedia, Jean de La Fontaine wrote fables, many of which featured a cunning fox.

Our room was gorgeous.

I loved the exposed brick walls paired with walls painted in a deep bluish green.

The king sized bed was super comfy.

Each room comes equipped with a record player and records.

Although I have to confess that we did not fire it up.

The bathroom was beautiful too.

I love that marble sink!

There was a steam option for the shower, but again, we didn’t use that.  The regular shower was quite nice though.

As I mentioned at the beginning, Hatchery is located right in Riverside Park.  All of our windows looked out onto the park.

And as the name implies, this park is situated right on the Mississippi River.

Hatchery also has a lovely cocktail lounge with beautiful views of the river.  I didn’t manage to take any photos of the lounge myself, so I’m borrowing this one from the internet.

Our room came with a couple of free cocktails, so Mr. Q and I headed down there in the evening.  He tried the Espresso Martini, and I believe the drink I order was called a White Cosmo … maybe?  Well, whatever it was called, it was delicious.

We followed that up with a sunset stroll along the river.

In the morning we headed to The Breakfast Club in downtown La Crosse (easy walking distance from the hotel) where I enjoyed some chicken and waffle kabobs.

Those waffles were amazing, but there was way too much food food for me and sadly much of it went to waste.  I didn’t think it would survive the drive home in a takeaway box.

There was also a lovely surprise around the back side of our hotel, but I’ll share more about that in this coming Sunday’s garden post.  So be sure to stay tuned!

In the meantime, if any of you local readers are looking for a romantic overnight getaway, I highly recommend a scenic drive along the Great River Road to La Crosse and then staying the night at Hatchery.

As for our road trip test run, we’re still not sure we’re ready to tackle a longer road trip.  We may have to consider purchasing a more comfortable vehicle for longer forays.  The VW bug convertible is fun, but I don’t think I’d want to do a much longer drive in it.  For now we may just have to stick to flying!