What kind of traveler are you? "Mustard, ice cream and oysters" or "billboards, McDonald's and rest areas?" We are the former and some people like to be the latter.

We like to stay off interstate highways and travel back roads through small communities to see the real America. Other people like to travel interstates to get from point A to point B the quickest way and they see billboards, eat at McDonald's and stop at rest areas. This summer we have traveled through small communities in Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota, and stopped to eat in unique restaurants and talk to locals.

In Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin we happened on the Mustard Museum, a must see unique type of museum containing thousands of jars of mustard. One year in Iowa we rolled into La Mars, Iowa, the ice cream capital of the world and the home of Blue Bunny Ice Cream. Twice in Oregon we bought fresh oysters from oyster farms and grilled them with garlic butter - delicious. In Alabama we saw men working in a cotton field picking and packing cotton so we drove into the edge of the field and stopped to watch. The men stopped working and came to greet us and explained their work and machinery in detail. They told us to come back later and they would demonstrate harvesting peanuts.

You haven't lived until you eat lobster pizza in Houghton, Michigan, Jiggs Dinner in Newfoundland, a slice of pie (61 varieties) at Betty's Pies in Two Harbors, Michigan and a cooked breakfast for $1.50 in Garnavillo, Iowa. We often stop the motorhome on Main Street in small towns and walk around until we find a place to eat and we have never gotten a bad meal. In Fort Benton, Montana we were invited to join a community pot-luck supper and we met many interesting people.  Recently we found a town named WYALUSING and it reminded me of the tiles I select when playing Scrabble.

There are different lifestyles but we will never be "billboards, McDonald's and rest area" travelers.