last day of vacation

Dubuque, Iowa is on the way home from Decorah and, since my brother and his family live there, I stopped through for a couple days and did the uncle thing as well as I could...I'm not so great with the babies. Luckily, Gracie is pretty easy to get along with....
















...and Mya doesn't really protest too much yet (especially since my camera has a flashing red light on it).
















I blogged about Minnesota Monthly's list of the best burgers in the state a few weeks ago and it turns out that I've been driving by one of them every time I head to Rochester or points south. So, in one last act of I'm-on-vacation-and-I'll-eat-whatever-I-want, I stopped at the House of Coates (it's in Coates, MN) for supper. The waitress suggested the Swanee Burger and she seemed to know what she was talking about. It's got onions fried to perfection and bleu cheese dressing that you can't see. I was trying to finish reading Ned Rorem's second volume of diaries but this thing was not a one-handed affair. I think I got some burger grease on one of the pages (sorry, Ned!).