A great day for a road trip!

Today has been absolutely beautiful!  76 degrees is the perfect temperature for me.  I am not one who likes it blazing hot in the summer.  Today was the "100 Mile Garage Sale", which means there are a bazillion sales going on between Winona and Redwing along both sides of the river. It's an annual event and it's a big deal around these parts.  I'm not sure how long it has been going on, but for as long as I can remember caring about garage sales, so at least 20 years.  Vince and I had intended to make the whole loop - which I have never actually done in all the years I've lived in this area.

We started the day off having a yummy breakfast at Bonnie Rae's.  I was happy to see that they have flower baskets hanging on their porch already - first flowers I have seen this year and it makes me antsy to plant mine!

After breakfast we headed to Winona and started our 8 hour garage sale-ing, road tripping adventure.  We scored big for Vinny, who is looking for furniture and items for his new apartment (I'm still trying to wrap my brain around that).  We found a cute little table and chairs for his kitchen and a coffee table/end table set.  The sweet lady selling them had a hard time parting with them.  She told me the whole story about when she bought them, where they were in her house, and why she was selling them (her kids were making her).   I had to email her pictures of them to help her have closure about seeing them go.

I love people.

We found a couple things here and there.  I, of course, found a basket.  I can't really call a garage sale-ing excursion a success unless I come home with at least one basket.  And a Christmas thing.

We made it out of Winona and up river as far as Wabasha, where we spend most of the afternoon because they had so many cute shops in their downtown area!  We love Wabasha.  Here are some of the places we perused and will no doubt visit again.

This was an antique shop, I forgot the name, but they had a Christmas room and this sleigh was adorable.

I was giddy to find this little treasure in the corner of the Christmas room...a display of Dickens Village pieces by Dept. 56!  Most of the pieces I have not seen before, so I wonder if they are retired.  I ended up buying the little mistletoe cart and salesman, if you can see it on the top left corner.  If not, you'll just have to come over to my house at Christmas!

This huge, gorgeous thing is called a Butler's Pantry and it is stunning.  So is the price tag of $18,000!  The store owner said she has someone planning to buy it after they get done with their remodeling project.

In the lower level, we saw this vault, so we assumed that this building used to be a bank...but actually the owners told us it used to be a dry cleaners and the vault was climate controlled and used to store expensive furs.  Very cool.

And to round out our date day, we both brought our laptops to Caribou to have coffee while we waited to see Hope's "Grand March" for prom...

I'm usually here by myself, so this was a nice change of pace and everything I could have dreamed of in a coffee date.  Oh, except for the time when Vince moved his laptop screen and dumped my entire cup of coffee on me. Good times.