42nd GOF Central
LaCrosse, WI
How Wet Can You Get? The LaCrosse GOF and Back Again

On July 11, I left my garage at 6:45 AM, headed for La Crosse, WI and the 42nd GOF Central. The Minnesota T Register hosted the event, and they usually do a great job. Because of Covid, my wife did not tag along. I chose to take local roads north to Route 50, then travel west through Lake Geneva and Delevan, then take Route 14 all the way to La Crosse. It started to sprinkle fifteen miles from home, a harbinger of things to come. Fuel prices north of the Illinois border were $0.60 to $0.80 lower than at home, but the TD got a steady 25 mpg, even traveling at 60 mph and higher. Lake Geneva came and went, and Delevan showed up where it was supposed to, but where was Route 14? It’s supposed to cross Route 50. But it doesn’t. I asked a few people on foot who told me to take Route 11 which turns into Route 14, so I did. Just a few miles east of Janesville I saw the first Detour sign. Uh Oh. I had not taken Route 12 to Madison because of a massive detour. What now? The detour shunted me from nice two-lane roads to Interstate 39 all the way to Madison. I hugged the slow lane for more than thirty miles, not what I had intended. The drizzle came and went, and my windshield wipers did their job.

Once around Madison, I followed Route 14 west from Middleton, WI, where I worked for a summer back in 1970, into the hill country. I chose this route because the last hundred miles through the Driftless Area is some of the best scenery in the Midwest. The skies did not clear, but the rain was never intense. I pulled into the Radisson Hotel next to the Mississippi River five hours and fifteen minutes after I left. The sun was out, and the day had turned gorgeous.

The GOF lived up to its billing. The weather, for the most part, was good. On the day of the magnificent car show, held in a park on an island in the middle of the river, most of our Chicago group had booked evening passage on a paddle wheel river boat so we could cruise north of town and through a 19th century swing railroad draw bridge. On the return voyage the Buck moon rouse majestically over the river and La Crosse. Unfortunately, dark storm clouds and lighting followed the boat back to town.

Reinout & Henneke Vogt

The Minnesota club had arranged for us to stash our cars in a downtown parking structure, so most of us ran from the boat and drove the two blocks to make our cars safe before the deluge. It worked! Jerry Cihak and I stopped on the walk back to pick up some delicious homemade ice cream.

First in Class—1931 M-Type

The next day more than forty MGs, ranging from Reinout and Henneke’s M-Type to some rubber bumper MGBs headed out see the driftless area and tour Norsekedalan, a 19th century Norwegian Immigrant farm. The farm included original period buildings brought in from other farms in the area.

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