June/July 2012 - Coulee Region Women Magazine

| from thE EDitor |
A few years out of college, three
friends and I took a road trip. We left work
early on a Friday afternoon and departed
Minneapolis for Bayfield, Wis., for a muchanticipated
weekend of girl antics at one of
our favorite places on earth: the shore of
Lake Superior. I remember this as being a
breathless, hopeful time of life, brimming
with possibility. Young and idealistic, I
woke up each morning with the feeling that
today, anything could happen and very well
might. Getting your career break, meeting
the love of your life—fantastic things were
just around the bend.
Imagine that spirit, bottled in all four of
us, barely contained in a car whizzing up
I-35. Then picture me, waiting on a curb in
downtown Minneapolis, as my BFF, Katie,
drove up with our wheels. It was not her
parents’ old station wagon, which she usually
drove. It was a rented convertible. It was red.
With floaty scarves and sunglasses, we’d be
motoring in Thelma & Louise style, but with
a better ending.
The photos from that trip show us as
happy as we’d ever been, arms thrown around
each other sitting on the car, waist-deep
in lupines in a roadside ditch, posing on
gigantic slabs of rock on the shore. We were
at that sweet intersection of adulthood and
6 JUNE/JULY 2012 www.crwmagazine.com
childhood: old enough to get in a car and
drive, girl enough to simply play. A road trip
will do that for you.
You could motor north (as we did),
but why go that far? We have so much to
celebrate and enjoy within an hour of our
very doors here in the Coulee Region, and
those destinations—along with the women
behind them—are what we sought out in this
issue of Coulee Region Women. Fill up the gas
tank (just once) and enjoy an art tour through
the Bluff Country, a day of exploration
in Viroqua and Westby or a day pedaling
the bike trails of Onalaska or Sparta. Meet
women who have made Galesville a shopping
destination, women who have made a family
tradition of growing apples in Trempealeau,
women who have established Winona in the
art world and women who promote the area
through tourism organizations.
We invite you to spend your summer
cruising the Coulee Region in your own
style. Revisit that childlike sense of discovery
and delight. Come to see your surroundings
in a new light. Dip into that sense of
possibility. You might find exactly what
you’re hoping for just around the bend—and
we promise you a happy ending right here in
the Coulee Region!
Issue 62, Volume 11, Number 2
JuNe/July 2012
PuBlisheR
Diane raaum
eDiToR
Betty Christiansen
PRoofReADing
Leah Call
DesigneRs
renee Chrz, innovative graphics, LLC
Lisa houghton Design
mARkeTing ACCounT RePResenTATives
Carol schank, Director
sandy Clark
Claire ristow-seib
WeB mAsTeR
mader Web Design LLC
PhoTogRAPhy
Janet mootz Photography
megan mcCluskey, Atypik studio
DisTRiBuTion
Citywide marketing services, L.L.C.
Joanne mihm
Coulee Region Women is published six times per
year by Coulee Region Communications, L.L.C.
816 2nd Avenue S., Suite 600, Onalaska, WI 54650.
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©2012 Coulee Region Communications, L.L.C.
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