After a number of years living in Eau Claire, I needed to relocate to a town about an hour south east. For the sake of this blog post I will not name the town, but it starts with "N" and ends in "ville." I am sure the fine readers will figure that one out. Anyway, I was there for a couple of months and I noticed many things. The biggest thing I noticed were the people. It seemed as if everyone and I mean everyone was in a hurry, and wanted to keep to themselves. I asked around (I have a few family members in the area) where are all the community activities, where is the culture in this town? They just starred at me and broke out the overly used title that people associate to persons that are laid back – "Hippie." I laughed it off and kept up my search. It didn't take long for me to find that there just wasn't anything in this town. I did find a farmers market, if you can call it that. A few local people selling a few goods, nothing like the Valley. Now I do realize that yes this is a smaller town and everything, but things have to start somewhere. I started asking around again for people to contact about starting events or what the process was. Nobody knew – this was disappointing. I was just shocked that, only an hour away, people changed in a big way. In the end I came back to Eau Claire, and in only five days, I have done more and met more people then I did in two months in the other town. I missed you Chippewa Valley, thank you for welcoming me back with open arms.