Hello Everyone! I hope you’ve all had a great week since last I wrote. I can’t believe we’re already halfway through August, but it’s sure been a beautiful week here in Wisconsin. For me, it’s been a week of catching up – catching up on work and catching up with my family in the Greater Milwaukee area. Since my dad is from Milwaukee and I spent a lot of time here as a kid, there is a lot of familiarity to it even though it’s been many years since I last spent time in the area. It’s been great though, and I’m really enjoying it.
When I finished this post last week, I headed over to the Neville Public Museum in Green Bay. Right as I parked and got out of my van, the tornado sirens started going off downtown. The museum was clearly a better option than my van in a tornado, so I headed inside. The staff was great and moved us all into the theater to wait it out. Thankfully the tornados passed us by and I could go ahead and get a look at the museum. There were some interesting artifacts there, but I really wanted to learn more about the history of Green Bay and it didn’t quite deliver on that for me. I did enjoy the museum but I would have loved a better organized permanent collection. The top highlight was a very cool model of Lambeau Field built entirely out of Legos which was definitely worth seeing. When I left the museum, I went to a delicious little spot called PhoComa downtown. Green Bay (and Southern Wisconsin) has a huge Hmong population who settled there after escaping from Southeast Asia at the end of the Vietnam War. I have definitely been craving some good Southeast Asian food for a while, and this place was amazing. After dinner I went to see the Green Bay Booyah baseball team play. They play in the Northwoods League with the Traverse City Pitspitters, and that night they were playing against Racine. The storms had cleared out and it turned into a beautiful night for baseball, but the Booyah couldn’t pull one out for the home town crowd.
Fond du Lac Lighthouse
Thursday I headed out of Green Bay and drove through downtown Appleton to see where Harry Houdini spent much of his adult life. It seemed like a nice enough place but there was nothing to keep me there. I moved on to Fond Du Lac at the bottom of Lake Winnebago and visited the Lighthouse Park for great views out over the lake. Lake Winnebago is a massive lake but can’t really compare to the nearby Great Lakes. The Fox River passes through Lake Winnebago and connects the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River. It’s also one of the few northern flowing rivers in the country and was a major route for early traders. I really enjoyed learning about the area at the local Visitors Center but had to keep moving so I headed on towards Milwaukee where I met my cousin Emma at her office for an evening event. I got there a little early so we could catch up as it’s been 8 years since I saw her last. We had a great chat and then moved into the music venue at her office which does a monthly livestream of a local band. That night we got to see the wonderful duo of Andreas Transo and Charlene Adzima on guitar and fiddle, playing Irish tinged folk music with some definite Wisconsin flare. They were amazing and I really enjoyed the show and especially seeing it with my cousin.
State Fair!!
The next day was State Fair Day for me and I was so excited to go. When I was growing up, the Wisconsin State Fair was a definite highlight of the summer for me every year I went. I’ve often said that one of these days I would make it back and on Friday “one of these days” became “today”. It hasn’t changed that much in the 30+ years since I was there last, which made it even more fun for me. I enjoyed some delicious food while I was there flavored with a healthy dose of nostalgia. The Lions Club has been roasting corn at the State Fair for many years and it’s the corn on the cob that I measure all others against. I was so happy to find that it was as good as I remembered it to be. Another big highlight of the fair is their cream puffs, of which they sell 400,000 every year. They were also as delicious as they were when I was a kid. I wandered the barns and saw all the prize-winning animals and loved watching newly hatched chickens take their first steps. I stopped in several of the beer gardens to raise a few pints, rode the giant slide and the sky-coaster and eventually settled in for some live music at the Budweiser pavilion. The band that night was the Love Monkeys who have been playing at the State Fair for 30 years. They are a cover band, but played music which mostly came from my high school and college years. Because of this, the crowd was mostly around my age and it was so much fun to watch. I hadn’t planned on staying all day, but I was at the fair from open until close.
All of that fun and walking around in the sun left me pretty tired and I slept in on Saturday which was a great plan. A little bit later in the day I headed on down closer to downtown Milwaukee and toured the Pabst Mansion, the last house built by Captain Pabst in his adopted hometown. Pabst went from a deckhand to a captain to the largest producer of lager beer in the world in his life and built a beautiful house to show off his fortune. Many years after his death, the house was sold to the Archdiocese of Milwaukee which housed their bishops there. They kept it up pretty well, but after many years the house started to show its age. It was slated to be knocked down and turned into a parking lot for the adjacent Holiday Inn when a group of citizens stepped in and stopped the demolition plans. They have done a great job restoring the home and I enjoyed seeing it. When I finished my tour and the mandatory can of PBR that followed, I headed up to meet Emma in West Bend. We had a few drinks downtown and then her husband and a few friends joined in and we went out for dinner at a great pizza joint just outside of town called Maricio’s. It was really great – the cheese here is fresh and really flavorful which makes a huge difference. We went for a drink afterwards and then I went and stayed at their place that night.
On Sunday I spent some time with them in the morning and then headed over to my uncle and aunt’s house which is right down the road. Emma and her husband joined us, as did her sister Kaytlyn and her husband. The last time I was here was for Kaytlyn’s wedding and it was so great to spend the day with this side of my family. I got to hear some fun stories about my grandparents and their parents and we had a really good time together. After dinner I was pretty beat, so I called it an early night.
While I was there, we did make plans to go to the Milwaukee Brewers baseball game on Friday when my Washington Nationals are in town, but I really couldn’t stay in Milwaukee until then. So I decided to head out to Madison for a few days and see the State Capital and then head back midweek so I can catch the game and see what else I want to see in Milwaukee. I got to Madison just after lunch and went straight to the State Capitol building for a tour. I had a wonderful tour of the building and learned some great little tidbits of Wisconsin history while I was there. My favorite story was about a bald eagle named Old Abe which served as the mascot for one of Wisconsin’s army units during the Civil War. Old Abe was marched into battle alongside the US Flag on a perch and was even shot during the battle of Vicksburg. After the war, Old Abe took up residence in the Capitol basement but unfortunately a fire in the building caused him to die of smoke inhalation. He was stuffed and sat in the state House of Representatives until the fire of 1904 which burned much of the building and Old Abe along with it. Another eagle has taken his place as a tribute to Old Abe and his place in Wisconsin history.
After visiting the Capitol, I headed out to the library to catch up on some work and then went for a nice long wander on the campus of the University of Wisconsin. Both of my parents went to UW, so it was fun to walk around and imagine them being there 50 years ago. I went back to the Capitol to take a few pictures in the fading daylight and then walked over to Lake Mendota to watch the sun set. I grabbed some dinner on State Street before calling it a night.
Yesterday I wanted to spend the day in the museums, but the state history museum is apparently only open on Thursday through Saturday from 11-3. I simply can’t imagine a state museum of that magnitude only open three days a week for four hours. They had something posted about CDC guidelines which is clearly just passing the buck to a convenient scapegoat. I was truly disappointed, but went around the corner to the Wisconsin Veterans Museum which didn’t blame the CDC and actually was open. It was a great museum with a look at America’s wars since Wisconsin became a state. Their descriptions were succinct and well done and they had some wonderful dioramas depicting the wars. From there I headed out to the National Mustard Museum in Middleton. It was a little silly, but it was open and worth a quick stop. They had over 6000 types of mustard there in their collection and offered about 50 different types for a taste test. When I had had my fill of mustard, I wandered back to Madison and went to visit my fraternity’s house and chapter at the University. It’s always nice to have a connection to these schools and I enjoyed seeing their home and learning about their chapter. One of the young men there mentioned that their home football opener is against Penn State in Madison in just two weeks. I may have to make a return trip for the game. From there I wandered down to the Student Union for a beer and some delicious University of Wisconsin creamery ice cream while the sun set over Lake Mendota. It was a beautiful place to be, although I know it’s a very different scene in January (although probably still quite beautiful). When the sun set, I wandered back up to my van and headed out to the Ho-Chunk Casino for the night. I didn’t like the casino at all, but it was a nice place to park for the night.
I was up early this morning and made my way down for a quick stop at Lake Geneva before making my way on to Kenosha. I had a delicious breakfast at Frank’s Diner, a Kenosha institution since 1926. The diner was built by the Jerry O’Mahoney Company in New Jersey and sent west on a rail car to Kenosha. When it arrived, it was dragged to its current location by a six horse team and there it’s been ever since. I’ve been in a lot of diners in my life, but this one was one of my favorites. I got a half-order of breakfast and still took half of it with me for lunch. With a full belly I headed on to the Kenosha Civil War Museum which told the fascinating story of Midwesterners’ contributions to the Civil War, both on the front lines and on the homefront. Since most of my time studying the Civil War has been looking at the Eastern Theater and the Deep South, it was very interesting to see a different perspective. There were wonderful dioramas and an excellent film as well. I appreciated the modern scholarship of this museum and found that it got many things right that a lot of other museums seem to get wrong or omit altogether. It was definitely worth a stop. From there, I went across the channel to the Kenosha History Museum which was small but gave a feel for the history of Kenosha and the people who had lived there. I learned that the Native Americans in the Midwest would often fill their birch bark canoes with rocks and sink them in the early winter and that they would sit, under the ice, until the spring thaw. This kept them from drying out and cracking. The museum also went into some of the manufacturing history of the town, including Kenosha’s long history with automobile manufacturing which lasted almost a hundred years. Kenosha has done a wonderful job reimagining itself in the wake of losing many of its industries and I find it to be a clean and pleasant little town with a beautiful setting right on Lake Michigan. I like it here.
When I finish this up, I’m going to go wander around downtown for a while and then go check out the tiki bar in town a little later on. Tomorrow, I’ll be on my way back to Milwaukee for the rest of the week which I’m really looking forward to. Beyond the Friday night baseball game, it’s also Irish Fest weekend in the city which I will also be attending. I plan on having a really relaxed Sunday and then heading up to Door County for a few days before heading out across the state. I haven’t made any big plans yet, but I hope to really sit down and look at Wisconsin this weekend and make some before I start out. I may still be in Door County this time next week, but we’ll see how it goes. I hope you’ll come back and find out what I get into. Have a wonderful week out there wherever you are, and I really appreciate you following along.
-Mike