Wisconsin Is Corny!

No insult intended, just an observation as we drove west to east across Wisconsin. The state is covered by cornfields, with accompanying silos and barns. At this time of year the corn stalks are sand-color and dry, but still very pretty.

Although we saw it in the rain, Milwaukee is a nice little city. We toured the Eisner Museum of Advertising, drove by the palatial Pabst Mansion and a Greek Orthodox Church designed by my favorite architect, Frank Lloyd Wright.

Racine, south of Milwaukee, was another enjoyable destination. We saw the S.C. Johnson Company administration building (designed by you-know-who). It's famous for lily-pad shaped columns in an impressive three-story open work space. Wingspread, the nearby Johnson family home, was equally impressive; no surprise, as it was also designed by you-know-who. The great room is spacious, with a huge center fireplace that has hearths on four sides. An amusing, unique feature of the dining room: the table is on wheels so that it can be pulled into the kitchen by the staff, then cleared, reset with the next course, and pushed back into the dining room, all while the family and guests remain in their chairs.

South of Racine we stopped at the Jelly Belly warehouse tour, with info about how jelly beans are made, a gift shop, and free samples galore! Believe it or not, they have a Dog Food flavor jelly bean ( I preferred Pomegranate...).

Our campground near Milwaukee offered a long-standing Wisconsin tradition: the Friday Fish Fry! We chatted with a few local characters during dinner... A note about campground culture: The thing to do is make a fire in a metal ring outside of your RV, which is the "signal" that you're hoping for company to come by, sit, and shoot the breeze. Another campground note, a first for us: at this particular RV park, in order to take a shower, you had to feed 50 cents into a little box next to the shower controls! Luckily, the water didn't stop while I had soap in my eyes.

The Great Lakes are dotted with lighthouses (surprising to me, I thought the east coast, especially Maine, had all the lighthouses). The lakes are so big that whitecaps are common and shipwrecks have been known to happen.

Earlier in the week we were in Minneapolis/St. Paul. Both are attractive cities with plenty to do. Our favorite was the Minnesota History Center. Museums these days are "interactive" which means there are short films, music, hands-on exhibits, many clever and fun displays. Not like old-fashioned museums, where everything was in a glass case. We had lunch in "Dinkytown" (really, that's the name), a college area full of cool cafes and little shops. We learned that the economy of Minneapolis was once dominated by flour mills and saw the exterior of an art museum designed by Frank Gehry, with his signature wavy/shiny/silver walls.

Today we complete one month on the road. We're liking it...

Patty