My month in Wisconsin

My take on Wisconsin

where I went this month

I made this map larger than I usually do because the yellow marker is hard to see in a photo of the whole state.  And also not as noticeable because I spent much of the month following the water (I used to outline my pictures before I crayoned them).


The Land of Wisconsin

Wisconsin must be one of our most scenic states.  It doesn't have much in the way of mountains (its highest point is 1,951' high), but it does have some serious canyons carved by various prehistoric glaciers and present rivers.  Combined with hills in much of the state, they provide relief for the flatter land in the center, where the glaciers did a grinding, flattening number on the land.

For not having a coastline, Wisconsin does pretty well at taking advantage of all its contacts with other bodies of water - most notably the Mississippi River, a bit of Lake Superior, and a lot of Lake Michigan.

As I've mentioned earlier, it's got a lot of pretty large rivers, quite a few creeks and streams, and multiple large and small lakes scattered throughout the state.  Forests everywhere, with a variety of evergreen and deciduous trees.

Wisconsin's Lake Winnebago has the world's largest number of sturgeon.

I heard what I'm pretty sure was a loon.  It's the first time I've ever heard it, which is why I'm unsure, but the bird book says they're in the area where I was (the Lake Superior coast) and when I heard it, somehow I just thought first, "what on earth is that?" and second, "I'll bet that's a loon."  I see why people describe it as haunting.


The People of Wisconsin

Almost everyone I met was pleasant and helpful.

When people learned I was from elsewhere, the first question they always asked was, "What do you think of Wisconsin."  And when I said it's a beautiful state, they always instantly agreed.  People wanted to tell me places I should visit, things I should see - trying to help me find what they think is wonderful about the state.

I met a few people who said they'd rather be living somewhere else, but every time they meant moving to the big city (Green Bay, for instance) or moving back to the rural areas from the city.  Nobody said they'd rather be in another state.  Everybody said that the winters could be hard and long, but several people went out of their way to tell me they were getting much milder than in the past.


Life Here

Wisconsinites celebrate their heritage, both in ancestry (43% German, 9% Polish (highest percentage in the US)) and in industry (the US makes more cheese than any other country and Wisconsin makes more cheese than any other state - it is after all America's Dairyland).

Wisconsinites aren't particularly diverse racially (it's 83% white), but they are in character: Milwaukee alone has produced Justice William Rehnquist, Gene Wilder, Woody Herman, Spencer Tracy and Steve Miller.  There seems to be a strong sense of self-reliance while valuing community.

They have a sense of humor.  For example, at one campground instead of the usual "watch out for children playing" signs I saw "Caution: Cage Free Children At Play."

As far as I could tell, the whole state enjoys the out-of-doors in one way or another.  They go swimming, hiking (there are trails all over the state), camping, sportfishing, sailing, skiing (water and snow), ATVing and snowmobiling.

They love their Green Bay Packers.  Of course, Green Bay decorates for its home team, but the house in this photo is in Mazomanie, a town near Madison, many miles away.  I saw Packers support all over the state.

Driving in Wisconsin

I got the impression that drivers here are willing to accommodate you but not willing to go to much extra trouble for you.  Not the ultra-polite drivers of Ohio and Indiana, but not hard to live with either.  They're a little casual about speed limits, but they're not aggressive about it (as in Texas, for instance).

The roads here are generally pretty good.  There are some stretches where they could use some work, but overall the governments maintain them pretty well.  This to me is a little unusual because so very many of the roads I spent the month on were county roads, or even local roads, and despite the acknowledged hard winter weather they were still in pretty good shape.


What I Didn't See That I Wanted To See

Lots of things, despite all my driving around.  I mentioned some of them as the month went on, but there are others I just never got to.

I was already gone from the Lake Superior coast before I found my note to visit the Copper Crow Distillery near Bayfield.  I'd heard about it on NPR months ago - it's a Native enterprise that makes vodka and rum.

I wished I'd had time for Racine, the home of Western Publishing Co., which produces Little Golden Books.  It's also the location of SC Johnson Co. (Pledge®, Raid®, Drano®, and Windex®, for examples); their headquarters building was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and is world-renowned.  Racine also has Wind Point Lighthouse, the tallest and oldest still in use on Lake Michigan.

I had one small taste of cheese curds, but it wasn't really enough for me to know whether I like them or not.  Many people here are fanatics about them and eat them in many different flavors - like potato chips come in.

And despite spending a month in the Cheese State, I never made it to a cheese factory that produces the stuff.  They're all over the state so I have no excuse except running out of time.

I didn't see one of Wisconsin's best known areas: the Dells.  That's where the Wisconsin River narrows into a gorge gouged out by glaciers.  The name Dells was Anglicized from that given by early French explorers, who called it a dalles, meaning narrows or rapids (Oregon's Dalles are spelled correctly, apparently).  I'm told this is one of the beauty spots of the state.

The city of Appleton has the Outagamie Museum, which is known for its Houdini exhibit.  The magician used to live here and the museum has many of the things he used in his acts.  I decided not to go this trip because they charge $12 admission, which I decided was too much for what I expected to be a fairly quick and limited visit.  But another time when I can stay longer, I'd be very interested.

I'd love to spend more time in Door County.  I could take the ferry to Washington Island for a day; they have the US's largest Icelandic population, for some reason.  Door County has more coastline than any other US county, and going on a sailboat from Egg Harbor looks like it'd be something special.  I'd like more time to poke around the villages and to relax on the shores.

Similarly, I'd like to take the ferry to the Apostle Islands and see the largest collection of lighthouses in the country.


Conclusion

I liked Wisconsin a lot and can understand why Wisconsinites do too.  It seems to be a comfortable place to live.  People don't seem to be particularly fussed about things in general (other than Packers football).

Of course, it's got some real screwed up political situations, too - I don't just mean left vs. right, I mean an outgoing Legislature binding the constitutionally-authorized hands of the incoming administration?  That's a stunt neither side should be proud of; it just happened to be Republicans doing it to Democrats this time in this state, but there are other states where the Democrats currently dominate and if this maneuver succeeds through court challenges, democracy isn't safe, in my opinion.

Wisconsin is a beautiful state - beautiful in a laid-back kind of way.  Its beauty comes from heavily-treed river valleys, glacier-gouged gorges, acres of crops, huge forests, the shores of two beautiful Great Lakes, a lot of wildlife - like that.  Nothing really spectacular, just calmly beautiful.

I'd like very much to come back for another visit, preferably in the fall after the main part of camping season is over and when the leaves start to turn.  But could I ever live here?  There're no mountains nearer than West Virginia and no ocean; so even if I could see Lake Michigan as a substitute for the ocean, I do love mountains.

a visitor to my picnic table

August 28 - 31 - Lake Michigan, Milwaukee and southern Wisconsin

I wanted to see as much of the shoreline as I could before I left Lake Michigan so spent several hours driving from Potawatomi State Park down the scenic route to Milwaukee, and from there across to our campground.  From there I went back to the Madison area for our last couple of nights - it was the beginning of the Labor Day weekend and getting a reservation was tricky, and they gave me one in a spot I thought we could live with.


Route Maps

route on Wednesday the 28th

close-up of Milwaukee route on the 28th

route on Friday the 30th

Campgrounds

* Country View Campground, Mukwonago - Decent campground that looks like it used to be a KOA, based on the main building; family-run operation with teenage girls behind the counter and the dad sitting in an easy chair watching TV.  But they were all pleasant and polite and helpful, and the campground was more comfortable than I'd thought at first.  The front section has very few trees, and the back section is nothing but trees.  But I got the campsite I wanted and there was plenty of room to walk the dogs, so who can complain.

* Madison/DeForest KOA - I was back at this campground I'd stayed in earlier in the month.  It's still comfortable, even though it was jam packed for the holiday weekend.  But there was one odd thing - I've worked out a schedule for walking the dogs that has so far avoided almost all other dogs, and here it didn't work.  It seemed like nearly half the campground had one or more dogs with them, which upped my chances anyway of seeing one.  But even on my early walks when I can always be assured of being alone, I'd see one or two or three dogs each walk.  It was crazy.  I mean, how many people would you expect to see walking their dogs at 5:45 in the morning?  I'll be so glad when this holiday weekend is over.  And even more glad when people stop this silly camping hobby until next summer.


Comments from the road

I finally passed a field of this crop I've been seeing growing throughout Michigan and Wisconsin located where I could stop and take a photo without risking a car wreck.  I still don't know what it is, but maybe Kris's idea of soybeans is the right one.

I saw 4 Blue Jays together, which is pretty unusual for me and I was glad to see them.  Maybe a family.

I passed through the town of Algoma, population 3,100, and saw some large murals about local history.  There aren't any photos online that I can use, so I'm sorry I didn't stop to take any myself.  There are a couple at this link that you can see, if you want.   doorcountypulse.com/the-murals-of-algoma

The wind was really blowing hard today from west to east, making driving a challenge to drive southward.  I didn't turn westward until the afternoon, when the wind had died down at least a bit.

Continuing the names-like-Alaska trend I mentioned the other day, I passed through the town of Alaska today, where I saw the Alaskan Supper Club and Motel.  And the town of Two Rivers (south of the even smaller town of Two Creeks) is home to Machute's Supper Club.  What is this "supper club" thing?

Some tourist-service government person was being interviewed on the radio about places people could go for Labor Day weekend, and she pointed out many people [including me] don't realize that freshwater bodies can produce beaches and that Wisconsin has many really nice ones.

Along those lines, the city of Sheboygan calls itself the Malibu of the Midwest, and claims to have the best surfing on the Great Lakes, especially in midwinter [when any sane person would be sitting inside with a hot toddy].

I also heard that the Lake Michigan Flyway is very active during bird migration and 234 species have been spotted in the area.

Kewaunee County advertises itself as offering "The Good Life on a Great Lake."

I passed the Luxembourg American Museum.  Didn't know there is one, did you?

I saw a bumper sticker on the car of a young black man that said, "The Hippies Were Right."  And there you have it.

Jefferson County, where my campground is, has a sign saying it's "Dementia Friendly."  I have no idea what that's about.


Milwaukee

I was so far behind in the blog postings that I hated to take the time to see anything else, but I also hated to leave Wisconsin without having seen anything at all of its largest city, other than the state fairgrounds.

front of the Milwaukee Public Market

mascot

I saw somewhere that Milwaukee has a public market and thought it might be like Seattle's or Philadelphia's so decided to go.  I was a little daunted when I saw it doesn't open until 10 AM - most city's markets open earlier - but still decided it was worth a shot.  But when I saw the front of the building I changed my mind.  You can see in this photo how very attractive and civilized it is, with all the tables and umbrellas for people to sit outside with their coffee or lunch.  I was expecting something much more functional, grittier I guess, and lost interest in seeing the inside.  It's an old market, as maybe you can tell from the mascot on the sign, so maybe I should have given it a chance.  But instead I walked the dogs around for a while and left to go for a bit of a driving tour.

This photo (below left) of the city hall just presented itself while I was sitting at a red light, and I never got a better view.  The building dates back to 1895 and was the tallest building in town for the next 80 years or so.

The Menomonee River runs all the way through town - I guess the city built up on its banks, because the river empties into Lake Michigan not far from where I took this photo (below right).  So there are bridges everywhere and it makes the city very pleasant to me.

Menomonee River in Milwaukee

Milwaukee City Hall

I'd heard that Milwaukee had mansions along the lake shore - a slight twist on the house-between-road-and-water routine - and I decided to try to find them.

They're there, all right.  Miles of them.  Some of them were far enough from the road that they had a lot of landscaping as a buffer, but others were on a much narrower strip of land.  Some clearly qualified as mansions, while others were just very very nice houses.  Here's a small sample.

the water is barely visible in rear

the nothing behind the house is Lk Michigan

gives you an idea of the sort of cozy homes they have

From somewhere I'd heard that one of Wisconsin's contributions to the country's cuisine is the butter burger, which is (no surprise) a hamburger patty cooked with a pat of butter on it.  The originator of this culinary delight is reputed to be Solly's Grille in Milwaukee, so that's where I went.

I ordered Solly's Original.  The very nice waitress gave me a choice of cheese or no cheese, and boiled onions or no boiled onions.  I'd heard that the onions are part of the deal so went for them, but decided that burgers and butter were rich enough without the cheese.  And this photo shows what I got.  Very greasy paper and greasy burger with no condiments whatever - just bun, burger, butter, onions and grease.  It was good but certainly not something I'd go out of my way for ordinarily.  Or order again, for that matter.

But I did get one great thing out of it - the menu said they serve Sprecher's Root Beer which, they claimed, is America's best and made only 2 blocks away.  So I ordered it and it really is good root beer.  And when I was walking the dogs later, I found the Sprecher's facility, scarcely even 2 blocks away.  And a sign said they offer tours, which is certainly something I'd want to do when I come back.

Solly's is the kind of place where they have a sign: "Our credit manager is Mrs. Helen Waite.  If you want credit, you can go to Helen Waite."

I passed the former Schlitz Brewing Co., including a building with an onion dome, though I didn't take a photo and can't find an uncopyrighted one online.  Schlitz was once known as "The Beer That Made Milwaukee Famous" so I think it's sad that it scarcely exists anymore.  The company was sold several times and, over the years, the original beer recipe was lost.  When Pabst bought it, they reverse-engineered it and began producing it again, though not in Milwaukee.  The buildings now are part of something called Schlitz Park, which seems to be a conglomeration of things, though if it includes a park I didn't see it.

I saw somewhere that the Miller Brewing Co. offers tours of its packaging and shipping center, but that doesn't sound as interesting to me as the brewing end so I didn't check further.

I drove for several hours in the morning and had a couple more hours of driving ahead in the afternoon so didn't stay in town very long.  But I can say that I liked it a lot, it gave me a good feeling for some reason, and I'd be glad to go again sometime when I have more time.

August 25 - 28 - Door County and Potowatomi State Park

Door County, the farthest half of Wisconsin's little finger (my version), aka Thumb (their version), is considered by Wisconsinites and many others as having among the most beautiful scenery in this scenic state.  So I realized soon after I came to Wisconsin that I might have trouble finding a camping spot in the vicinity on a weekend, and I planned my visit there for the slower camping days of the week.  Even with that it wasn't easy, and I was glad I'd made a reservation a couple of weeks in advance.

Because my campground - Potowatomi State Park - is so close to my previous campground, and because there was a forecast for serious rain in the next few days, I decided to travel around the peninsula the same day I was changing campgrounds.  Turned out to be a good idea.


Route map

route for Sunday the 25th, starting from the far bottom left and heading to the top right

Campground

* Potowatomi State Park - As with all Wisconsin state parks, this one is heavily wooded, well cared for, with large campsites.  None of them has water at the site, though about half of the sites do have electricity.  And again, no wifi either with their signal or with my hotspot.  So I spent 3 peaceful days there, but frustrating too because it's not that easy for me to work on posts when I can't see how they'll fit in to the blog, and when I can't add photos with the expectation that they'll transfer over.  And even there I ended up with neighbors who didn't believe in telling their dogs to stop barking.  And I did indeed get heavily rained on.  But the campsite and roads drained well, and I still had a pleasant stay.


Comments along the road

This house is a sample of the house-between-road-and-water scenario I've been seeing for 2 months now.  That body of water is the east shore of Green Bay.

I passed the Belgian Heritage Center near the village of Brussels, which I guess makes sense.

I saw this at a wayside area

full view of well site

You know from my previous Peshtigo post that the fire this sign refers to is the one that razed Peshtigo and all the forests in the area.  I'm glad to know that, because otherwise this sign doesn't make as much sense.

This was at a rest area, where my dogs were made much of by a woman in her 60s and her daughter.  The daughter had no boundaries at all, which is a phrase I've never understood until now, and she only heard about a quarter of anything I said.  I was explaining to them how I ended up living in the RV, saying after my momma died I'd have been homeless, and this seemed a reasonable alternative.  The daughter jumped in and said, You're homeless?  So I went on to explain about my month-per-state traveling plan, which the mom was envious of and the daughter didn't listen to, and the daughter asked if I'd come stay with them for a few days.

I thought she just wanted more info on my travels, which seemed weird enough, but then she said, I'm sure we can have you back on your feet in no time.  I've lived under bridges myself and you don't need to worry."  It took me a minute to realize she was fixated on my "homeless" remark and wanted to make me a project.  I could barely get away from her, though her mom, who was a hospice nurse, appeared to have a better grip on reality.  But it was a very weird incident.  Just showing campgrounds aren't the only places where I can meet loony people.

Sturgeon Bay (the city) is the largest town in Door County with 9,000+ residents; it sits on Sturgeon Bay (the body of water) and seems a lovely place.  Several bridges across the bay, many marinas for the many boats.  In fact, Sturgeon Bay is known as a shipbuilding center and I passed plenty of evidence showing that's still quite an active enterprise.

The photo on the right was taken at another rest area, that was also apparently a popular boat launch - I saw 15 boat trailers parked near where this photo was taken.  It's looking out over where Green Bay flows from Lake Michigan.  Pretty, huh?

right side of the same view

left side of the view coming into Little Harbor

Little Harbor is the name of the harbor as well as the village, just out of sight of that right-hand photo.  As picturesque as the harbor.  I passed a place called the Little Harbor Inn, just above the water on the water side of the road.  It looked so pleasant and relaxing I was tempted to just stop right there and spend a few days.

The slightly larger town of Egg Harbor has a population of 801.  This is not an overpopulated part of the country, though I imagine if you live here, you think it's populated enough.  I talked with a woman who said she'd lived here all her life and loved it.  Said her daughter had recently moved back here with her husband and children and bought the very successful store the woman was working in.  At the end she added, "Hard winters, though."

Cherry orchards up here, with "pick your own" signs.

The Edgewater Cottages at Sister Bay (both a town (pop. 876) and a body of water) also looked a very comfortable place to stay.  It would be a very pleasant vacation to fly into Milwaukee (only a few hours away by car), rent a car and drive up here to spend a week or two sitting around one of these small motels or B&Bs staring at the water, maybe taking a water tour or renting a boat or driving around to these tiny towns with their crafts and antiques and produce shops.  For myself I think I'd come in the early fall, after the majority of the tourists have left and when the trees are starting to change.

Everybody's right on this one: it's truly gorgeous up here.  Very pleasant, very comfortable, very relaxed.

I passed the village of Ephraim (pop. 288), that has a yacht club.  Also a Sled Dog Discovery Center, which I'd think said something about their winters, except I found online that there's one in Juneau, Alaska, and after spending 15 years there I can say that's one of the last places I'd expect to see sled dogs (plenty of snow, no place to sled on), so maybe this is a tourist thing.  Anyway, it's there.

At the end of Door County peninsula is a ferry terminal, where you can go over to Washington Island.

In my photo, you can see the end of the ferry dock on the far right, the breakwater, and beyond that Plum Island, while very far back is Washington Island.

Washington Island has a year-round community of about 700 and a lot of summer tourism - there are multiple ferry trips daily.

The road at the ferry terminal is called Porte des Mortes Drive, which I gradually translated to myself as Death's Door - not encouraging so much better to be in French (which I never took and relied on the Latin I did take to translate).  That body of water is Lake Michigan.  Pretty lake, huh?

On the way back to the campground, I passed yet another marker for the 45th Parallel, but this one was more erudite than they usually are, so I took this photo.

It did pour down rain the next day, as forecast, and I found out later it rained more than 2".  The good part about that for me is that nobody in the campground wanted to walk their dogs any farther than they had to, so I could walk mine with far fewer worries than when it's sunny.  Perverse sort of life I'm leading - but it should be better in a few weeks when camping season winds down.

Little Chute

There I was, driving around a pastoral countryside, minding my own business, when I stumbled on this windmill.  I couldn't believe my eyes, because I now know what a real windmill looks like (thanks to the one in Holland, MI) and this sure looked like the real thing.

front of the building

So we parked and I walked the dogs around the block.  Out front there was a sign saying they offered walking tours of the town on Saturdays, which this was, but I was really just interested in the windmill and didn't want to park my dogs, so I just stuck my head in the door to ask.  And learned that yes, this is in fact a real working 1858 windmill, the last to be imported from the Netherlands.

I told them I'd taken a tour of the one in Holland that claimed to be the only working windmill in the US and claimed they were the last to be shipped out of the Netherlands.  And the people at this one smiled and said, well, you know how those folks in Michigan exaggerate.

But this one wasn't originally an intact windmill and instead was constructed of pieces of fallen-down windmills and that's what was shipped.  So maybe they can both claim to be the last.  And maybe that's also why this one doesn't have to have a Dutch-certified miller operating it like the Michigan one does - because this one wasn't shipped as a functioning entity as the other one was.

It was clear this one was restored, because it's really a pretty building.  The sky was quite overcast when we were there so all my photos came out without much definition.  I lightened them up as much as I could, but you can't really get a clear view of the beautiful details.

rear of the building

close-up of the windmill

The town, Little Chute, doesn't appear to have any particular connection with the Netherlands until you take a close look at the names on the local businesses and the patrons of the public buildings - all very Dutch.

I was getting back in the RV when another vehicle pulled into the parking lot, a pickup with a Ted Cruz bumper sticker.  And while I was wondering why a Wisconsinite would be a Cruz supporter I noticed the Texas license plates.  So of course I went over to talk to them, and once I pointed out my own license plate, they understood why I'd noticed the Cruz sticker.  A nice family from San Antonio visiting in the area.

I haven't seen anything anywhere telling me this windmill is here, so it was just luck that I was driving around the area (trying to get away from the uncomfortable neighbors in the campground) and stumbled on it.  Shows how many treasures are hidden in America's towns, small and large, just waiting to be stumbled upon.

National Railroad Museum

I don't remember where I heard about this museum, but it was well worth my time.

As I was pulling into the parking lot, I saw people getting on board a train and suddenly remembered there were train rides every 2 hours, so if I missed this one I'd most likely miss taking the ride.  I barely took the time to open the RV's windows for the pets and raced over to ask the conductor if I was too late, and he said he'd hold the train if I'd hustle.  So I hustled and they started right after I was on board.

The train makes 2 loops around the rail yard and down the river a little way - I think 2 loops partly to give us a longer ride and partly because they've got so much to tell us about they couldn't cram it all into 1 loop.

hobo symbols

more hobo symbols

The hobo culture began after the Civil War; soldiers were released from service where they'd last been fighting, and they had to find their own way back home.  "Hobo" is short for "homeward bound" and the ex-soldiers either had to walk home or jump on the trains.  They developed a language to pass on information to others on the rails, and the symbols shown here are only a few of them.

The symbols above from left to right:
   * Boxcar Betty was the nickname of a hobo - many of them created their own personas and left a sign to show where they'd been
   * Danger - Water to show the water near where the symbol was found wasn't good to drink
   * Enthusiastic cops and jailers - who were happy to find and jail hobos for any or no reason
   * that upside down Y shows a place that isn't hobo friendly
   * shows where the train will slow down enough that someone can hop on safely - at a curve or crossing, for instance
   * Bozo the Clown was a real hobo (not just the TV character we saw in the '60s) and this was his personal symbol

I lightened this photo up as much as I could in hopes you could see the attachments on the side of this car that were used to spread gravel to firm up the track area.  The rails were often laid on ground that became soft after rains, causing the trains to sink.  Apparently the gravel was an afterthought that made rail travel more possible.

The photo on the right was taken when the train crossed a bridge, known as a "flying bridge" because we couldn't see the ground or the rails underneath and, when the train was going 50 mph, the passengers would have felt like the train was flying.  In fact, Seaboard Airlines was the name of a train.

Our train didn't have a caboose, though there were several at the museum.  They were used until the 1980s.

Our conductor, who was full of information, told us people would sometimes have weddings here, and they'd get a special train ride for the wedding party.  I love trains, but it seemed like this would be a little dirty for traditional wedding attire.  But lots of fun.

example of a standard station

This exhibit explains that the railroads eventually found it less expensive to have one standard type of station and build that same building along the routes.

This photo doesn't show the ball that hung from a pole near many of the smaller stations as a way of communicating with the engineers.  When the ball was at its highest point it meant there were no passengers or freight to pick up, and our language added the phrase "highball it," meaning full steam ahead.

When the ball was dropped to the ground, it meant the train needed to stop to pick up waiting passengers.

rear of the train

front of the Aerotrain

half of Aerotrain explanation

2nd half of Aerotrain explanation

explaining how cars phased out passenger trains

rest of explanation

I think I rode in a car like this in the '50s in Texas

the engine of our sightseeing train

a gen-u-ine Silver Streak

There's far more at this museum than I took the time for, and quite a few exhibits that I haven't bothered to post here.  It's a great place for families and train enthusiasts - not so great for pet owners, because they restrict pets to one small area off to the side, so I drove the critters to a nearby neighborhood and we walked along the sidewalks.  Otherwise, I'm really glad I went.

Green Bay

I'd figured Green Bay for a football town, and that seems to be the right guess.  But it's more than that.  It has 104,000 residents and is known in some circles for the National Railroad Museum, which I'm doing a separate post for.  It seems to be a lovely town with a number of historic buildings. 

But it's also heavily invested in the Green Bay Packers football team.

The Packers are the only publicly owned franchise in the NFL.  Rather than being the property of an individual, partnership, or corporate entity, they are held as of 2016 by 360,760 stockholders.  No one is allowed to hold more than 200,000 shares, which represents approximately four percent of the 5,011,558 shares currently outstanding.  It is this broad-based community support and non-profit structure which has kept the team in Green Bay for nearly a century in spite of being the smallest market in all of North American professional sports.

Green Bay is the only team with this public form of ownership structure in the NFL, grandfathered when the NFL's current ownership policy stipulating a maximum of 32 owners per team, with one holding a minimum 30% stake, was established in the 1980s.  As a publicly held nonprofit, the Packers are also the only American major-league sports franchise to release its financial balance sheet every year.

I copied this off the Wikipedia page labeled Green Bay Packers, Inc., to give an idea of how unusual this team is - the only NFL team that isn't owned by one person or a small group of people and the only one in such a small town.

I saw Bart Starr Drive, Mike McCarthy Drive, and of course Lombardi Drive - a primary road in town that runs past the stadium.

my photo of Lambeau Field

Streets around the area have official street signs that say, "No Parking Day of Packers Game."  And I'm sure the traffic is intense.  Just off to the right of this photo there's a huge area that's labeled Tailgaters Field, though it's paved - nothing field-y about it.  I'm sure that, like a more informal area around the Univ. of Texas stadium, competition for tailgating spaces is intense.

I couldn't help but notice that it's an open air stadium, and I thought about the town being situated at the end of a long body of water off the Great Lakes and about the NFL season lasting into full-on winter, and this is Wisconsin after all, not Florida.  These are hardy players and fans.

I talked with several people who said they loved living in Green Bay, that it's a really pleasant place to live and that people are really nice.  So there you have it.

Rhinelander's Pioneer Park

My route from Arbor Vitae across to Peshtigo took me past the town of Rhinelander.  I'd seen somewhere that they have a logging museum there so decided to stop and learn something about logging in Wisconsin.  Unfortunately, I found the museum doesn't open until 10:00 and we were there before 9:00.  I just didn't want to wait around that long, but it looked interesting and I'll plan to stop when I come back through.

It's a whole lot more than just the logging museum: it's also got an antique saw mill, a restored train depot with rail cars, an old school house, a fire museum, a boating museum complete with antique outboard motors, and a CCC museum that I'd have been very interested in.  And best of all, it's free.

The city owns the park, which also includes ball fields and playgrounds and dog parks and picnic areas.  Nice area.  I walked the dogs while we were there and they found plenty to sniff at.

logging machinery

train depot, including logging car

cars on the Soo RR Line

August 21st - 24th Green Bay area

Over the course of several days, I drove from northern Wisconsin over to Green Bay (the body of water), then along the shoreline to Green Bay (the city) and to the small towns south of there.  This post gives general information about that route and I'll do separate posts about what I found in Green Bay (the city) and in the village of Little Chute.  [Again, I wrote a lot of this on my computer's writing program and my only choices are to retype the whole thing or live with different spacing and appearance.  So sorry - you get the second choice.]

Route Maps

route on Wednesday the 21st to Peshtigo

Friday the 23rd to Apple Creek

route in Green Bay on the 23rd

route on Saturday the 24th near Lake Winnebago

Campgrounds

* Peshtigo's Badger Park Campground – (Peshtigo is pronounced PESH-tih-go) This is a small city park, and I’d had trepidations about staying here just because it’s so small – I figured it wouldn’t have a wifi signal and knew I couldn’t get one on my hotspot, and I usually find it more comfortable to have large areas to walk the dogs in.  But it turned out to be great and, in fact, I decided to stay an extra night.  The campground does have its own wifi signal, and it’s part of a large recreation area that includes a football field for the local school teams and a small pond with walking trails and large green areas that the town uses.  Except there weren’t many in the campground (it was a Wednesday) so my main competition for dog walking was from local townspeople with their dogs.  Very pleasant, very comfortable.

There was even a band playing in the band shell that first night; they have them every other Wednesday during the summer and this was one of them.  This band played what they called early rock and started off their set with an early Beatles song, and when I gave the dogs their last walk before bed it was a CCR tune - you get the idea.  It looked like half the town had turned out, with lawn chairs and blankets on the grass, and most of the campground had their lawn chairs out for the show.  Nice show.

* Apple Creek Campground/De Pere – This was a weird campground and not particularly comfortable, though that wasn’t entirely the fault of the campground.  Fortunately they had a decent wifi signal, because my hotspot still wasn’t picking up anything.  There were no paved roads anywhere in the campground, so I was glad to be there in sunny weather.  They too have pay showers - “to conserve water” they say.  It was fortunately large enough for us to have room for our early morning walks, because it was on the very busy County Highway U and we couldn’t risk walking along the road. The problem for me was that my next door neighbors were a very large and noisy family in a small pop-up trailer, so they spent every minute of every day and evening outside.  With their dog tied up on a long line, who whined and barked whenever they all went off and left him there, which they did several times a day.  And anytime we appeared from around my RV, the dog would bark at my dogs, who of course would get really bouncy at the sight and sound of that dog, so it was very hard to walk them in the daytime.  And hard for me to tune the family out at almost any time because they never stopped making noise.  I’d already booked in and paid for 2 nights so I was pretty well stuck there.  But it wasn’t for forever, as I kept reminding myself.  And I drove us around the area the 2^nd day so the dogs would have somewhere else to walk. So it was okay.

Comments along the road

I kept passing many many bodies of water – rivers, streams, lakes large and small.  I know next door Minnesota has 10,000+ lakes, but upper Wisconsin seems to be trying to stay in the competition.  The state map barely seems to have room for the roads and villages between the labeling for all these bodies of water.

I saw a lot of wild turkeys in northern Wisconsin.  One day I saw 2 separate families near the road, with 2 adults and several young.  They were many miles apart, and one batch of young still looked pretty downy.  Very sweet.

I’m starting to see bright red leaves.  Nighttime temps are only getting down to about 50°, but I guess that’s enough to be a trigger for some trees.  And one morning I heard on the radio that in the Lake Superior area there was frost, so I guess it’s colder in places than I’ve been finding.

In some small town, I passed a Burger King with a sign out front: Don’t work 4 the clown, Work 4 the King.

In Rhinelander I stopped at the Pioneer Park and will do a separate posting for that.

I’ve noticed a number of towns in Wisconsin with the same names as places in Alaska.  You might say that Eagle River and even Juneau aren’t that unusual, but Kinnikinnick?  That’s the name I heard in the Bristol Bay area of Alaska – there it’s pronounced kih-nick-kih-nick, and their local team is the Kinnikinnick Knackaknockers. (I kept hearing about them on the radio when I was fishing out there, and once heard hard to forget about.)  According to the internet, in Alaska it's a type of berry; in Wisconsin it's spelled Kinnickinnic and it's the name of a river.

The farther east I went the more I saw trees touched with red.

Near the town of Laona is the Lumberjack Steam Train, another of the old trains still running in Wisconsin.

Wabeno calls itself the Center of Four Seasons Entertainment.

In several of the small towns I drove through I saw multiple businesses for sale, though I couldn’t see any one reason why.

I stopped at a rest area somewhere and found this historical marker about Wisconsin’s iron industry.  It echoed some of what I’d learned at the Iron Museum on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

All over the northern half of the state I’ve been seeing ATV trails.  They’re really geared for them up here.  Also many sportfishing facilities.

I saw a field of sunflowers with all their heads bowed down.  Does anybody know if this meant they’d been hit by disease? or bad weather? or were just ready to have their seeds harvested?  I’ve never grown sunflowers so don’t know anything about them.

And then I was back to Lake Michigan, or actually Green Bay off Lake Michigan.  Like Michigan, Wisconsin has a peninsula that sticks up into a large lake, and here too they call it a thumb.  But having seen Michigan’s thumb, I can say that Wisconsin’s is more like a very long little finger, because it’s quite narrow.  The west side of it forms Green Bay, with the city of Green Bay at its end; the east side faces Lake Michigan itself.  This finger consists of Kewaunee County at its base and Door County for most of its length.  Door County is fairly well-known as one of the most scenic areas of the country, and I'll post about that later.

A sign in Peshtigo says it's "the city reborn from the ashes of America's most destructive forest fire."  Never having heard of this I looked it up, and it seems to be true.  Oddly, it happened on the same day as the Great Chicago Fire which, probably because of the dumb Mrs. O'Leary's cow story, embedded into the national consciousness, eclipsing the other fire.  And at the same time, there was a massive fire across Green Bay in Door County, as well as fires across Lake Michigan in Michigan towns.  I found several links to this story, with Wikipedia's appearing to be the most factual.   en.wikipedia.org/Peshtigo_fire

Green Bay

Driving along Green Bay I was once again seeing houses sandwiched between the road and the water.

I saw a flock of 7 turkeys along the roadside.  Not sure why I’m seeing so many of them, but maybe they just like Wisconsin.  The bird book says they live year round in all but the farthest north part of this state, but also in most of every state east of the Rockies.  They just stay hidden better in the other states?

Driving along the mainland side of Green Bay I kept finding High Water warnings.  At least four of them, and at each one the water was definitely lapping at the road.  I haven’t heard of any particular weather system that would have dumped that much water in this area, but I guess there was one.  Makes me wonder about the safety of all those houses I’m still seeing between the road and the water.

Oconto County Court House

The town of Oconto near Green Bay (city) says it’s a Tree City and a Bird City.  I don’t know about that but I made a wrong turn and stumbled across the Oconto County Court House and thought it was worth a photo.  Oconto isn’t now exactly a metropolis and I was surprised to find such an elaborate building here.  But then I know from Texas that whatever else the county seats may or may not have, you can count on finding an elaborate courthouse, and I guess it’s the same up here.

I drove around Green Bay a bit and went to the Railroad Museum there, and I’ll do a separate posting about this.

Along the Fox River

Driving south from town along the Fox River, which dumps into Green Bay at Green Bay (city), the houses I saw between the road and the water were actually mansions.  I saw one with 6 or 7 chimneys, which seemed excessive, but it was a big house.  The name of the road is Lost Dauphin Road, and maybe that’s pretentious enough to justify the mansions.

At one point, 2 does bounded across the road fairly close in front of us.  Dext got pretty excited (and I was not unmoved).

The Apple Creek Campground has an official address in De Pere (deh PEER), a suburb of Green Bay, but it’s closest to Wrightstown, which looks almost nonexistent on the map but turns out to have 3,300 residents.  In fact, all the towns in this area look quite small on the map but Kaukauna, the next town over from Wrightstown, has a population of 15,000. 

The towns of Little Chute and Combined Locks (I swear those are the names) sit so closely to Kaukauna that I kept stumbling over bits of it as I was driving in these other places.  I’ll do a separate post for Little Chute, which held a big surprise for me.

In Wrightstown I went to Dick’s Family Foods, “since 1908” they say.  And in the same little strip mall was a cafe called Ambergris Eateris.  (heh, heh)  On the road beside the grocery store was a sign saying “Brat Fry Today.”  We happened to be there around lunch time so I got one.  Not bad.  It was a benefit run by some high school girls (looked about 10^th grade) to fund the dances after the high school games this year.  Worthy cause.

In this area I saw lots of crops growing, lots of cows, and substantial veal operations (sorry, but I just can’t eat veal after seeing these sweatboxes).

I passed a sign saying “Part of the Heart of the Valley Area - Village of Combined Locks.”  I need a guide book to this area or something because I’m not sure what valley this is – the Fox River valley?

I passed several places that said they’re Supper Clubs.  I guess supper clubs are a thing in this area.

I pulled off the road to look at the map and was passed by 3 Model T type cars.  I’d have thought they were just out for a drive on a sunny Saturday afternoon, but 3 of them in a row made me think they’d attended an event.