Bathroom Break

I guess you could say we got it "bassackwards"; moving from the Toilet Paper Capital of the World (Green Bay, the city not the water) to the Bathroom Capital of the World (Kohler Village).

Oh well. We'll just have to wipe the slate clean, flush our mistake and move on.

Not surprisingly we felt the urge to go...to the Kohler Design Center, which turned out to be a surprisingly interesting stop. We ended up spending the better part of a day there. 

We recently replaced the toilets in our house with Kohler products but I don't recall seeing anything like this on display at Lowe's! (click this link for video)

The Kohler Company was founded in 1873 in Sheboygan by Austrian immigrant John Michael Kohler when he bought a controlling interest in an iron and steel foundry that manufactured farm implements.

Ten years later Kohler began experimenting with sprinkling enamel powder on an iron tub and then heating the tub to 1,700 degrees. He called his porcelain invention a "horse trough/hog scalder" but noted to potential customers that, with some legs added, it would make a nice bathtub. The rest, as they say, is history.

Although he had served as mayor of Sheboygan Kohler decided, in 1900, to relocate the company to a rural area four miles east of Sheboygan and to start fresh by creating a company town where his employees could both live and work with comfort and convenience. But Kohler did not have the typical company town in mind, where he would build minimal housing and rent to his employees. Instead he wanted to create a "garden community" where the employees would own their homes and manage the town independent of company executives, who were prohibited from holding public office. Kohler hired the Olmstead Brothers landscape architecture firm to design the community which was incorporated as Kohler Village in 1912 and, like so many Olmstead projects around the country, has stood the test of time.

As the photos and videos suggest we enjoyed walking around the village and perusing the design center and the Kohler history museum. We are impressed with the Kohler Company, which is entirely owned by family members whose philanthropic endeavors have had a tremendous impact on Wisconsin and, especially, on the Sheboygan area. You can't go very far or do very much in a public venue anywhere in this state - and definitely not in the Sheboygan area - without experiencing first hand the good works of the Kohler Foundation.

Each Kohler generation has improved and expanded the utility and functionality of the core products, but they've also paid a lot of attention to design and used it as a marketing tool; and they have treated their employees well and given generously and effectively back to their community. We did not encounter anyone that did not have something good to say about the Kohler Company.

This photo and the one below show how the Olmstead design successfully separates the 3,000-person village of tidy houses from the adjacent 6,000-employee Kohler industrial manufacturing operation.

It's a bubbler!

While the Kohler stop was planned our visit to the huge air show in Oshkosh was total serendipity.

We had decided that we had to make a loop around Lake Winnebago (by far the largest lake in the state that is contained entirely within the state). That trip took us through Oshkosh where we had no plans to stop...until we saw the huge crowd and all of the planes. And then it dawned on me, a vague recollection that Oshkosh hosts a huge "fly-in" each year; sort of like a convention for private airplane pilots and hobbyists. I'd heard it was a pretty big deal but had no idea how big. Planes and people were everywhere at the headquarters of something called the Experimental Aircraft Association.

We paid $10 just to park and it looked pretty interesting but maybe not worth the time and the $90 for the tickets to get in for a few hours (or driving back to Oshkosh for a full day). Still it was fun to nose around, looking at the stuff we could see from the outside and marveling at the crazy amount of aviation activity in the sky above us; helicopters, planes flying in formation (click the link for a 21-second video) and others doing crazy stunts.

This was not a serendipity. We went to Ripon, Wisconsin on purpose, reasoning that since we are watching the Republican Party wither and die before our very eyes this year it was only fitting that we visit its birthplace. #RIPGOP

Another serendipitous stop was at the humongous flagpole (and flag) at the Acuity Insurance Company adjacent to I-43 in Sheboygan. I am not a fan of businesses that use the flag as an advertising gimmick and I try not to patronize businesses that do so. However, this thing at Acuity (which, to my knowledge, I do not patronize) is so massive (a 338-foot pole and a 10,000-square-foot, 340-pound flag) that we had to stop for a closer look. (click here for a short video)

Another stop we made on a rainy day was at Wade House a state historical museum that preserves and interprets an 1850 roadhouse and stagecoach stop on the old plank road that connected Sheboygan and Fond du Lac. Not surprisingly, the reason the house and grounds are still standing and now in state ownership is because the Kohler Foundation purchased them and donated them to the state in 1950.

The Wade House blacksmith.

Kind of sort of how it used to be on the Plank Road in 1850.

It's a bit off the beaten path and there are no tours, but we couldn't pass up this quintessential Wisconsin photo op. Ralph and Alice Stayer were, like the Kohlers and many other people in the Sheboygan area, descendants of 19th Century Austrian immigrants. In 1945 they decided to open a butcher shop in the tiny, unincorporated farm town where they lived, about halfway between Sheboygan and Fond du Lac. They used a recipe for sausage the family brought with them from Austria. Today the privately-owned company is one of the largest sausage producers in the U.S., employs 1,600 people and distributes its products in 50 states and 40 countries. 

Yet another serendipity - in fact, a double-dipping serendipity - was our stumbling on to the 38th annual German Night at the city park in Plymouth, which features the ONLY high school German band (Junge Kameraden) in the U.S.

Here's what happened (and I'm not making this up). Betsy read that Plymouth, which is close to the Wade House and to Johnsonville, had a pretty, historic downtown AND a well-regarded brew pub. So it seemed like a good place to close out the day on Wednesday. En route to downtown Plymouth (and the brew pub) we saw a sign for the Plymouth Visitor Center stopped and, of course, chatted up the lady at the front desk who mentioned that the town was having its annual German Night (one of the biggest events in Plymouth) on Thursday. So we decided to attend. When we got to the park the next day there was already a good crowd and we sat down at a picnic table with a guy name Ryan who was very friendly. Soon, over beers and brats and German potato salad, our respective stories began to spill out. Ryan grew up just down the street and works at Johnsonville!

As we were reveling in this coincidence Ryan's friends, Angie and Jerry, showed up and sat down with us at the table and, of course, we got to talking to them. Ryan and Jerry were classmates at Plymouth High School in the late 1980s and Jerry had played trumpet in the band. After talking for a while Angie asked us; "Did you two come into the visitor center yesterday?" Sure enough, Angie was lady we had talked to at the Plymouth Visitor Center the day before. That folks is the definition of serendipity.

Angie, her husband Jerry (wearing leitehausen) Ryan and some guy in a Wisconsin camo shirt.

The Plymouth High School Junge Kameraden.

We spent our five nights on this leg of the trip at a pretty state park on Lake Michigan just south of Sheboygan, which is just a few miles east of Kohler Village which is just a few miles east of Plymouth. Not surprisingly, the name of the park is Kohler-Andrae; recognition of the initial gift of 122 acres of scenic Lake Michigan frontage to the state in 1928 by the widow of wealthy Milwaukee businessman Terry Andrae; and the 1966 donation of an additional 280 acres from the Kohler Foundation. 

Beautiful marshlands on the western side of the park...

...and beautiful Lake Michigan on the east.

3 Sheeps Brewing recently opened up in an abandoned warehouse in Sheboygan and got a hand-up from (surprise, surprise) the Kohler Foundation, which donated the fixtures for the bathroom. Not only does Three Sheeps Brewing have the nicest bathrooms of any brewery we have visited (and we've visited a lot of them) it had something that we'd never seen before at a brewery; a yoga class, which was conducted on some of the vacant floor space adjacent to the tap room.

I've previously posted photos like this one taken on the modern day version of the "Plank Road" between Sheboygan and Fond du Lac. And I do so again to emphasize that this is a ubiquitous scene on our travels through central and southern Wisconsin; tidy farm after tidy farm. In fact, if I had to pick one word to describe Wisconsin I think it would be "tidy". Betsy, as she is wont to do, embellished on my description. Noting that the people of Wisconsin are overwhelmingly white she summed up Wisconsin as "whitey tidy".

Ports des Morts (and the Stinker Bay Packers)?

We think Door County is a real cherry of a place!

As we travel around the country on our “really getting to know” a state tour we sometimes speculate about the places that we might put on a “really wanna go back to” short list. Door County, Wisconsin (the northern part of the peninsula that juts into Lake Michigan northeast of Green Bay like the thumb of a palm-down left hand) is going to be a strong candidate to make that list.

With great scenery, cool breezes, rocky shorelines, corn fields, round-topped silos, cherry orchards and lots of quaint little towns Door County has an East Coast look with a Midwest feel. We spent a week encamped at an RV “resort” on the outskirts of the village of Egg Harbor, which is on the Green Bay (referring to the body of water, not the city) side of the Door Peninsula.

Lake Michigan

Looking west over Green Bay...

...and east over Lake Michigan.

The drawbridge at Sturgeon Bay

Lavender on Washington Island

Downtown Egg Harbor

Green Bay (the water, not the city) is part of Lake Michigan but separated from it by the Door Peninsula in Wisconsin, the Garden Peninsula in Michigan and several islands scattered between the two peninsulas. The bay is about 120 miles long and 10-20 miles wide. The Wisconsin peninsula got the name Death’s Door from the treacherous channel crossings that separate the Green Bay from the main body of the lake. Presumably, somewhere along the line, someone at the local visitor bureau thought it might be a good idea to drop the “Death’s” part of the name.

Nicolet (and friend)

Searching for a passage to the Orient French explorer Jean Nicolet was the first European to cross Lake Michigan, in 1634. Instead of finding China as he had hoped Nicolet stumbled instead on Wisconsin; landing on the southern end of the bay near the present-day city of Green Bay. Coincidentally, but notably, Tex’s fiancé Rachel Simon is a descendant of Monsieur Nicolet!

According to Wikipedia Nicolet named the bay he “discovered” La Baie des Puants (the bay of the stinks) because his Indian guides called the natives that lived in the area a derogatory word that roughly translated as "stinkers". However, later French explorers, like Jacques Marquette, found this nomenclature rather odd and so began to call it instead Baie Verte (Green Bay), possibly because of algae in the water or, perhaps, because the landscape seemed relatively green compared to the Montreal area where their journey had begun.

In the aftermath of the War of 1812 the U.S. built a fort where the Fox River empties into Green Bay. A fur trading village developed in the vicinity of the fort and, after settlers began to pour into the Wisconsin Territory in the 1830s, the village's population boomed and the borough of Green Bay was formed in 1838. The City of Green Bay was incorporated in 1854 and it has grown slowly but steadily to the current population of just over 100,000 that makes it the third-largest city in the state (behind Milwaukee and Madison and just ahead of Kenosha). Oddly, Green Bay is the county seat of Brown County.

Today Green Bay (the city) can rightfully claim to be the “toilet paper capital of the world” (because of its many paper mills). However, the Chamber of Commerce may prefer the nickname “Title Town”, a reference to the Green Bay Packers and the team’s 13 professional football championships dating to 1920. That’s the most titles won by any pro football team and includes four Super Bowl championships (tied for third-most).

Door County was not settled until the 1850s and then mostly by subsistence farmers/fishermen. However, by the late 19^th century wealthy residents of Milwaukee and Chicago had discovered it as a vacation spot and tourism has been a mainstay of the economy ever since; although there is still some commercial fishing and a considerable amount of corn, soybeans and cherries being grown on some pretty good-sized farms in the interior portions of the peninsula.

In fact, there are really two distinct landscapes. The two main roads on the peninsula run along the two shorelines, passing through idyllic towns with boats in the harbors and lots of restaurants, cherry orchards and art galleries. However, when you cross from one side of the peninsula to the other on one of the myriad county roads the landscape is mostly fields of corn and soybeans.

Initially the tourists came by boat but since the 1920s the peninsula’s been reached mostly by automobile.

A whopping 94.6 percent of the 27,500 residents of Door County are non-Hispanic white and more than 27 percent are over the age of 65 while barely 16 percent are 18 and under. The median income however is a surprisingly modest $50,000, which is slightly less than the statewide median of $52,000. President Obama received nearly 53 percent of the Door County vote in 2012, almost exactly what he got statewide.

The view from the highest point in Green Bay

On our first day in the area we traveled an hour or so south from Egg Harbor to Green Bay and took the “deluxe” tour of the Packers Lambeau Field. We are both pretty ambivalent about the Packers; not haters but certainly not fans. That said; the tour of the stadium and the on-site Packers Hall-of-Fame was a great, first-class experience. The team runs upwards of 50 tours per day and more than 15,000 people per month pass through the stadium led by well-versed, professional tour guides that reinforce the Packers mystique and brand as a small-town, fan-owned franchise that is distinct from and more “authentic” than any other in the NFL.

Throw in the on-site Packers Hall of Fame with its slick introductory film and you have an impressive, carefully choreographed, Proctor & Gamble-esque package that markets and brands the Green Bay Packers franchise. 

Check out this video I shot during the tour.

It was interesting to observe the parts of the story the team wants to emphasize, and those they do not. For instance, Bart Starr got lots of adulation for his years as the quarterback of championship teams but there is scant mention of his nine years as head coach when the team won just 40 percent of its games.

Taking the Lambeau Leap

It seemed to me that there were four or five people who got top billing. One was the founder, Curly Lambeau, a local high school star that had to drop out of Notre Dame due to a serious case of tonsillitis. To scratch his itch to play football Curly formed a semi-pro team in 1919 that was briefly sponsored by the meat packing company where he worked. The “Packers” then joined the NFL at its founding and Lambeau managed to keep the team solvent in a backwater like Green Bay by creating a non-profit corporation and selling ownership shares to the fans. He ran the team until 1950. The team is still “fan-owned” and periodically offers ownership shares for sale that have no value, pay no dividends and cannot be sold. The last offering of these shares was in 2012. 

There was a guy on our tour that I would guess to be about 40 who owns some team stock. He said being a stock owner is relatively easy compared to being a season ticket holder. He has been on the season ticket waiting list for 21 years and he said his only realistic chance of getting tickets is if the stadium seating is expanded. 

The #1 Packer?

Perhaps the top billing of the Big Five went to Vince Lombardi, the 60’s era coach that took the team to five NFL titles and the first two Super Bowl championships.

The third member of the Big Five that surprised me was Ron Wolf who became general manager in 1991, hired Mike Holmgren (the fourth member of the Big Five) as coach, and traded for the fifth, Quarterback Brett Favre. Interestingly, Wolf was the only one of the Big Five that did not eventually leave the Packers for another team.

There were certainly plenty of others getting plenty of love; Paul Hornung, Reggie White, Aaron Rodgers, etc.

All in all the “Lambeau Experience” was interesting and entertaining and gave me a new appreciation for the Packers, not so much as a football team but as a business and a brand.

By getting the Packers out of the way early we were able to focus in on Door County.

One day we took two ferries, drove across one island (Washington) and circumnavigated another (Rock) on foot. We also toured a beautifully-restored light house on Rock Island, saw a mature and a fledgling Bald Eagle at their nest, reached the eastern-most spot of land in Wisconsin, ate at a Fish Boil (click here for explanation), visited a second light house on yet another island (that we walked to) and watched a full moon rise over Lake Michigan. Wow, what a day!

 

Reaching out for easternmost Wisconsin. In fact, we were so far east on Rock Island that the cell phone time lost an hour.

The Cana "Island" Lighthouse (if you can walk there is it really an island?)

And, if all of that was not enough, we also saw the famous goats grazing on the sod roof of a restaurant in the village of Sister Bay.

The “goats on the roof” is on the list of Top 100 Things To Do In Wisconsin. It’s an eclectic list that we have steadily been chipping away at but have no expectation of completing (we’ve only “checked off” a little over a dozen so far).

On another day Betsy biked into town and really got to know Egg Harbor while I rode my bike to, through and around Peninsula State Park; Wisconsin’s oldest and largest state park. That night we attended an Agatha Christie play "The Hollow" in a beautiful outdoor setting that overlooks Green Bay (the water, not the city).

The next evening we biked into Egg Harbor to listen to an excellent trio of folk singers perform in the beautiful Egg Harbor City Park.

We liked the group (which, some of our readers may be interested to know, is fronted by Carleton College graduate Katie Dahl) so much that we paid to see them perform again the next day, which was Friday which, of course, meant Friday Fish Fry. The only question though was; "which fry?" 

After much, much teeth gnashing, doubt and indecision we settled on Mike's Port Pub & Grill in Jacksonport; yet another wonderfully quaint little town on the lake side of the peninsula.

On a bike ride one day I had stopped in at a small art studio and chatted up the owner who gave me numerous recommendations for places to eat. Mike's was one of them. A half-dozen or so additional potential Fish Fry venues also made the shortlist,  Then, through an elaborate but largely opaque decision-making process, Betsy settled on Mike's.

We are keeping track of our various Friday Fish Fry venues and will rank them when the Wisconsin tour is finished. It's going to be difficult. The fish at Mike's was great, but the fish at every fry has been great. Betsy gave Mike's high marks for its German potato salad. The wait (just to sit down at the bar and then for the food to come) was long and the place, a small, run-down bar was packed with locals; all factors that will work in Mike's favor when the judgement day arrives. Probably the biggest knock against Mike's is that we did not like any of the beers they had on tap and had to drink non-local beer from a bottle.

 

Mike "invented?" this clever contraption to assist those like us that like to eat at the bar.

Speaking of beer selections, en route to Mike's, we stopped for some locally-produced refreshment at the Door County Brewing Company and, while it was a very nice venue with good beer, we decided we prefer Shipwrecked, the brewpub in Egg Harbor.

After the fry at Mike's we caught the last half of another performance by Carleton College alumnus Katie Dahl and her group in the barn-like venue of an art gallery near Egg Harbor. Indoors (sort of) without the wind noise and with better acoustics she was even better than the night before.

We wrapped up our stay in Door County with some chores around the "house", checked another Top 100 thing off the to-do-list with a trip to Whitefish Dunes State Park, checked out the famous boat house in Ephraim where generations of marina users have left their mark and ate supper at Fred & Fuzzy's Bar & Grill, a place that many consider to be one of the best sunset views on the peninsula.

As I understand it the concept is that, if you have harbored a boat in a slip at the marina in Ehpraim, you can paint the name of the boat and the date that it was moored there on the wall of this boat house. However, it seemed that maybe some of the graffiti writers had a different concept. Prior to the construction of roads in the 1920s many Door County visitors arrived on steamers at this dock.

It was a great westerly view over Green Bay (the water, not the city) from Fred & Fuzzy's; but it was not a great evening for a sunset.

After our week in Door County there is no question that it has rocketed to the top tier on our list of favorite places we've been, not just in Wisconsin this year but in our travels around the country in recent years. To quote a line from a Katie Dahl song; "Straight from the mighty hand of God to the top of his thumb." Of course, we have lots of favorites and, when the dust has finally settled on this trip, Bayfield County and Madison will probably give Door County a good run for top billing.