Big Shoulders

We gave Chicago a big, wide, 120-miles-out-of-the-way bypass en route from Milwaukee to Indiana Dunes State Park, which is about 60 miles east of downtown Chicago, on the very southern tip of Lake Michigan.

We settled in at a lovely, busy and very-difficult-to-reserve campground in the state park – which is surrounded by Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore – and then immediately began preparations to head back west to the same City of Chicago that we had just spent all day trying to avoid.

This may sound a little crazy, and six months ago when I was putting the trip together I wondered if it might be. But it all worked out as planned and on Saturday morning we rode our bikes a couple of miles on a beautiful bike path to catch the South Shore Line Train (which has been running from South Bend, Indiana to downtown Chicago for more than a century) and, a little over an hour later, we we met up with Tex and Rachel at a Starbucks in Millennium Station.

It was a beautiful day for the four of us to attend the Chicago Hotdog Fest in Lincoln Park and tour the Chicago History Museum, which included a cool exhibit of some of the thousands of photos taken by the phenomenal “nanny photographer” Vivian Maier.

Afterward we dropped by the north side apartment that Rachel and Tex rented for the summer, looked at the great photos Rachel took on their trip to Europe and went out for a tasty meal together.

After a night spent in what may very well be the world’s most expensive Super 8 Motel (I did not see a single truck driver) we got back together with the happily-engaged couple and mass transited downtown for the famous architecture boat tour.

This might be a good venue for next year's Hotdog Fest?

Soon enough we were back on the train, back on the bikes and back home at the trailer.

Our laconic Monday bicycle tour on the quiet back roads of Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore seemed like a long way from the hustle and bustle of the weekend even though we could see the Chicago skyline across the lake on a beautiful, sunny day.

Look close and you may see the Chicago skyline across the lake.

On Tuesday we moved to Dayton, Ohio for a two-night stay at a KOA. This might strike readers as an odd move, and it felt that way to us too. But the purpose was to finish off our 2014, six-week, “really get to know” tour of Ohio that was abruptly truncated by the untimely death of a close friend that caused us to return to San Antonio before we could get to Dayton, the final stop on our Ohio tour.

So we returned to eastern Ohio and were greeted by what was, by far, the hottest, most humid weather of the trip.

However, we braved the elements and a few downpours for what may turn out to be one of the fullest and most rewarding days of the summer. Basically it was a full immersion plunge into aviation history that began with a morning stop at the Wright Brothers Bicycle Shop in downtown Dayton (home to the visitor center for the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park), an afternoon traipsing through the monstrous National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, an evening jaunt to the Colonel Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers National Monument near Xenia, Ohio and, finally, a stop at a brewpub in an obscure strip center in a Dayton suburb that served what Betsy described as; “one of the best hamburgers I’ve ever eaten.”

The beer was pretty good too and it was a great way to, finally, wrap up our “really get to know” tour of Ohio.

Betsy is sky-high about this visit to yet another NPS site.

After the initial trip to Kitty Hawk for tests Wilbur and Orville returned to Dayton and spent several years perfecting their flying machine with ever-longer flights around this farm field, storing the machine in the shed and using the catapult to help launch it.

It's difficult to describe the immensity and scope of the Air Force Museum but it is staggering. I took this photo of the jet that served as Air Force One from Kennedy through Clinton (which carried the body of JFK back from Dallas after Johnson was sworn in on the plane with Jackie beside him) from the plane that Eisenhower used. From the first plane the Army purchased to the Stealth bomber the actual planes, not replicas, are on display in this incredible museum.

So, just in case you are wondering, the stops at the various National Park Service sites mentioned in this blog post have increased Betsy’s total to 179 and mine to 253; out of the more than 400 NPS units. Also, we have now visited all four of the NPS national lakeshores and all 10 of the NPS units in Ohio.

We’ve moved on now to an RV Campground at the Indiana State Fair in Indianapolis, but details about that and the Illinois State Fair in Springfield will have to wait for a future post.

Milwaukee 1.02

On Monday we drove the truck for the first time since we got to Milwaukee and took a tour of U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan’s congressional district. That’s not really what we set out to do but later, looking at a map of the district which covers the southeastern corner of the state, it’s a pretty good description of where we went.

Spoiler alert; based on our highly scientific method of observing yard signs, Ryan has a really good chance of holding off his primary challenger.

We stopped in the town of Milton (just north of Ryan’s hometown of Janesville, on the western end of the district) to tour a tavern/inn that was a stop on the underground railroad that helped escaped slaves get to Canada.

Then we drove to Racine (on the eastern side of the district) to buy a Racine Kringle which is, in case you might be wondering, the official pastry of Wisconsin. According to a website claiming to be the “home of the Racine Kringle” this pastry is; “…hand folded over and over creating its signature 81 layers before resting for 3 days, developing delicate texture. Once ready, the dough is carefully filled with a generous amount of our hard-to-resist fillings, then hand shaped into a traditional oval. After being baked to a golden brown, Kringle is hand-iced creating a truly one of a kind, authentic Danish Kringle”.

Who knew? We could not resist getting the apple cinnamon filling because that's all they had left.

En route we looked for and actually found a few of the “Barn Quilts of Racine County”. According to the internet, this art project was the “brainchild” of a local “quilt enthusiast” who thought it would be a good idea to paint 21 quilt patterns on 8-by-8 foot square pieces of plywood and then hang them on the sides of obscure barns that are strategically located on narrow, but busy, rural roads with no shoulders in order to produce conversations like this:

“There’s one coming up on the right.”

“You said that 10 minutes ago.”

“Slow down.”

“There are 15 cars backed up behind us and a lot of them must think Wisconsin is going to be pretty good this season because they’re waving one finger in the air.”

“There it is!”

“There’s what?”

“A barn quilt you idiot”

“Where?”

“You were going too fast. We missed it, turn around.”

[Note from Betsy: this is a significantly embellished version of our real conversation.]

Supposedly, this quilt pattern symbolizes the "54-40 or fight" slogan that was used in the 1840s dispute with Britain over the Oregon territory. Why it's hanging on a barn in Racine County, Wisconsin is less clear.

The City of Racine is very different than most of the rest of Wisconsin with a declining population that is 25 percent Black and 20 percent Hispanic.

We stopped at the headquarters of the SC Johnson Company (makers of household products like Pledge and Windex) in Racine to gawk at some of the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed buildings on its corporate campus.

"The Golden Rondelle" was originally built as the SC Johnson Pavilion for the 1964-65 New York World's Fair.

The administration building on the left was Wright's first project for the Johnson campus and opened in 1939. The research tower, built in 1950, is one of the tallest buildings in the world that uses a cantilevered concrete core for its structural support.

This FLW-designed house on the lakefront is near the SC Johnson campus but is privately owned and has no connection with the company.

Sunset at the Racine Harbor on Lake Michigan.

Safely back home from that excursion we left the truck parked the next day and hopped back on the Hank (not Henry as I wrote in a previous post) Aaron Trail to ride our bikes downtown to the Harley-Davidson Museum (the number one tourist attraction in Milwaukee, which we rated “fair”) and the Milwaukee Museum of Art (which we rated “fabulous”).

An "easy rider".

This Harley was packed in a crate in Japan in 2011 when the tsunami hit and it was swept out to sea. A year (and 4,000 miles) later the crate washed up on a beach in Canada. The motorcycle is now on display at the H-D Museum in Milwaukee.

The best thing about the trip to the art museum (and yet another of the many pleasant serendipity experiences on our trip through Wisconsin) was an exhibition of the works of Kansas City Missourian Thomas Hart Benton, one of our favorite artists. The exhibit featured Benton’s extensive relationship with, and inspiration from, Hollywood; an aspect of Benton that we knew nothing about.

Between 1937, when Life magazine sent him to Hollywood on commission, and 1954, Benton painted five major works for projects related to motion pictures. The exhibition highlighted the connection between those experiences and the rest of Benton’s long, productive career.  

Unfortunately, photos were not allowed in the Benton exhibit but, fortunately, they were allowed in the rest of the museum which is, in of itself, a work of art. Check out this video clip of some of the museum's "modern art".

Although we could not take photos of the Benton art works...

...we did manage to get photos of ourselves in one of Benton's paintings.

Benton's was not the only art we got into.

When I took this photo outside the museum it had just closed and I did not realize that meant it was time to "bring down the sails" of the ship (see photo below). And, yes, that thing in the foreground is a car wrapped around a pole. Ignore that and focus on the building's "sails".

Inside "the ship".

Nearby, a real ship...a "laker".

The next day we were back in the truck to take in some of the sites around Milwaukee, including the Basilica of Saint Josaphat, an over-the-top-opulent Catholic Church built in 1901 to resemble St. Peter's Basilica in Rome and to serve a Polish immigrant neighborhood that no longer exists. 

A lot of the materials for the building came from a U.S. Post Office and Customs House in Chicago that was razed because of structural design flaws. Father Wilhelm Grutza came up with the bright idea to purchase the salvaged materials from the Chicago building for $20,000 and ship them to Milwaukee.

However, that did not keep the parish from going into major debt to build the massive church. So the archdiocese brought in the Franciscans to straighten things out, which they did in a little over a decade.

Apparently, having a ginormous church that looked like St. Peter's wasn't enough redemption, so the Franciscans brought in a Roman artist to "gaudy-up" the interior with paintings and ornate plaster work. That took two years after which they sought from the Pope, and received, "basilica status" for the building. Basilica means, basically, that the church is big, pretty and pretty important and when it was conferred on Saint Josaphat in 1929 it became just the third church in the U.S. to be so honored.

We took a lot of photos inside Saint Josaphat, but the space is so big and and so dark that it is difficult to effectively capture and communicate it in a photograph. This is our best attempt at doing do so but it does not do the place justice.

Speaking of Saint Francis and heavenly pursuits we discovered something else about Milwaukee that we really like; beer gardens in county parks! Seriously, I'm not making this up. In keeping with a long tradition, Milwaukee County contracts with vendors to sell beer (in glass steins no less) in several parks scattered about the county. Here at Humboldt Park, about two miles from the St. Josaphat Basilica, the contract is (appropriately, we thought) with Saint Francis Brewing Company, which has a brewpub nearby. Now I may be way off base on my Catholic theology, but it seems to me that the simple setting in the park is a lot more in keeping with the spirit of Saint Francis than the ornate Basilica?

Beer in parks, what a concept!

On the way home, yet another Frank Lloyd Wright drive-by.

Finally, what better way to close out our week-long stay at the Wisconsin State Fair RV "Park" than by attending the opening day of the 165th Wisconsin State Fair! 

Sure, the fair's been around a while but that doesn't mean they are behind the times; check out this video of the newfangled way they have to "pour" beer.

Cream (not crime) puffs are the signature food of the Wisconsin State Fair and, naturally, they pair well with Milwaukee's signature beverage.

One of our favorite state fair activities is the sky ride; it is an essential element that a state fair must have to make it to the top tier of our state fair rankings. Wisconsin has (as the photo attests) a great sky ride (which they call a Sky Glider). And our plan was to close out the fair (as we have done at other state fairs) with a sky ride across the grounds.

However, before we could get on the Glider a fast-moving storm came in from the west, thunder cracked, lightening flashed and the Glider came to a (temporary) halt with people still dangling in the sky. We skeedaddled for the trailer and made it home just before the rain began in earnest. No sky rides for us at the Wisconsin State Fair this year.

We've now been to 12 state fairs and have two more (Indiana and Illinois) in our sights later this month. Thus we will be leaving Wisconsin today for approximately two weeks. Although we will be returning to the Badger State in late August most of our "really get to know Wisconsin" effort is now behind us. It has been a great experience and we are going to have our work cut out for us in determining which area of the state, which park, which beer drinking venue, which Friday Fish Fry and which batch of cheese curds we liked best. But there is no debating that we've gained a new appreciation for this fabulous state.

On Wisconsin! (we will be back soon).

An alert reader (and long-time friend of the PazTrips Blog) recently called to ask me if I was wearing a Wisconsin-themed t-shirt every day that we are here. And the answer was YES! (within the bounds of good personal hygiene, of course). Here is part of the collection. BTW. did anyone notice that Betsy got a new shirt during our day at the state fair?

Milwaukee 1.01

On Friday we moved 60 miles south down the Lake Michigan shoreline, from Sheboygan to Milwaukee, and set up in an RV Park(ing lot) at the Wisconsin State Fair grounds.

The State Fair RV Park(ing lot) is actually in the city of West Allis, not Milwaukee) but it is incredibly convenient. We chose to stay here primarily because we are going to attend the state fair on Thursday (fairgrounds visible in photo) but it is turning out to be a fantastic location for general sightseeing in Milwaukee.

Because it was Friday and Fridays mean Friday Fish Fry in Wisconsin we walked across the street to Liquid Johnny’s and experimented with the Fish Fry options that are sometimes offered on Wisconsin menus; perch, walleye or (usually less expensive) cod. I think the takeaway was that we are not discerning enough for it to matter too much. We liked all of them.

On Saturday we walked a few hundred yards to get on a shuttle bus that took us to a lakefront park for German Fest, a celebration of Milwaukee’s and Wisconsin’s most abundant immigrants. My observation is that a lot of folks here in Wisconsin take this stuff pretty seriously, not just as an excuse to drink beer (although, there is plenty of that too).

In this video you can watch the Wisconsin version of the Texas mechanical bull.

This video is a short clip from the parade that wound its way through the fair grounds. This video shows a segment from the human glockenspiel.

Betsy is really in her element here in Wisconsin, surrounded by her German cousins; and she is really excited about getting these beer cup koozies.

A beautiful venue on the cool shores of Lake Michigan.

The official cars for the German Fest parade? Volkswagens of course (but vintage only, no modern-day "environmentally-friendly" diesels in sight).

On Sunday we rode our bikes a couple of miles down the Henry Aaron Bike Path to watch the Brewers beat the Pirates.

It's an easy ride and the parking is really convenient.

Beautiful day and great seats, again. Thanks StubHub!

I won, I won!!!

 We did not know this but on Sundays the famous sausage race at the Brewers game is run as a relay where the "real" sausages hand off to little kids who are also wearing sausage costumes. You can watch it on this video.

We love the Henry Aaron Bike Path, which I am also using for occasional jogs. The abundant bike paths here in Wisconsin are phenomenal; convenient, functional and useful, for both transportation and recreation. 

As previously mentioned, Betsy seems to really fit in well with the folks here in Wisconsin.