We spent about a week in Wisconsin and had a nice relaxing time. We stopped in Madison for a night and wandered around a bit. The University of Wisconsin has a nice campus, but really the most important thing was that we bought small pieces of 5 different kinds of cheese to sample over the next few days. It is Wisconsin after all. The sheep cheese wasn't my favorite but the Asiago was tasty and the 10 year aged cheddar was intense. Hard to beat the stuff from Gouda when we were with Sandy and Norman in the Netherlands, though.
Then we moved onto Milwaukee or Milewokie as Christiana could not stop calling it. Of course Alice Cooper taught us that is Algonquin for "The Good Land."
This is the Milwaukee Art Museum. Most of the collection is not open right now due to renovations so we didn't go in but it is a pretty cool building right on Lake Michigan. Those wings are actually shades and they can open and close them. Every day at noon they "flap" them once by closing and reopening them.
We also went to Summerfest which is the largest music festival in the world. They have over a thousand bands over a couple weeks. We didn't see anyone particularly of note the day we were there but the fairgrounds are really nice and fried cheese curds are the real deal.
Doing my best Captain Frederick Pabst impression.
The Pabst breweries complex is really interesting. There are 28 buildings that were saved from demolition and they are in various stages of renovation. They take up a good chunk of downtown Milwaukee. They do tours in the old office building and have turned some of the others into condos and hotels and restaurants. You learn some really cool history on the tour. Pabst is still an American owned brewery and they have acquired enough old brands to be one of the largest wholly owned American breweries but all of their beer is now contract brewed by Miller. They are really a giant holding company.
Fun fact: Pabst Blue Ribbon never actually won a blue ribbon. It won a gold medal. The name comes from the fact that it used to be sold with a blue ribbon tied to the bottle and consumers gave it that nickname which stuck. It was eventually formally renamed.
There are a lot of Danish immigrants in Racine and the specialty in this area is the kringle. It's a giant iced danish the size of a small tire. Ours had cherries, cranberries, and cream cheese. We enjoyed it here on an awesome if a bit windy beach on Lake Michigan.
SC Johnson is based in Racine and they give free tours of their offices designed by famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright. This first picture is just outside the main entrance. Notice the lily pad columns. These go throughout the inside of the office building as well.
This is the research tower which was used from 1950 to 1982 when fire regulations required it be closed. This is where scientists invented Glade, Raid, Off, and Pledge. It alternates circular and square floors. It's really neat architecturally but you wonder how easy it was to work there in practice.
Frank Lloyd Wright also designed the home for one of the Johnsons. This house is called Wingspread. Again, it's pretty cool architecturally but it would be strange to actually live there given the set up.
