Into the Midwest--Madison & Minneapolis

Upon leaving Chicago, we continued our route into the Midwest.  First stop was Madison, WI.  Cheese Country.  We were tempted to purchase some of the local fare, but we are still well-stocked from our Ohio Amish outing a couple of months ago.  We did visit the weekly farmer's market in downtown Madison and bought lots and lots of fresh vegetables.  It's a huge market that's set up around the capitol building.  The day was beautiful and there was a huge crowd.  While there, we took a walk through the capitol building.

Wisconsin Dells is not far from Madison, and neither of us had been there.  We took a boat tour of the Dells, and enjoyed the scenery; the tour narrative was rather 'cheesy', if you'll excuse the Wisconsin pun.

We drove into Milwaukee one Sunday afternoon.  The Historic Fifth Ward was quiet that day, but there was one group of ladies that were there enjoying themselves on a pedal tavern.

It looked like fun, but we would have needed a few more friends to power the vehicle, so we settled for a couple of lake perch sandwiches and Schlitz (sorry Budweiser, but we were in Milwaukee) at a sidewalk cafe.

Walking around the area we came across a sculpture that we think must have been made from Rust Belt detritus.

Along the Lake Michigan shoreline, the art museum makes a striking impression.  Its nautical architectural form is so fitting for its setting.

After our Madison stay, we spent 5 days in Minneapolis.  For the most part, it was just a convenient place to stop for a few days.  We did visit the Mall of America and were, frankly, not that impressed.  There is a fun amusement park feature in the middle of the mall, but other than that it's a mall.  Seen it, done it.  We spent an afternoon in downtown Minneapolis and saw the Mill Ruins Park.  A glass-walled museum of the flour milling history of Minneapolis has been built within the ruins of the original mill.  We tried to capture both the old and the new structures in the picture below.

The Vikings stadium is just a short walk from the Mill City Museum.  It was formerly known as the H.H.H. stadium, but has now been changed to the Mall of America stadium.  We think it should have remained H.H.H.  Too many stadiums have commercialized names these days....just our humble opinion.

We stayed at KOA's in both Madison and Minneapolis.  What they have in common is gravel/dust interior roads and pads.  The spacing between sites is not roomy but navigating into and out of the sites is relatively pain-free.  Madison's KOA is too close to the interstate--you hear a lot of road noise day and night.  Minneapolis Northwest KOA, on the other hand, is very quiet and peaceful.  Both are definitely CAMPgrounds--lots of campfires which precludes our opening windows in the evening when the fires abound.  The weather in this part of the country has moderated into a fall pattern--comfortable days and cool nights.  We would love to open our windows at night.  (Heavy sigh).  Oh well, maybe at the next RV park there won't be so many campfires, and we can do that.  We're heading a little further north for our next stop.  We're trusting that winter is going to hold off a bit longer.

Last Stop in Michigan, Then On to Chi-Town

We spent a total of 3 weeks in Michigan.  Our last stop was in Hopkins in the southwestern part of the state.  The RV park was very nice--paved streets & sites, ponds with small fountains & resident swans.  In fact, the view directly in front of our site overlooked one of the ponds.

And one day we were treated to a synchronized swimming routine by the swans.

Hopkins is centrally located for visiting South Haven, Holland, and Marshall--towns we had chosen to explore.  In South Haven, there is a replica of the tall ship Friends Good Will which played an active role in the Great Lakes during the War of 1812.  Visitors are able to sail on the ship, which we had intended to do, but tickets were sold-out on the day we were there.

The drive up to Holland from South Haven included a stop in the Douglas/Saugatuck community.  It's a very popular vacation spot judging from the traffic and tourists there.  The shops and inns are plentiful.  When we arrived in Holland, we expected to see more Dutch influences in its structures, etc.  We were disappointed that that's not the case.  Of course, it would have been nice to see all the tulip blooms in the spring, and if it had been spring when we were there, we would have been more inclined to pay the admission fee to get into the Windmill Island Gardens where a 250-year old imported Dutch working windmill stands.  We'll plan another visit in a future spring to catch both.

Marshall, Michigan was destined to be the capital of the state.  A state senator in the 1800's was so sure of that destiny that he built a house to be the Governor's Mansion there.  But then reality happened, and Lansing was selected.  We went to see the mansion that was built in Marshall.

The word 'mansion' didn't come to mind for us.

There's another house in Marshall that we wanted to see.  It's called the Honolulu House.  It was built in 1860 by Abner Pratt, a Marshall justice who became U.S. Consul to the Sandwich (now Hawaiian) Islands in the 1850's.  He was so enamored by the islands that he built a house paying homage to them.  The interior is decorated with many murals showing Hawaiian scenery, and has very elaborate woodwork and moldings painted in tropical colors.  Most of the original painting has been preserved.  We really enjoyed the tour through the house.

We did visit Kalamazoo as we had said that we would; we saw a movie and had lunch there one day.  And as we were moving from Hopkins, MI to Joliet, IL we saw another town with a fun name--Paw Paw, MI.  If we had noticed it sooner, we would have driven through it to add to our collection.  Does driving past it count?

The park in Joliet was a disappointment.  Good Sam has it rated as '9' out of a possible 10, and reviews that we found for the park were rather glowing.  When we arrived, we found an old, tired park with really, really dusty interior roads.  Its fitness center was a joke with old, broken equipment.  It has potential for being a nice park, but it needs some TLC.  It was home for a week while we visited Chicago and the town of Joliet.

We had visited Chicago several years ago, so had already seen several of its major tourist spots.  We had missed Millenium Park so that was first on our list.

As has been the norm for us this summer, the weather was unusually hot the day we were walking around Chicago, so we looked for a cool refuge.  One of the brochures recommended the Art Institute and it was nearby.  We weren't sure just how much art it housed, but knew that it at least had the American Gothic since the brochure used it in it's advertisement.  So we went and we saw.

We were truly impressed by how much more was there.  Besides the American Gothic, we saw Van Gogh, Monet, Cezanne, Remington--and the list goes on.  It's always nice when our expectations exceeded, and that's an understatement for Chicago's Art Institute.

The next day we went on a guided walking/tasting tour.  The tour we chose covered The Loop area. We sampled Chicago pizza, Chicago hotdogs, Fanny May candies, boutique cupcakes, and German brats.  We were guided through the Culture Center (formerly a library) where musical and theatrical performances are presented free of charge.  We saw Richard J. Daley Plaza and imagined that we could hear some faint "hut, hut, hut, hut" echoes from the filming of the Blues Brothers there; we took a picture of the columns the soldiers scaled.  If you're as fond of that movie as we are, you'll know what we're talking about.  (The young people who were accompanying us on the tour, including the tour guide, didn't get the full appreciation of that scene.  Oh well.)

The architecture in Chicago is so impressive.  If nothing else, it's fun to just walk through the city.

The picture above is looking up the Trump Tower.

After our Chicago visit, we drove into Joliet.  It's on the old Route 66 and has some buildings and a cafe that are of that vintage.  It used to be known as The City of Steel and Stone.  The Joliet Iron Works made Joliet a major manufacturer of iron and steel products.  Today the Iron Works is an historic site of the ruins, and there is a 1.5-mile walk through them.  We took the walk.

This is the extent of our Illinois visit this time.  We're heading up to Wisconsin and Minnesota before winter sends us south.