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.