Kettle Moraine

After we left Chicago, we drove up to Wisconsin hoping for cows, and cheese. We found corn. We were both very disappointed. There were some fields with cows in it, but we didn’t see many milking facilities over the hundreds of local and interstate miles we drove.

Tuesday night (10/20), we camped at Kettle Moraine State park. We got there just before dark, and were treated with a wonderful sunset over a lake from our campsite. After setting up our tent, we explored the camp a little and found a RV that was completely decked out in Halloween decorations. They had christmas-tree-like lights, pumpkins, scarecrows, etc. I really hope they were planning to stay awhile, and didn’t just set that up everywhere. Dinner was cheese, and bread (from Zingerman’s) with some salsa and pickles.

The next morning we woke up and drove to Madison for lunch. Ashley found a place -- The Weary Traveler -- that looked great. A country tavern in the city, that promised local, organic foods. I ordered an organic Wisconsin burger with cheese, caramelized onion, tomato, and maybe some lettuce. It was pretty good, but too done. Ashley ordered a meat and cheese platter that promised local Venison sausage, local beef, turkey, (for me) and organic wisconsin cheddar, pepper jack, mozzarella and blue cheese (for her). It was horrible. As you can see, it looked like the deli counter tray with rolls of meat and thin cheese triangles - it also tasted wholly uninteresting. We were both expecting something from a small farm but got a big commercial product. Unfortunately given the quality of the restaurant and the other menu offerings we got the impression that this was Wisconsin’s best. On a deli sandwich the Wisconsin meat and cheese would have been good, but they were very much not what we were expecting. Ashley hardly ate any of it, but I decided to take it to go for some lunch meat while we are camping.

After lunch, we toured Madison. Obviously a college town, a lot like Ann Arbor, but with more hippies, especially old hippies. Downtown, and where the University is, is on a tract of land only about half a mile wide between two lakes. Atop a hill between the lakes is the Capitol building. It looks a lot like other capital buildings, but seemed significantly more beautiful to both of us.

A few days earlier we had noticed that Jack Danger’s right headlight was out. We avoided driving at night, and kept looking for service stations that could help us. Ashley found a express Toyota service station on the way out of town. You just pull up to a service bay, leave your key in the car, tell them what you want, and wait. Free wifi and CNN in the waiting room. They fixed the headlight, changed the oil, and reminded us we had Nitrogen, not regular air in the tires. Oops! Also, they gave us a free car wash. After cleaning up Jack we headed to Minneapolis.