Madison, Wisconsin and the three C's

Today we visited Madison, Wisconsin for a while in the afternoon.  We needed to get a new water filter for the motorhome and pick up a few groceries so we thought we would see some of Madison while picking these items up.  In looking on the internet to see what sites Madison has that are interesting it seemed the answers centered around the Wisconsin Badger football field called Camp Randall Stadium, Cheese Curds, and the Capitol Building.  Camp Randall is the home of the of the  Wisconsin Badgers football team and was built originally in 1895 and as a complete stadium in 1917.  The stadium today holds over 80,000 fans.  The thing I find very nice about Wisconsin University is the fact that it is located in downtown Madison.  This seems to make the entire city more vibrant since you see young people walking and biking everywhere carrying books and back packs.  In the very heart of downtown is the next place we wanted to see and that was the Wisconsin State Capital building. It resembles the capital building in Washington, DC.  These first two sites we just drove around them and didn't feel like taking any kind of tours,  The last thing we wanted to find in Madison were some good cheese curds.  Madison is known for it's great pub food and cheese curds is one of those foods that are served in Wisconsin restaurants, pubs, taverns, and bars. I did a little research before going into town since we only had so much time and found that one of the best places to go for cheese curds, and many other things, was Mickey's Tavern.  In a recent contest they recently were voted to have the best sandwich and the best Bloody Mary.  We started out with a Bloody Mary and an order of cheese curds.  In my opinion, cheese curds are just like mozzarella sticks but only in a different shape. These cheese curds were about the size of green olives and were breaded and deep fried.  The flavor was just like mozzarella sticks.  The Bloody Mary was awesome and came with a beer chaser.  In addition to the beer chaser the garnishes on the Bloody Mary included a pickled brussel sprout, a small pickled onion, a dill pickle, an olive, and a hot pepper.  It was like you were eating a salad with your drink but I can understand why this drink won the contest.  It was the best I have ever had just barely beating out the Bloody Mary at the Harley Davidson Museum which isn't that far from here.

Tomorrow we are off to Rochester, MN to see where the famous Mayo Clinic is located.  It will be a very easy day since it is only around three hours from Madison.

Below are a few pictures taken today.  The downtown sites were hard to get since things are so confined but here you go.

The blog is not letting any pictures to be downloaded.  I will try again tomorrow.

What do you know I loaded Google Chrome and the Blogger lets me upload pictures where it wouldn't let me do that with Internet Explorer.  Might be that the Blogger is a Google product.

This is our bartender/waitress and her 23 years worth of tats.  Those aren't pants those are all tattoos except for the short skirt she has on.











$67 worth of tolls and two hours of bumper to bumper traffic and were through Chicago

We left Warsaw today at around 8:00 am thinking if it worked going through Atlanta on Sunday it should work going through Chicago. Wrong, it didn't work.   I have never gone through Chicago when we didn't get stuck in traffic.  I used to go there for work to visit suppliers riding with others who have driven through Chicago many many times and the traffic always sucked.   I feel if you pay $67 in tolls to get across Chicago it should be on highways where you aren't moving at a snails pace and the roads aren't so bumpy they rattle your back fillings for hours.  Oh well were through it now and I bet that will be the worst traffic we experience in our entire trip.  Couldn't get much worse.  I didn't take any pictures today but just imagine lines and lines of cars five or six lanes across for miles and miles. The GPS had us stay on 90 going through downtown but personally I don't think it matters what road you take.  What I would like to know is what do they do with all of the tolls they collect in this town.  I know there is corruption in Chicago but some of the money should be going into improving road conditions so this doesn't happen.


We pulled into DeForest, WI at around 2:30 in the afternoon and that was after taking an hour nap at a rest stop in southern Wisconsin.  DeForest is just north of Madison, WI.  This was TJ's first experience of traveling in the motorhome and he did great.  The rv park we are staying at is very nice and we plan on seeing some of Madison tomorrow.  I will start taking some pictures to spice up the blog a little since I understand the pictures make it much more interesting.

Heading West for a month long trip

This Sunday we are planning to start our trip west.  Our first night we plan on staying in Madison, WI.  Our plan is to take it slow and just have a nice relaxing trip.  We'll stay at each stop as long as  that location has things to do and see that appeal to us. We would like to make it to Vancouver, BC but who knows with all the wild fires going on out west.  We took this trip pulling a pop up camper with the boys when they were young.  We have seen most of the major sites along route 90 like Wall Drugs, The Badlands, The Corn Palace, Devils Tower, Mount Rushmore, and Yellowstone National Park.  We will visit most of these again but don't have any set itinerary. 
  






One challenge we will be faced with on this trip is traveling with little TJ who will be about three and one half months old when we leave.  At this point he is around 50% potty trained so he wears piddle pants that we had from our other dogs when they were young.  Since we won't be able to pull over as often as we would like I see diaper changing in our future.  Speaking of TJ, Huli saw some pictures of some Pekingese puppies on the Internet that looked just like TJ.  We think maybe the Amish got some Pekingese mixed in with their Shih Tzu's during the breeding process.  Having pedigree doesn't matter to us other than his papers say his mother and father are both Shih Tzu's. Oh well we think he'll be a great dog once we get him trained and he gets to be a little older. For now though it's him trying to just wear us down.