Week of Wisconsin

We made it to the half-way mark! It's been 6 weeks on the road as of today. Sometimes it feels like no time at all, sometimes it feels like forever.

Spent the week in Wisconsin with family, and did some visiting with friends while we were here. On Tuesday we went to New Glarus to see the new brewery that they recently opened. It's quite shiny and was obviously built with wandering patrons in mind--everything was walled off from the walking track you could "tour" along. Not as fun as the tours where you get to step over puddles of fermenting beer. Had lunch at a Swiss restaurant (New Glarus is a very Swiss town) where we got a giant cheese & salumi plate, a huge sausage, Swiss meatballs, and enough cheesy potatoes to last us all week. Also featured was the giant urinal.

Visited Chicago on Wednesday after lunch with Grandma. Saw the giant steel bean, I guess it's supposed to be a cloud. The sculptor must not have taken a step back to ask what it really looked like. It is very shiny though. Had dinner & beer with Ben and Chris at a brewpub, rode the L through the cute neighborhoods of brick buildings, and generally enjoyed Chicago except for the whole humidity thing. They told us it was a good day... There was also the incident with the underground walkway: it took us 20 minutes and directions from a cop to cross the street. Should have just gone to the light, but we did get to see two underground train stations, an underground mall, and some other fun under-the-highway type places.

Had lunch with Nate and Jill on Friday in Tosa. On the way we drove past Aaron's childhood home and other assorted landmarks. Today the family came to visit for dinner. In the next few weeks several of us are leaving the country (temporarily) so it was a good time to get together. There were brats of course, and they were served on pretzel buns! What a great idea, the pretzel bun. Got a CD burned of 30,000 Pounds of Bananas for the rest of the road trip, and tomorrow we're back on the road. We might need to run to the east coast to burn off the extra food we've eaten in the last week, but it was totally worth it.

Map Link.