My wife grew up in Milwaukee, and I’ve visited there several times. I like Dinsdale’s “small big city” description. I always found it an interesting city with lots of little places to go and some great cultural attractions. The art museum is very good.
If you don’t drink beer, you can have Sprecher’s root Beer, which is also quite nice.
Madison, a fairly short drive away, is also beautiful and a really interesting college town.
And for a pretty big city, Chicago is not far away either. If I wasn’t bound to St. Louis for family reasons, I’d be happy to live in Milwaukee.
If you are a Tolkien fan, Marquette University has a bunch of original manuscripts and notes – including a time track with moon phases where where each group was aftet the split up – written on the back of a Oxford menu card.
I live across the river, but I am from Wisconsin and work there and most of my TV stations. Unfortunately I’m not all that familiar with the Milwaukee area.
Speaking of TV, keep in mind that Wisconsin is a battleground state in 2020 and will recieve heavy advertising from candidates, parties, and inteerst groups. DVR and/or keep you finger on the mute button.
Kettle Moraine State Park, North and South unit have wonderful hiking trails along the drumlins, kames, eskers, kettles, and terminal moraines. Nice sandy beaches exist in state parks like Kohler Andrae and Harrington. You can see both the Circus Museum and whooping cranes out by Baraboo. Tour Frank Lloyd Wright’s studio and school, and also his home (Taliesin) in Spring Green. Get cognitive dissonance out by the House on the Rock dere, too. En so?
See such fine noted academic academies as UCLA (University of Cudahy onna Lake, Aina-hey?)
And wherever you go in Wisconsin, pause a moment to take a deep breath and smell our dairy air.
Yeah, their collection is AMAZING. I remember seeing one exhibit; a single page displayed there, blank save for the words “The Magic Ring” written in JRRT’s spidery hand, then crossed out. Below it, in the same handwriting was written “The Lord of the Rings”. <<frisson>>
I get there seems to be lots of beer, but is it good beer? Or just tons of “the beer that made Bill Famey walk us?” It’s a pitcher joke, try to keep up!
They are both huge US sports fans, so that’s a plus. As long as there’s beer. Is bbq a thing? Don’t want to start a feud here, just asking for a friend.
I do know of one good BBQ place downtown (name?*), right around the corner from a wonderful Belgian Ale House (Benelux) and a fun brew pub (Angry Hop).
Damn, I need to visit my mom and take her out to dinner (she still lives in MKE… think she’ll suspect my ulterior motives?).
I’ve seen cheese curds mentioned a few times now, for those that don’t know, cheese curds aren’t those breaded deep fried pieces of cheese as everyone else seems to think of them. Cheese curds look like this. They have a very light airy texture and when they’re fresh and/or room temp, they squeak when you bite them. It’s similar to what you’d imagine a styrofoam packing peanut would feel and sound like if you chewed it.
They are good though.
Milwaukee area:
The Zoo
Whitnal Park, which is where Boerner Botanical Gardens is. It’s in Hales Corner.
The excellent public museum
Outside of Milwaukee:
House on the Rock
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin
American Players Theater
The International Crane Foundation
Devil’s Lake
The Circus World Museum
And…it’s possible (and easy, actually) to do House on the Rock and Taliesin East on the same day. In fact, you can easily do those two one weekend while if you go up to the The Dells. Then, while you’re in the Dells (staying at Great Wolf or Kalahari, naturally), you can go to Noah’s Ark and one of the 800 Go Kart Places*.
Taliesin is fun in an interesting/educational way. FLW spent a lot of time in the midwest and after a tour of Taliesin, you’ll quickly be able to spot his work (or replicas) all over the place.
House on the rock, on the other hand, is fun like wandering around in your grandparent’s basement on acid is fun. It’s more of an experience than anything else.
*well, maybe not 800, but they do have a lot of them, Big Chief and Mt Olympus are probably the ones you should hit.
Damn - weird to encounter fans of the same horrible humor!
It was a couple of decades ago that I considered possibly accepting a job in Milw, but at the time I was astounded at the value of homes you could get in lakeside towns immediately N of - and a very short commute from - Milw. But, would likely be less attractive if you worked in West Allis or S of the city.
OTOH, I’ve thought that the area immediately S of Milw was kind of a sweet spot. If you could figure out a commute that kept you off of 94 in rush hour, you would have all the benefits of a quick commute into a small big city, as well as a pretty big city just about an hour to the south.
Same principle would exist placing yourself between Milw and Madison, or between Milw and “up north”.
Ah, but since you can’t see across it, you can imagine you’re at the ocean. As a kid, we used to drive an hour north and rent a cheap house on the sand dunes near Kohler/Andrae State Park. Only an hour away and it felt like a deserted stretch of Cape Cod (minus the salt).
