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Touring Wisconsin Again (and Illinois too)

I don't travel back to Wisconsin to visit family very often. Since Sandy and I had visited in April I thought I was good for this year. But this was a slow summer for us for travel and Sandy really wanted to go back again. Shannon's wedding was planned for the fall and she wanted to help her pick out her wedding dress. So in September we booked another trip. Although I moved away from Wisconsin over forty years ago, this was one of the few times that I went back twice in the same year.

We planned another grand tour. We would start with two days in Oregon (that's Oregon, Wisconsin) visiting Sandy's parents. Then we would go to Yorkville, Illinois to visit Shannon and Jimmy. That's where the wedding dress shopping part came in. Then we would head up to Oshkosh to visit Mickey and Allie before returning to Oregon for a day before heading home.

Our time in Oregon was pretty quiet. We spent the first evening at her parents. Lynn and Dan came down from Sun Prairie after they finished work and brought take out pizza from La Rocca's.

The next morning Sandy and Lynn took their mom out shopping. It gave me a chance to make a trip to Noble Knight Games in nearby Fitchburg. I picked up Napoleon Against Russia which almost completes my set of OSG's Library of Napoleonic Battles series (I only need one more - although OSG keeps doing more all the time). After lunch at Sugar River Pizza with Lynn and Dan we went to visit a winery. It's unusual for a Wisconsin winery but Botham Vinyards actually does have their own vinyard. Because of the climate they only grow grapes for some of their red wines. Since we are white wine drinkers we didn't try them. They did have a nice Riesling and a nice white blend made from grapes that came from upstate New York. We got a couple of bottles to take with us. We figured that we had the rest of the week to drink them.

Next stop was Yorkville, Illinois where we stayed with Shannon and Jimmy. We expanded our grand tour beyond Wisconsin. The following day the Finleys drove down as well and the ladies (Shannon, Sandy, Lynn and Colleen) went off to shop for a wedding dress. Since that was the key objective of the entire trip, we decided to let them proceed without any male interference.

To keep us out of the way, Jimmy took the guys (Dan and me) to visit the Air Classics Museum at the nearby Aurora airport. It wasn't very elaborate, just a small trailer and some aircraft parked outside, but what they had was well worth seeing. They had quite a few historic aircraft. I just love old airplanes so I thought it was great. There was hardly anyone there so one of the guys in the museum gave us a tour and told us a lot of interesting stories about the old airplanes they had. It was well worth the visit. Afterwards we all met up for a late lunch where we got the full story on shopping for the wedding dress.

As Jimmy and I were riding together we got to talking about our dive trip to Bonaire in 2018. Together we hatched a plan that we should do another one in 2020. As soon as I got home I started working on it. In 2018 Mickey had missed because he had just taken a new job and couldn't get away. With Tim in the miltary it's always tough to find dates that work for him. Amazingly enough though, I actually got a trip scheduled for March 2020 that everyone could commit to which got me pretty excited.

(NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: Unfortunately due to the coronavirus, the trip was postponed. As of mid-2020 it has still not been successfully rescheduled but I am hopeful it will still happen. Someday. Maybe.)

When the weekend was over we ended our brief excursion into Illinois and headed back to Wisconsin. We drove straight through Milwaukee, not even stopping to eat at Barbierie's, and up to Oshkosh.

At first we thought that Mickey and Allie had a new dog, but it was just Daisy with a haircut. They don't have central air conditioning in the house that they rent. Usually Daisy is just one big ball of fur, which would have been unbearably hot through the summer, so she ended up getting a haircut. And it was quite a haircut. I thought it was impressive that after several years in South Carolina, it was finally the hot and humid Wisconsin summer that convinced Mickey that Daisy needed a haircut. I'm sure she was a lot more comfortable but it took some getting used to. She was only half the size I was accustomed to. But it didn't take long for me to be convinced that it was still good old Daisy.

Next day we made the drive up to Green Bay, it's only about fifty miles north, and visited Lambeau Field. Although I grew up in Wisconsin I had never been there. We took the tour through the stadium and it was quite interesting. The Green Bay Packers are the only major sports franchise that is located in a small town - the population of Green Bay is only a hundred thousand people. The stadium is located right in the middle of a neighborhood, with a parking lot that is barely large enough to handle just the tour buses for a game. Providing parking on game day must be a major industry in the town. Although I'm sure going to a Packer game at Lambeau Field would be an experience, kind of an American sports pilgrimage, I'm not sure I would want to deal with the hassle.

Although a stadium may not seem like a big deal, the tour was actually very interesting. We saw where the Packers organization has their offices. We went up to the luxury boxes, which were fun to see since it's not where I usually sit when I got to a sporting event. We got to see the team locker rooms and walked out through the tunnels that the players take to go out onto the field on game day. We walked along the sidelines at field level. The narrative provided by the tour guide was interesting too. Even though the stadium is quite old, it had been updated many times over the years to keep it up to date. It's a different approach from most other teams, who always clamor for a new stadium to be built. But then the Packers have to be the most atypical franchise in all of American professional sports.

The tour ended at the largest sports fan store that I have ever seen. Almost anything you can imagine you could buy there, with a Green Bay Packer logo on it of course. After getting our souvenirs we ate at the stadium restaurant, where naturally every item on the menu was Packer-themed. With the whole day being all-things-Packers, I was glad that I had thought to wear green. I felt like I fit right in.

Mickey told me that when he moved to Oshkosh he put his name on the waiting list for Packers season tickets. He said his number was around fifty thousand, so there's a good chance that his grandchildren will be season ticket holders someday.

After some Oshkosh area shopping we drove back to Madison the next day. We stayed overnight and then caught our usual early morning flight back to Boise. Overall a fun visit but it may be a while before I double up trips to Wisconsin in the same year again.