A Road Trip With Myself, Day 1

This morning I dropped Amy off for a five-day canoeing trip at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.  It’s one of those pre-orientation freshman bonding trips that either yield good friends or people you duck behind hedges to avoid.  (This isn't a great picture because she doesn't know I was lurking on the Lake Mendota terrace watching her play icebreaker games.)

The four days previous to our flight here were pretty fraught.  Amy came home from working at a resident summer camp and had to be de-loused.  Every single thing she took to camp was absolutely filthy and had to be washed, sometimes more than once.  Small brown Insects were dropping out of the attic fan vent.  Rats had nested in the pool cover vault.  One of garage doors has seemingly developed autonomy and opens and closes at will.

It was necessary for me to come with her to Wisconsin in order to help her transport her six duffel bags of sports equipment and winter clothing.  And I have to stay here to help her move into her dorm next week.  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Faced with the tantalizing prospect of five days of doing whatever I wanted, I perused a guidebook and planned out a series of adventures.

Here are the things I planned for today:

-       Go to a train museum in East Troy and ride an old trolley

-       Browse hand-crafted items at a maker fair in Milwaukee’s Historic Third Ward

-       Attend a German festival with live music

Here are the things I actually did today:

-       Ate Norwegian meatballs in Stoughton

-       Browsed a lot of junk at the Seven Mile Flea Market and bought a truly excellent lacquered print of the Last Supper

-       Drove up the shore of Lake Michigan and ate candy on a beach while ten-year old boys shrieked in the water

-       Checked into my Milwaukee AirBNB, immediately left and drove to a Hampton Inn  (it transpires that a deal that seems too good to be true usually is)

It was actually a very fun day, even if wasn’t the day I had originally planned.  I had Google Maps on “No Highways” and ended up driving through some lovely farm country and up the lakeshore while listening to an Agatha Christie mystery and drinking Diet Dr. Pepper. 

Tomorrow I plan to go to Old World Wisconsin, an outdoor living history museum featuring homes that were transported there from some of the immigrant towns that were established in Wisconsin in the 1850s.  Stay tuned to this space to find out what actually happens.