Sausage & Cheese, the Circus, and Yoopers

We left the Windy City and headed north to where I once lived for a brief time 30 years ago.  The town of Zion had grown quite a bit, but we were able to find two of the houses where I had lived and the church where we were members. 

Erik and I lived in the upstairs part of this house

After driving down memory lane, we drove north into Wisconsin.  We stopped in Milwaukee to get some summer sausage, bratwurst, hickory beef sticks, and rolls.  We ate the beef sticks right away for a snack, and had some brats on the rolls for lunch later.  Yum!  We drove past both Miller and Pabst breweries in the city.  We stopped at a Cheese Haus along the road and got some Wisconsin Cheddar. I thought about getting a cheese head hat ... but no ..!!  (They are sold everywhere!)

cheddar in the shape of the state

While driving on through the farmland, we stopped at an Amish roadside stand and bought a wonderful strawberry/rhubarb pie.

 

And we stopped for a Wisconsin favorite, butter burgers and fried cheese curds.  The burgers are fried in butter making them crispy on the edges, and the buns are buttered.  Very tasty! 

 

 

Our next place to see was the Circus World Museum in Baraboo.  It is the original winter home of the Ringling Brothers Circus.  They had a wonderful museum filled with the biographies of the brothers, the history of the circus and its acquisition of other circuses to become the biggest show on earth!  They had displays of costumes, train cars, and many circus wagons.  We also saw some elephants, horses, ponys, and miniature horses. The drinking fountains were lion heads, so you had to put your head in the lions mouth to drink, and the trash cans were animal heads too. While we were there we attended a magic show.  It was great fun! 

We drove north through Wisconsin, stopping to grill brats for lunch at a beautiful park along Lake Michigan.  We enjoyed the view across Green Bay to the peninsula. 

Then we drove into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  We headed first to Whitefish Point Lighthouse and Museum on Lake Superior.  This was a fascinating place all about the shipwrecks in the area.   No wonder it is called the shipwreck coast, there were hundreds of ships destroyed by storms and fog, and many crashed into each other!  We toured the museum and lighthouse, and watched a video about the divers replacing the bell on the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.  The original is in the museum. 

the lighthouse

We had a pasty (past-ee) in this part of Michigan too.  They are similar to the ones we had previously, but these were made with meat and vegetables in a flaky crust with no gravy on top.  Yoopers (U.P. ers) make them with chicken, beef, or fish.  We had a beef one with onions, potatoes, and rutabagas and a chicken one with broccoli and cheese.  They were both very tasty, we liked them a lot. 



beef pasty with potato and rutabaga

chicken pasty with broccoli and cheese

We went for a walk at Horseshoe Falls in the north woods near Munising next.  The falls were pretty, the gardens were peaceful, the blooms were colorful, and we liked how all the trees were labeled so we could identify the different kinds of trees. Then we stopped and fed the biggest rainbow trout I've ever seen in the pond.  They were fun to watch fighting for the food nuggets we dropped in the water.  On our way out we had an ice cream cone.  It was a really nice place to stop!

While in Munising, we stopped at a park for a better look at Lake Superior. 

We have now seen all 5 Great Lakes.  How cool is that?!  This was our final stop in the U.P. and we were rather glad.  Although the area is gorgeous with all the woods, the Great Lakes, and forests, the people were not very friendly.

Summer is becoming Fall. The leaves are changing colors and falling, the humidity is gone, and the nights are cooler again. We are enjoying the beauty as we drive.  We see school buses on the roads again, and prices are dropping from the summer increase.  The corn fields are now yellow and dry and will soon be gone like the crowds at all the campgrounds and tourist attractions.  I love Autumn!