Midwest Best

Hey all,

We’ve had an excellent past few days in the Midwest.  After driving across the rest of  South Dakota and Minnesota, which weren’t that exciting (perhaps we should have visited the Corn Palace), we stayed on the Mississippi River, just on the border of Minnesota and Wisconsin.  We did a quick hike in the morning along the Mississippi and then set off to Milwaukee for the day.   

Above the Mississippi looking from Minnesota across to Wisconsin

Milwaukee was a really fun place to spend the afternoon.  We walked along Lake Michigan and then did a tour of the Lakefront Brewery, which was one of the best deals we've found so far.  A tour of the brewery, a souvenir pint glass and three beers for $7.  Would have been perfect had I not dropped one of my beers on myself during the tour, but I guess walking around the rest of the day smelling like beer helped me fit in during our day in Milwaukee.  We continued our Milwaukee experience by eating dinner at the Brat House.  We each ordered a Brat and got the appetizer sampler.  Apparently in Milwaukee appetizer means one of everything on the menu so we ended up eating six Brats between us.  After dinner we waddled back to our car and drove down to Chicago.

Lakefront Brewery, which is actually on the river

Milwaukee

So many Brats!

Our weekend stay in Chicago was perfect.  Andrew and Susan were excellent hosts and their place downtown was great for going out and exploring the city.  We even slept somewhere other than in the Suburban for the first time in two weeks.  We made two trips to Wrigley Field.  One on Saturday to do the tour of the ballpark and one on Monday to watch them play the Brewers.   A Buster Posey jersey was worn for both trips.  It was especially funny to see the Brewer fans reactions after the Giants had just finsihed crushing the Brewers for three games and then some random Giants fan shows up at Wrigley to heckle Ryan Braun.

 

Cubs - Brewers game at Wrigley

On the field during the Wrigley tour

We spent a lot of time walking around Lake Michigan and made a couple trips to the jazz festival in Millennium Park.  We  had several excellent meals including sandwiches at Lucky’s Sandwich Shop (from an episode of Man vs. Food), a rooftop BBQ at Andrew and Susan’s and Chicago Dogs at Wrigley.  Overall a really great experience for both of our first trips to Chicago.

We left Chicago around 4PM on Labor day and spent 20 of the next 30 hours driving to Cape Elizabeth, Maine.  We spent Monday night in a KOA near Lake Erie.  I believe the official name was the I Hope No One Accidentally Shoots Us KOA.   There were probably around 20 other campers staying there, I think they were all named Cleatus and we had more teeth than all of the Cleatuses combined.  The next day we made a quick stop at Niagara Falls, which was pretty impressive, and arrived in Maine around midnight.

 

OK, we didn't actually take this picture, but this is what Niagara Falls looks like.

We’re in Maine now relaxing, hanging out with family and checking out Acadia National Park, which we’ll write about more in our next post.  Hope all of you are doing well.  We love hearing from all of you !

B and G