Old Milwaukee July 19, 2915

We left Kokomo under cloudy skies and headed to our next stop.  It rained hard a couple times on the way to Chicago but the sun came out the further north we drove.  Lots of traffic around Chicago and the toll roads about did us both in.  You can be eight lanes over to the left and they give you a two second warning that you need to be in the right lane to pay the next toll in cash.  By the time we got to Wisconsin, we had spent $10.70 and Debbie was in meltdown mode from negotiating the lane changes.  There were signs along the road that said “Emergency Stopping Only..2 Hour Limit”.  How does anyone know how long an emergency will last or take?  They are very weird about how long you can do things here.

Our first stop today was in Pleasant Prairie, WI at the Jelly Belly Factory.  Huge factory building and with retail stores in the front.  The also had a tasting counter where they will give you “a bean” of your choice to taste.  You can taste more than one kind but you can only get one bean each taste.   Lots of cute things in the store.

 We left there and headed to a place called the Mars Cheese Castle which we read was like a factory store near Kenosha, WI.  We stopped and it was packed and a cute building but not what either of us were looking for and it was so crowded that you could barely move around so we left without cheese and headed on to Milwaukee.  We were looking for the Market in the Historic area downtown.  Actually this city was totally surprising.  It was exceptionally clean and neat and the downtown market area was really nice with outdoor dining and lots of shops.  We ate lunch at a place called the St. Paul Fish Market.  Debbie had the fish and chips and I had lobster bisque and an appetizer crab cake.  Both were fantastic and Debbie loved hers too.  Again we went to this shop in the market looking for cheese and didn’t find what we wanted…do we even know what we want?  It was very crowded there but turned out to be a beautiful day.  We walked back to where we had parked the car and then headed to the casino that is near downtown.  The place was huge and I got my Fitbit steps in today looking for Debbie in there. 

We had a little drive to get to the hotel and the GPS routed us through an “interesting” part of town to get us there.  Even though, we were amazed at how neat and clean the places looked…..you would not see that in Atlanta.  We eventually got to the Hilton Garden Inn where we are staying and it is very nice here.  We decided to eat in the hotel restaurant since I wanted to write the blog tonight.  We dropped our things in the room and went to eat.  Both of us had a spinach salad with fresh raspberries, walnuts, gorgonzola with a raspberry vinaigrette and honestly they were delicious!  So here I am finishing up today and Debbie just got out of the shower so now it’s my turn.   Day two is now in the books.  My only issue is Debbie’s computer won’t import the photos from my camera and the blog will not give me the prompt to start a new post.  As soon as these issues are resolved, you will be reading along with us!