Milwaukee, WI: September 2, 2023 - Wishigan

It's time for a sequel.

Two years ago, my parents and I did The Dakotas Trip, in part because my mother has been to almost all fifty states and needs to cross off just a few more to finish.  Up and Down Dakota were two of them, and now two more: Wisconsin and Michigan, affectionately known to us by their celebrity couple name, Wishigan.

After a skosh under a year at my new job in Charlotte, I'd built up enough PTO to finally take a trip somewhere, and I used the week of Labor Day to take it.  We flew out Saturday morning for the reasonable-length flight to Milwaukee direct from Charlotte, and got in in time enough to have a lunch at Martino's Italian Hot Dogs, which looked like a place that would have even been sketchy in the 80s:

But the hot dog itself satisfied:

I was admonished by Leigh to take pictures of all my food on this trip and send them to her.

Our first real stop was the Basilica of St. Josephat: 

Which is mightily impressive, but my curse strikes again: we couldn't tour the main sanctuary because there was a wedding going on:

That's as much as we could see.  Impressive!

We saw the rest of the place, though:

They had that chapel, the third picture, under the main church, just a spare chapel, y'know, in case ya need it.

Next, the Art Museum, an iconic Milwaukee landmark:

with it's whalebone architecture.

A truly extensive place, we barely had time to see most of the areas and even then, for the last few, it was kind of a rush.  Your sightseeing sensors tend to get worn down to the nubs.  They had a good mix of the B.S. modern crap:

Real art:

Sculpture of various kinds:

Miscellaneous:

And frawg:

Another view of the whalebone and shore of Lake Michigan:

Lake Michigan is VAST, by the way.  In the plane, I was taken aback by how endless it was, even from way up there.  It looked like an ocean.  Stretched so far into the distance that you couldn't see the other shore.

After the Museum was the hotel, followed by a brief walk through the city to dinner, at Good City Brewing:

Next to the fiserv.forum:

where the Bucks play!!!!!!!

On the return walk, we made a detour by the library:

But didn't go in, as it had closed for the night.

So that was day 1!  But there was still a week to go, and many adventures still to come.