The kids have really run Uncle Dennis’ pets ragged. It looks like Jack is pooped:
Today we headed downtown for a tour of the Wisconsin Capitol with Uncle Dennis, Grandma DiAnn, and Tricia’s sister:
B was given the job of using a laser pointer to indicate for the rest of the tour group a fossil in one of the stone steps:
The hearing room:
The Supreme Court chamber
The Senate Chamber:
The State Assembly chamber:
We climbed a couple flights of stairs and a narrow spiral staircase to reach the walkway that circumnavigates the exterior of the building:
After we returned to Uncle Dennis’ house, the kids played with his pets:
Trish had a great time playing saxaphone with Uncle Dennis for several hours. She brought her mouthpiece on this trip for just this occasion. Uncle Dennis had a saxaphone for her to use. They sounded great!
After dark, we headed back to Walmart for our last night there.
M rode Zeus many more times today, and we took many turns with the go karts:
B solos on Pegasus:
The park also had a small goat petting enclosure:
The kids rode Manticore again. The swing assembly goes all the way to the top:
Trish made theme park-themed funnel cake, which I had never heard of:
We left the park around 5pm and drove south to Madison. We went to Uncle Dennis’ house and went for a walk with him and Grandma DiAnn down to the lake:
For the next few nights we will be overnighting at a Walmart in the Madsion area, and bringing the RV back to Uncle Dennis’ house during the day. See the trip map for today’s drive and out current location.
This morning I got up at 5:15 and went out for an early morning ride in the countryside around Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. This is America’s heartland, folks:
After doing homeschool in the Walmart parking lot under torrential rains, we packed up and drove west to the amusement park town of Wisconsin Dells. Mt. Olympus Water and Theme Park had a fifty-eight dollar deal which included one night at their full hookup RV park and two days of admission for four people to the theme park:
We avoided the waterpark half of the park and spent all of our time with the go-karts and rollercoasters:
I’m not a roller-coaster rider, but Trish and the kids rode Pegasus, which has a 45-foot drop:
Pegasus was enough for B, so Trish and M rode Cyclops, with its 76-foot drop:
Trish and M then rode Zeus and Hades 360, with 85- and 140-foot drops respectively. After that, Trish decided she was done riding roller coasters.
The kids rode the Manticore, a giant rotating swing ride:
Shabbos in Appleton was made tolerable by fans that kept the worst of the heat and humidity at bay. Late Friday night we were visited by our friend Jessamyn and her father. Jessamyn and I co-led the Jewish student group at the college and were a quarter of the membership. We talked about old times, Jessamyn’s newly released debut novel Safekeeping which has received many glowing reviews, and her father’s experiences travelling by RV. On Shabbos, our friend Chuck stopped by to say hello. I had the chance to speak to a couple of my professors as well, which was fun.
This morning M broke out his rollerblades:
…And then mocking figure skating. Or something:
We went for a drive and stopped at Skate City, where I was a member of the speed skating team during my college years:
We walked up to the observation tower where I proposed to Trish many years ago:
M and B did a reasonably convincing reenactment for us:
After making googly eyes at each other for a couple minutes, we came down from the tower and walked down to the shore of Lake Winnebago, where there’s a marina:
On our way back to the RV, we stopped at the private school that we used to skate to from the college:
While Trish made lunch, I walked to campus one last time with my camera. We both found the reunion to be depressing, as we found ourselves thinking of all the things we wish we’d done but didn’t, and all the dreams we had that have so far gone unrealized. I found walking the campus alone after the reunion was over to be even more sad. The empty, locked buildings seemed to be telling us to leave.
The dorm where we met:
Main Hall, built in 1853:
Shaking off our malaise, we drove south to the town of Neenah to visit the Bergstrom-Mahler Museum of Glass. The museum is currently hosting a temporary exhibition, titled Native Species:
The Mahler collection is composed primarily of European glassware from the past 500 years:
The museum is most well known for its extensive collection of paperweights:
My favorite paperweights were made using millefiori:
Each petal of each flower is made of glass and assembled into a bouquet:
We visited the research library upstairs:
We stayed at the museum until it closed, then walked across the street where the kids played on this great structure:
We drove south to overnight at the Walmart of Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.
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