We left on Thursday morning and got back home Saturday night. First stop was Green Bay, where we reserved a room and then went back north--up the Door Peninsula to the Maritime Museum in Sturgeon Bay, which is about halfway up the peninsula.
As with the other stops, my wife studied a AAA travel book and chose these places as the ones she was most interested in. Along the way, we also picked up flyers and tourism books about other attractions in the area. We can study them at home over the winter while planning future adventures.
The museum proved to be a worthwhile stop. They had a lot about the history of shipping on the Great Lakes, the transition from sail to steam and the many shipping disasters on the lakes. Also, a lot about the shipbuilders in the Sturgeon Bay region.
In the middle of the first floor was a periscope,
They even had a flotilla passing by, outside the museum ...
That was our only stop in a highly touristy part of the Badger State--but we'll check out the books for other places to visit in the future. From there, we drove back to Green Bay and a large craft store that my wife loves. Alas, we got there just as they were locking up. It was 8 p.m. already. So from there, we went off to the motel and bed.
But the next morning, we had breakfast ... and then made a beeline for Hobby Lobby, where she shopped for over an hour and picked up several pieces of fabric and a quiilt book that is inspiring future projects. (Evidently Hobby Lobby is a chain--we later saw Hobby Lobby stores in Appleton and Oshkosh.)
Then we went south to Appleton and had our motel booked by noon. From there, it was off to Menasha and the Weis Natural Science Museum on the campus of UW-Fox Valley. We spent several hours there, looking over their displays of fossils ...
... and rocks and displays on the natural history of the earth and the different kinds of rocks created during our planet's lifetime ...
We even saw a rock in a prominent display that came from our area!
The next stop was back in Appleton at a 19th century home that has been preserved with period furniture and decorations. It was very opulent, and we learned a lot about how "society" and "proper etiquette" worked in the Victorian and Arthurian eras. The main historical significance of the house is that it was the first home lighted with electricity in Appleton.
Alas, they forbade photography inside. But they must pay a price for that policy--I'm not mentioning the name of the place.
We were there a few hours, and the main attraction of the evening was visiting the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers of the Class A Midwest League. The Rattlers were playing the Fort Wayne Wizards. (That's my hand at the top of the frame, trying to fend off the low-angle sunlight.)
The T-Rats have had a long season. In this game, the lead went back and forth several times. The Rattlers took a 4-3 lead into the 9th inning--whereupon their closer coughed up three runs, and the team took a 6-4 loss.
But they did have a nice fireworks show after the game.
We got back to our motel room with the king-size bed. Too tired to do much of anything except hit the hay. It had been a busy, long day.
Saturday was the final day of our trip, and I wanted to visit Oshkosh and an outlet mall, where they had a Lands End store. When I visited S in Oshkosh (exactly 52 weeks earlier), I stopped there and got a nice raincoat on closeout. This time, I wasn't looking to buy anything, but I wanted to look at several of their men's fall/winter coats. That's on my shopping list.
Alas, they had nothing like that in stock. But my wife found a few things at a book closeout store--which itself was closing out permanently.
We had one last stop to make, and this was one I discovered myself in the tourism stuff. It's Memorial Park in Appleton. We had hoped to stop there Friday, but we stayed too long at the two other stops. Now we had time.
It's a relatively new park, about 10 years old, and just getting developed, but it had many beautiful floral displays. The bees certainly know all about it. There were bees all over the place, happily pollinating the flowers. So here's a series of shots, starting with a Scottish thistle ...
After the bee and thistle are a daylily, hibiscus, not sure, orchid and tigerlily. These photos aren't up to Grnidlady's standards, but they were nice to look at. The park is expanding--the orchids were from place-settings at tables where a fund-raiser was going to be held that night. We saw a layout of what the park could look like in a few years. Impressive!
Then it was time to head back north. We stopped to visit my mom and then went for supper at Pizza Hut. While getting out of the car, we saw a strange sight--a crane, in a big, shallow puddle on an empty lot between the Pizza Hut and a discount grocery store ...
I'm not sure what he was stalking, but he seemed very intense about it. Don't think there are fish in the puddle, but my opinion isn't important to him. It was worth a laugh ... and one more photo.
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