Come for a Visit in Madison!

If you’re like me, maybe you don’t know much about the Midwest. Well, maybe Madison, Wisconsin, is not representative of the Midwest at all—how do I know? I have never lived in the Midwest. So, I will say instead, if you don’t know much about southern Wisconsin, or in particular, the state’s capital, come along for a tour.

(The following is based on nearly three straight weeks of visitors we had in June, which was heaven. Finn came for a full week, and even though he worked for 40 hours, we still packed in the fun. Then came our nomad friends, Doug and Melanie, who stayed in our driveway in their new van. It was yet one more interesting interaction in our five years of seeing each other across the continent. Finally came my good friend Karen who was my neighbor when we were tiny. She delivered a custom-made wreath from her new wreath business, Crossed Sticks Creations. It wasn’t all business with Karen, though. We got matching tattoos, which I’m gonna guess you’d not like to do while you’re here. You never know, though.

My point is that this post is based on those three weeks. In the broader picture, I’ve been in Wisconsin less than a year and my neighborhood less than four months, so practically anyone else from here will know more than I do.

Okay, enough caveats: let’s get to the fun.

Transportation

I’m going to assume you flew out here, seeing as how Chicago’s O’Hare airport is about a two-hour drive away. Or, you could have come by train; Amtrak services Milwaukee, about an hour away. In a few years, we’ll get Amtrak ourselves.

If you took the train to Milwaukee, bring a jacket even if it’s summer, because the wind coming off Lake Michigan is fierce. Plus, we might want to check out the rare gull that’s made a home with common gulls on top of a shipping port there.

And, of course, we’ll want to get our photos taken with the Bronze Fonz. Heyyyyyyyy!

Accommodations & Getting Around

I’m guessing you’re visiting in the summer. You’re welcome other times, of course! We could go snowshoeing or walk across one of the two large lakes in Madison that freeze over in the winter. Wait, you don’t want to be here when you have to put on several layers of clothing just to step outside? Okay, fine, let’s plan on a summer visit.

If you’re able to wait for next summer, then our renovations will be done, and you can maybe have the entire upstairs to yourself, depending on which bedroom Tracy and I take after the work is all done. When will that be? We still don’t know! We’re slotted to have work begin in late October, if you can believe that, and it might take 3-4 months. You do not want to stay with us during that time, seeing as how we’ll be living upstairs and not in a good mood about it. There are hotels right around here, though, and plenty of AirBnBs.

Assuming it’s summer, don’t bother renting a car when you’re here. We can’t fit you in the truck, but we don’t drive anywhere. Well, Tracy drives to the better grocery store once a week, and we’re trying to drive to play trivia with our friends, Guy and Patti, more often, but otherwise we walk or ride bikes everywhere, and I mean that.

You can borrow a bike or ride any of the quick on-and-off electric bike rentals throughout Madison. There are something like 200 miles of bike trails, and the one that heads straight through the capital plaza as well as around several of the main lakes runs two blocks from our house. In fact, be sure to look right, left, and right again before crossing that bike path, even when it’s not bike-commuter rush hour here. Parents with kids on the backs of their bikes coming home from day care are in an all-fired hurry.

Last bit of business here: pack light, but bring a jacket. So far this summer it’s been in the 70s during the day and 50s-60s at night, but we did have a heat wave where it got into the low 90s. People are not used to that, and camps and other outdoors activities actually shut down! We finally turned on our a.c., which you know I’m grumbling about. We turned it off after that heat wave.

Enough about me, though. Come on, you’re going to love it here.

Physical and Spiritual Workouts

Just in case you feel like a fish out of water without your gym, there’s a community center a couple of blocks away with a drop-in weight room and cardio machines. Finn went three times when he was here! There’s also all-levels drop-in yoga there, and a boxing gym several more blocks away. Plus a circus gym. Although that one sounds par for Madison’s wacky self, I actually haven’t been there so can’t tell you about it.

We probably have the usual spread of churches, too, but I’ve attended services at only one, my local congregation of Universalist Unitarian that I described with the gnome parishioner and the fevered human-rights activities. My friend Julie belongs to a reformed Catholic Church that’s all about human rights and land stewardship.

I heard a preacher speak from another local church while I was at a protest, and he was quite personable. He shouted that because the press would roast the rally for letting a preacher curse to the public, he would say it another way, and he proceeded to yell out something along the lines of, “Fury Under Christ King Trump!” His words were more clever (I can’t remember them) but he repeated that chant many times until we all got the picture.

What I’m saying is, as long as you lean in this direction, you’ll find a service to your liking.

Sports

I’ll skip the usual about Wisconsin’s famed football in Green Bay and baseball in Milwaukee (although, we could go to a game!). Instead, I’ll tell you about our weird smaller teams. We have a college league of baseball players (the Mallards) and women’s softball (the Night Mares, although, the upcoming fireworks after that game has been called off so as not to disturb a nearby eagle’s nest). There is roller derby … and professional soccer with a flamingo as the mascot. Finn and I went to a pro ultimate frisbee game (the Radicals) and sat beside the mother of the team’s co-owner and league official, and that was super fun.

As with everything, we biked to the stadium.

Boating

Madison was built between two large lakes, on the thin strip of land that separates them. There are several other large lakes here as part of the city, but give me a break on remembering which is which; I’m still trying to figure out the two larger ones! Monona is closest to me, I believe, and the larger ones, Medonta, is ever-so slightly farther away. I mean, by two blocks, maybe. From our friend Patti’s old office building, you can see both. The water level of Mendota is four feet higher than Monona, built that way so that hydro-electric power could run some kind of mill, as I remember learning.

How do I know this stuff about the lakes, as well as the fact that Otis Redding died when his plane went down in the larger one? I found out during a $5 pontoon ride, that’s how! Finn and I took a tour on one lake, and Doug and Melanie on the other, and they were both delightful.

Madison’s school system runs these pontoons (parked right by where I park my kayak) as a service, and often, when I’m out on the water kayaking, I’ll see one taking out a group of students or elderly. It’s run by volunteers, so the quality of the tour guide you get as your captain varies, but at $5 a pop, just being out on the water with friends is spectacular, the heck with facts.

Festivals

There are many types of festivals that go on in any town, duh, from local food to arts to fundraisers to Pride. Madison has more than one cheese festival! The festival that—I think—might be special to this city, though, is the neighborhood festival.

Neighborhoods in my part of the city (near-east) are a patchwork of basically the same-size house and lot, all built in about the same era (100 years ago). Probably, this is the way all cities work; I was living with Tracy on the outskirts of D.C. for only a short time, and I wasn’t really inside Portland, or Atlanta, or Richmond … I’ve lived right outside a bunch of cities, but this is the first one where I’ve really paid attention.

Whatever, here, neighborhoods need stuff they can’t get funding for outside, so they throw a party every year. This will be the 61st festival in a row for one neighborhood near me. In the near-east are five festivals in the summer, plus there’s another one farther from us with good bands, so we’ll actually drive to that one.

Depending on the area, it seems to be several city streets closed off (or a big park), plus one or two stages, food and drink vendors, arts and crafts, and whatever smaller fund-raising endeavor they can throw in.

Karen visited during the first festival of the year, and it’s kicked off with the Fool’s Flotilla. Everyone who enters it dresses in costume and floats together down the river that separates the two big lakes. I didn’t do a great job of taking photos, but we saw a family of artists with the child standing in the middle of the kayak with her easel (above), a bunch of people dressed as Where’s Waldo, two bands on pontoons, someone with a laundry line strung between their paddle boards and a cardboard washing machine, two people dressed as the doggie slinky … the costumes were hilarious and seemingly endless. Karen and I rode our bikes to the river bank and sat and pointed and laughed all morning long.

For Tracy and me—music lovers who have been forever affected by an awareness of germs indoors thanks to Covid and who can’t board Banjo—these festivals provide us with a way to hear live music. Which, if you know how many music festivals we went to previously, you’ll know what a big deal that is.

At the neighborhood festivals near us, we research the bands that are new to us, hear repeating favorites (tricky!), enjoy being a short bike ride or walk from home, stand in the sun with good local beers in hand, sometimes with a giant lake as the backdrop, and enjoy the kookiness that is Madison all around us.

Where else can the official motto be “Respect Differences, Love Each Other, Breathe Deep, Seek Peace”? All to the music of several bands jamming together for the joy of it!

If you’re just interested in music, Tracy and I go hear bluegrass on Lake Mendota every Friday night, and once a month we hear a band at a nearby park; last time it was Lil Ed, a blues guy Tracy used to see when he lived here. What’s more amazing is that Tracy danced for that! Best of all is that we’re either walking home or riding our bikes, so we get to enjoy the sun set slowly on the lake, the fireflies flickering under large trees, and the darkening night sky—things we loved living outside on the road.

Finn and I rode bikes to the Terrace on the lake by the university, where we watched like a million people dance and sing to a Latin band while we ate so many cheese curds I had to throw some away!

I’m sure there is a much more robust music scene were we to go indoors, but ix nay on the icksnay. Whatever. We haven’t been sick (except for covid) in six years, so what we do works.

Beer

Most everyone my age is drinking a lot less than we used to, but, if you’re drinking at all, you’ll appreciate the beer culture of a town right beside Milwaukee, the home of so many beers I can’t list them. Madison has the usual number (a million) of microbreweries, each specializing in a style.

It’s not just them, or restaurants or bars, that have beer on tap. Here it’s coffee shops and bookstores, small comedy clubs and arcades (where children are not allowed, hallelujah.) Beer is ubiquitous here. We have a favorite brewery we walk to where we played trivia with Doug and Melanie, but we also walk to a tap shop to play trivia with Patti and Guy, where a rotating selection of 40 rare or unusual beers are on tap. We have a tavern at the end of our street (The Ohio), but the bartender there is too busy chatting up the regulars to serve us in a reasonable time, so we diss them. The brewery can have our money, instead. To think: rudeness cost them the patronage of drinkers just two blocks away.

Museums

This one is tough for me because I don’t enjoy being inside, and I know I miss out on a lot of art this way. There is a one-of-its-kind temple in the nearby Botanical garden that is lovely.

We’ve also visited the geological museum on campus …

I recommend setting aside several hours for that one.

The physics museum is cool because it’s the oldest continually running science museum in the country. Time your visit carefully though, because it could be overrun with school children.

This ain’t a flattering picture of Melanie, but that shows how hard it is to stand on a rotating disc while holding a rotating bike tire, propelling yourself this way then that as you move the tire back and forth in your arms. Fun stuff!

As usual, I have paced my writing terribly here, starting out with too many details about gyms and losing steam (and your attention) before I can even begin on cheese! Brauts! Giant soft pretzels! Even the rich European heritage of Wisconsin that you see everywhere you go.

You’ll just have to come to find out for yourself.