America 2015: Day Twelve (10 August 2015)

As the snow flies on a cold and grey Chicago mornin'
A poor little baby child is born, in the ghetto
And his mama cries, 'cause if there's one thing that she don't need
it's another hungry mouth to feed
In the ghetto

                                                                                                                   - Elvis Presley

Monday 10 August

After another excellent sleep – nine hours a night is fast becoming my norm over here, and I’m not complaining! – and breakfast with the kids, which is always a heap of fun, we picked up Karen and Lauryn and headed north from Illinois into Wisconsin, and eventually to Milwaukee, another city that sits on a small slice of the mammoth Lake Michigan shoreline.

One of the great things about the Midwest, for all it’s vastness, is that, no matter where you are, you’re not far from other interesting cities and towns. When there’s no traffic, Milwaukee is about ninety minutes away from Wheaton. On the way up, just across the Illinois-Wisconsin border, is the Jelly Belly factory, which was a very popular spot with some in the car. You can buy just about any sort of flavour jellybean you want there, everything from beer flavour to carrot flavour. I know, it’s kinda scary! Fair to say we came away with a fair haul.

 

You hear disaster stories of arctic-type weather throughout the winter in Wisconsin, but in summertime, it’s a charming city – if tiny – spread out mostly along the shores of the vast Lake Michigan. The best thing is that you can park anywhere and wander through giant parks that stretch for miles around the shoreline, right down to the water. When the sun’s shining, it’s a beautiful spot. In mid-January, when the temperature’s in negative Fahrenheit, maybe not so much.

On the way into Milwaukee, a small city that reminds me of, say, Adelaide, or somewhere like that, we drove through a pretty major storm, but it turns out that the before-lunch storm was nothing in comparison to the one that farewelled us from Milwaukee a few hours later. You know things are going to get bad when the Weather Channel app has a weather advisory warning for the city: gale-force winds, small hail and a serious amount of rain. We didn’t quite see hail – although, I feel like we came pretty close – but it was an impressive storm nonetheless.

 

Candy and beer. All the major food groups!

Speaking of impressive…AJ Bomber’s is a burger place that reminded me of the old Lonestar Steakhouse in Australia because they give you peanuts when you sit down, and encourage you to toss the shells all over the floor. The burgers are absolutely amazing, and I think it’s the first place I can remember in America where I’ve been able to order egg on a burger. We also got to try a Wisconsin delicacy: deep-fried cheese curd. You know, it isn’t anywhere near as bad as it sounds. Actually, it’s tasty stuff and I could have easily eaten more. A massive thanks to Allan for pointing us to AJ Bomber’s. Excellent place!



A combination of the storm in Milwaukee and bad traffic coming back into Chicago turned out ninety-minute commute into one closer to three and a half hours. Needless to say, we were very happy to arrive back in Wheaton, for another relaxing dinner and lots of laughs with everyone.

Sadly, tomorrow is our final full day in Chicago before we head south.