Hello Milwaukee

The drive up to Harrington Beach State Park wasn’t far, about 50 miles, but somehow that 50 miles changed everything. Once we were past Milwaukee (Harrington Beach is about 30 minutes north of Milwaukee) the last traces of heat disappeared. There were cheese curds at every gas station — a sure sign you’re in Wisconsin — and the world felt quieter, more relaxed, more natural. Even the lake seemed somehow wilder.

Last time we were here I wrote about the yellow warblers that were everywhere in our campsite. This time was no different, one even came in the bus to check it out.

We came back to Harrington because it’s a good place to camp and access Milwaukee. We don’t spend much time in cities anymore. We avoid them actually, especially large cities. Driving into the Chicago to get the awning was a nightmare I’d just as soon never repeat. Smaller cities like Milwaukee are more tolerable, though still not our thing anymore.

That said, we made an exception here because we actually like Milwaukee and we have some friends living here that we wanted to catch up with, however briefly. We had also promised the girls we’d get some sushi and cupcakes, and then go to a museum for their birthday since we’d be spending their actual birthday somewhere without sushi.

We started with cupcakes of course.

Then we had a sushi lunch and popped into a bookstore that was pretty amazing, but, despite having a seemingly endless number of books, did not have the one that the girls wanted.

The next stop was the Milwaukee Public Museum, which is such a vague name we didn’t really know what to expect except that it had some dinosaur exhibit of some kind. I think that was a good way to go in, not knowing anything (the opportunity for you to go not knowing anything is about to be ruined) because now that I’ve been, I am still not totally sure what the Milwaukee Public Museum is, beyond, the very generic: really fun.

The specimen collection in the lobby area reminded me of La Specula in Florence, which makes sense because that collection was designed to show off the original Milwaukee Public Museum exhibits, which date from very near the time of La Specula. But even the “modern” parts of the museum weren’t very modern. And I mean that in a good way.

The Milwaukee Public Museum is a throw back the museums of old: big dioramas, lots of signs and welcome absence of any screens or QR codes or any of the ridiculous digital gimmicks that pass for content in modern museums. Instead it was interactive in the original sense — the kids could touch the buffalo fur, peddle a penny farthing, and even let butterflies in the butterfly exhibit land on them.

The natural history portion of the Milwaukee Public Museum was extensive and full of great dioramas, though I have to take some exception the tiny little section devoted to the south. The south is apparently little more than a footnote here and can be adequately represented by a banjo, a musket, a few ears of corn, and a flag none of us recognized.

What the Public Museum understandably does a far better job with is the history of Milwaukee. There’s a huge exhibit called the Streets of Old Milwaukee with a life size replica of the streets of Milwaukee through the ages. Most of it seems to be roughly the late 19th century, complete with lighting that replicates the look of old gas lamps. It really did feel a bit like walking the evening streets a century ago, peering in shops and homes at the various scenes.

We met up with our friends later that night for some dinner before driving back out to Harrington. The next day our friends drove out to hang out at the beach for the day. There was a lot of driftwood on the beach, which the kids wasted no time in turning in to a little village.

Unfortunately that was all the time we got in Milwaukee. Harrington’s proximity to the city has a downside, it fills up quickly, especially the weekends. We managed to get four days midweek on short notice, but with fourth of July rolling around we had leave for more obscure parts of Wisconsin that don’t see the crowds. We had a nice rainbow send off on our last night at least, and the next morning we hit the road again, headed north.