Things to Do in Wisconsin: Henry Vilas Zoo

For my second things-to-do-in-Wisconsin post of the day, I present something we did today, instead of something I’ve forgotten about for a number of weeks. (I still have more old adventures to slap up here, by the way. Maybe I’ll also get to those this weekend?)

Madison’s zoo is not very big. Not very big at all, actually—for you western Kansans out there, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not quite as big as the Great Bend zoo. It’s probably a great size zoo for little kids, though, since every time I go to the Denver Zoo, I see kids throwing tantrums because they just can’t take any more fun. (And let’s face it, I was one of them when I was little.)

This sign was at the entrance. It made me laugh. (Hee hee! It’s a puffin!)

For a little zoo, they’ve got some quality animals. Like rhinocerauseses:

Tapirs:

The tapirs attracted a good size crowd, since they were about the only animals near the entrance that were out and doing anything (we never saw the alleged lions and tigers, for instance). As Neal observed, most of the comments from onlookers were along the lines of “WOW! How ugly are those things?!” Poor tapirs.

There was a giraffe that obligingly looked right at my camera:

an otter who was still resting before having water fun times:

a cool black swan:

and pretty flamingos!:

There were a coupla big ol’ buffalo:

a big ol’ black bear (which Neal attested was bigger than any black bears he’s seen in the wild):

and the biggest hamsters I’ve ever seen:

OK, they’re capybaras (the largest rodents in the world). But I liked them because—well, look at them! They’re gigantic hamsters!

Finally, there were a few pretty birds (not as many as we were led to believe there would be in the Amazon habitat house):

And penguins. Which is good, because what zoo trip is truly complete without seeing penguins?

Click here to read more . . .

Things to Do in Wisconsin: New Glarus Brewing Company

We've done a few more things on this list, but I keep forgetting to post about them. So here's one: we went to a brewery.

I don't like a lot of beers, but I do have a fondness for Spotted Cow, which they make at the New Glarus Brewing Company, not far from Madison.

We unwittingly went on the day that they were having the grand opening of their new "Hilltop Facility," which disappointed us because we wanted the good ol' fashioned tour. But we went up to the hilltop and found quite the party. There was a band and everything.

Also, the facility itself is surprisingly beautiful.



See?


And here's Neal in front of a fountain!

Since there was a party, there were no guided tours (or maybe there were and we just couldn't find them). But there were samples and souvenir glasses for surprisingly reasonable prices. (Six dollars for a really nice pint glass? That's good even without beer inside it.)

So we wandered around looking at stuff.

(The person posing held the glass of the person holding the camera; we didn't each get two.)

Anyway, it was fairly enjoyable, but there would be more than enough left to see--not just at the brewery but in the town, which is apparently "America's Little Switzerland"--to justify going again someday. Click here to read more . . .

Things to Do in Wisconsin

I watched this show on PBS the other night about aquariums (oh, the zany life I lead!) and for some reason it reminded me that it's been too long since I've gone somewhere and looked at stuff--like an aquarium, or a zoo, or a museum, or what have you. You know, field trip stuff. So I announced to Neal that we need to do Madisony Stuff--starting ASAP! (He was amenable to the suggestion.)

This is something between a list of suggestions and an itinerary.

Madison indoors:
State Capitol (check)

Wisconsin Historical Museum (check)

Chazen Museum of Art (check!)

University of Wisconsin Geology Museum

Wisconsin Veterans' Museum

Madison outdoors:

University of Wisconsin Arboretum

Ice Age National Scenic Trail (not all of it, unless we get real ambitious)

Olbrich Botanical Gardens

Vilas Zoo (check)

Outside Madison (this list is a lot shorter than it could be, but these are things I've been told I should go to):

The House on the Rock

Little Norway

New Glarus Brewing Company (check)

Cave of the Mounds

All right! We will have to see if Neal and I A) manage to do some of these things, and if we do B) remember to take pictures, so as to C) keep them for cherishing memories and D) post them on the ol' blog. Adventures! Click here to read more . . .

States

I saw a note on Facebook about the number of states the note-r had been to, but I decided to copy it here instead. Plus, mine will have additional information and be non-alphabetical--I think I'll go with roughly chronological.

1. Massachusetts: I was born there but have no recollection of it. Neal says it counts, though.

2. New Hampshire & 3. Maine: ditto on the not-remembering. I've been told I went on a trip to Maine (via New Hampshire? I'm fuzzy on the details) and did not enjoy it. I don't know if I'm missing any other travel-through states that I do not recall.

4. Kentucky & 5. Tennessee: We lived in Kentucky when I was wee, in a town on the border with Tennessee--which is where the hospital in which my sister was born is. (I've renewed these recently in Neal-family-related trips.)
6. Kansas: what up!

7. Colorado: I have been to Colorado countless times. It's always great.

8. New Mexico: we went on a trip there when I was in high school and saw Carlsbad Caverns (caves are awesome). To get there, we drove through

9. Oklahoma: lots of driving through this one, since it's on the way to

10. Texas: college! And during college, I took trips to

11. Pennsylvania: I got to walk on streets that John Adams strolled down with Thomas Jefferson (before the unpleasantness) when they were in the Continental Congress. (I have to assume there were fewer homeless people at the time--total, if not [perhaps] per capita.) From Pennsylvania, we walked to

12. New Jersey: The best part about walking to New Jersey is getting to say "I walked to New Jersey." Obviously, I still get a kick out of it.

13. Louisiana: I visited pre-Katrina New Orleans. There were mimes, high taxes, rude waitresses, cute architecture, and delicious beignets. I'm sure those things are there again/still.

14. Arkansas: I went on a couple of Spring Break church trips there. Let me tell you, Arkansas is not pretty in March.

It was still fun, though.

15. Maryland: Maryland was OK. The real attraction was

BONUS! Washington D.C.: I bet that happens to Maryland a lot.

16. California: And you know what? I did have fun, fun, fun!

17. Illinois: I still need to tell you guys about when Neal took me to see Wicked in Chicago. I went to the top of the Sears Tower once,but it wasn't a pretty day.

18. Michigan: It was real cold. Then there are those states that I've driven through instead of to, such as

19. Indiana, 20. Missouri, 21. Iowa & 22. Nebraska: Sorry, guys. I rather enjoyed driving through Nebraska--very specific road signs and lots of places to stop on the interstate, instead of signs indicating there's something at the exit which is really two miles away from the exit. (I'm looking at you, Iowa.) Similarly, there are my airport states

23. Minnesota: I got a connecting flight there. (I did like that the St. Paul airport had moving sidewalks everywhere!) And 24. South Carolina: on the way to D.C., our plane had to wait for weather, and it waited in South Carolina. I didn't leave the plane, but again, I checked with Neal and he votes that it counts. That leaves

25. Wisconsin: I live there! (For now.)



UPDATE: According to my dad (see the comments), I have also been to (through) 26. Connecticut and 27. Ohio. Over 50%, baby! Click here to read more . . .

A Sonic Story

A few weeks ago, Neal and I were extremely excited to see that there was a Sonic being built in Middleton. Up until then, the greater Madison area had been distressingly Sonic-free, a problem comparable to the dire lack of Chick-Fil-A. Little did we know that our elation was nothing next to that of native Madisonians.

The first time we drove past Sonic after it was open, every car port looked to be filled. And it was probably 15 degrees out.

The next time, we saw that the city had set up electronic traffic signs to direct people as to the correct way to reach the Sonic. (It's at an awkward point on the road where there's no traffic light to turn left into it.) Again, it was completely full.

Yesterday, we decided to drive out to Middleton to partake of onion rings and cream shakes, but we realized that we shouldn't go at a peak time, especially on a warmish day. We waited until about 2:00. So we drove out there, followed the signs, paid attention to all the orange cones, and turned on the appropriate street. That's when we saw a sign that said "GET PASSES HERE." As we turned onto this little residential street about a block from the Sonic, we saw that there were cars lined up, waiting to get a pass from a guy with one of those county-fair-parking sticks. You had to wait in line (behind, at this point in the afternoon, seven or eight cars) to get a pass so you could then drive down to the Sonic parking lot and wait there until another county-fair-style-parking guy allowed you to move into a car port once one was finally vacated. YEAH. There's a whole system to get people in and out of the Sonic because there are SO MANY people who are desperate for Sonic.

I hope this story accurately conveys how crazy the Middle Sonic situation is.

We went to Culver's instead. Click here to read more . . .

A Whole Buncha Pictures

This morning I decided to clear a backlog of pictures off my cell phone. I often take pictures meaning to put them up here, and then forget, so now I'm just going to blitz you with them.

In August, Neal and I went on a lovely honeymoon to picturesque Estes Park, Colorado. I have no pictures of our cute cabin or the view or any of the places we hiked to (I think Neal does, somewhere). What I do have is this bug I saw in a parking lot in Nebraska on our way to Estes Park:

This is a sign I saw in a rest stop bathroom, which may or may not be from the same trip:

Moving on--as a grad student, I rarely know what's going on on campus. So I can't tell you why this giant Bucky was on library square. I only know that a giant Bucky was on library square. And I made my friend Lindsay stand next to him for reference.

Lindsay also scored us some tickets to a Badger football game in late August. Her sister goes to Akron, so we got Akron student tickets--even though we were way down by one endzone, we were really close to the field, which was pretty cool.

Neal and I carved pumpkins for Halloween. His was a freestyle, jaunty carving:

Mine was old-timey Strong Bad:

The first time I got a perfect score on a Guitar Hero song ("My Name is Jonas" in Guitar Hero 3), I got really excited and took a picture of my stats to commemorate the event.

The warmer weather hung around longer this year than it did last year, it seemed to me. I saw this pretty iris after I would have thought it would be loooong dead.

Also, I saw a duck on a fountain. Campus ducks are pretty chill; he let me get pretty close to him.

And once I saw this amusing beer in the grocery store.

There were a couple other pictures (that are--if you can believe it--more riveting than Bitter Woman IPA) which I will hold back a little longer until they can be parts of posts that I keep telling myself I'm going to write. (Teaser: one is about my birthday adventure way back in May, and one is about election night craziness.) Click here to read more . . .

Olympics in Madison, 2016?

I had been seeing headlines the past day or so about cycling events maybe taking place in southern Wisconsin if Chicago gets the Olympic bid, but I just now actually clicked on one of the stories--it turns out some events might take place in Madison itself:

The road course would begin in Madison, have a couple loops in the city, then head west for five loops and the finish over demanding terrain in the Blue Mound area; the time trial road course would be entirely in Madison; and the mountain bike course at the Tyrol Basin ski area in Mount Horeb.

This sounds like a great idea to me. Sure, it wouldn't compete with the whole Forbidden City/Great Wall mystique that the Beijing biking events had, but Madison and the surrounding area is very pretty. And the end of the article points out, correctly, this town is full of bicycle enthusiasts. Bicycle lanes, bicycle stores, bicycle conventions--Madison is collectively a cycling fool.

Even if it happens, it would be unlikely to affect us directly, as the odds are very small that we'll still being living here in 2016. Still, even if we won't be able to walk down to Capitol Square to see some Olympic cycling (which would be pretty awesome even if it is just cycling), it would be pretty cool to watch Olympic coverage and watch people competing on what used to be your home turf. Click here to read more . . .

Alberta Clipper

The weather here isn't . . . great this week.

According to the National Weather Service, we're getting the effects of an Alberta Clipper, which is a pretty name for "it's going to be colder and windier than you can shake a stick at." (Side note: one of these days, I want to literally shake a stick at something, just to do it.)

This is just one good reason why Neal and I didn't wait another six months to get married. When people came up here in July, everybody loovvvved Madison. Can you imagine if it were this weekend? (Saturday's high: a balmy 19!)


Compare:

Yesterday, when it was warmer but snowy and cloudy, I took a picture with my phone from about the same spot:

See? Not as good. If you didn't know there was a lake there, you wouldn't be able to tell--and I mean in real life, too. I walked around on the lake when I was over there, and I only had a vague idea of where the shoreline was. Click here to read more . . .

Madison is Crazy

So, last weekend, I witnessed something that I had really not expected to see. Madison is a pretty actively hippie town (I mean, it's no Boulder Colorado, but still), which results in a lot of protests/rallies/general public gatherings that have some relation to some sort of cause. I mean, there were Free Tibet rallies in Madison before it was cool.

That may be why I would have sooner expected a "George W. Bush: Awesome President!" demonstration than what actually happened last Saturday:

Pro-China Rally!

Seriously, it was a good thing that (usually for such events) the participants were not aggressively handing out flyers. I wouldn't have had any response at hand besides, "Are you kidding?"

(They weren't kidding.)

That one is "Go Olympics! Go Badgers!" Many of the China ralliers even wore Wisconsin shirts because--fortuitously!--they're red. Other signs included:

"No OlymPolitics!";

one with some slogan I can't remember about being pro-peace/anti-riot;

the unintentionally-scariest one, which read "One Dream/One World/One China";

the informational poster telling its readers that Tibet has been a part of China since the 1300s (neglecting, I'm sure, that military force has also been necessary to keep that true for centuries)

and the one that genuinely made me angry, which was "Judgement without Evidence is Ignorance" (because, hey, let's think--why is there a lack of first-hand evidence about what's going in Tibet? Hmm, that's a tricky one. It sure couldn't be a Classic Commie Media Stonewall, could it?).

Another observation: the pro-China people were uniformly Chinese people. Pro-Tibet people are mostly people of Chinese descent, but with others mixed in, too; the pro-China ralliers all appeared to be exchange students, either from the main UW campus or who had shown up from other UW branch campuses (I saw a bunch of UW-Platteville t-shirts, for instance).

Now, I'm sure the pro-China people are nice people. Nothing ugly or violent went down--there was a pro-Tibet rally going on at the same time (not a coincidence, I feel sure; somebody from the Tibet camp got on a microphone to introduce a speaker they'd brought in and she reminded the China group that the Tibet people had a permit to be there and the China people did not). There was some pretty fervent chanting at some point, but it dissapated when the microphone person asked it to.

Also, I get it that it would be pretty frustrating to be abroad just when everybody is dogpiling on your country. Still though, there's liking your country and there's self-delusion. I feel like both sides were represented at the rally. In my admittedly rough estimation, the people defending China's right to host the Olympics belong to the former, while the people equating Tibet with violence and China with peace are suffering from the latter.

Click here to read more . . .

Good Times

Well, winter and the winter-esque leg of spring seem to be officially over now in Wisconsin (excuse me for a moment while I go knock on all the wood in my apartment).

Yesterday, for the first time this calendar year (and probably for the first time since October? September?) the temperature broke 70. Oh man, it was awesome. And today? It's going to do the same thing again!

A corollary to general weather awesomeness is some particular clothing awesomeness. I bought this shirt off the internet a month or two ago, but it's been tricky to wear because I don't have anything that looks very good underneath it. But today, Dinosaurs on Bikes Shirt will be flying solo!

Good times indeed.

Click here to read more . . .

Phone Pictures

I got a new phone a while back, and although I hate it, I've never had a phone with a camera before, so that's kind of nice. I always thought that if I had a camera phone, I would take pictures of quirky things and write about them in my blog, and now . . . that dream is coming true!

This is one of my earliest attempts. I had to go on a Bureaucratic Red Tape Quest one frigid, frigid morning, when I saw an interesting clock on the side of a bureacratic building:


Like I said, an early attempt. I'm not sure if there are any camera phones with zoom, but wouldn't that be cool? I've zoomed in on this here computer in an effort (a dubiously successful effort?) to make it easier to tell what's going on:

It's a Bucky clock! His arms tell you the time! . . . Look, I promise it's cool in person.

This next picture is about showing you that Wisconsin is how you think it is. People here are very positive on cheese, very positive on bratwurst, very positive on beer, and very very positive on all things Green Bay Packers.

This is the sign for a bar by my house from a couple of days after Favre announced his retirement. Usually, they have some weird pirate-related slogan. I think the other said something like "WE LUV YOU FAVRE."

Finally, I give you a puzzle.

This was something the gentleman caller and I saw in the dairy case at our local grocery emporium. We looked at it in confusion. Then I picked it up to read the label: "Butter Lamb." But that just didn't erase any of my questions. Question the first: What? Butter Lamb? Question two: But why a butter lamb? Question #3: Are butter lambs something that happen that I just don't know about? I mean, are all of you out there reading this and thinking, "Geez, you've never heard of a butter lamb before? What, have you never been to a [social event traditionally involving butter lambs] in your whole life? You need to get out more"? I just don't know.

In all seriousness, if anyone has any answers about the butter lamb, I would really appreciate it.

Click here to read more . . .