Let's Go Places (and Meet People!): Racine & Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Last weekend was Boy Scout camp weekend in our house.  You know the drill: my family went off to the woods, our puppy went off for boarding at our vet, and I hit the road in search of adventure.

Normally I don't talk about my travel plans in advance, but I need to tell you what I have planned for June in order to explain this trip.  Just like last year, the rest of my family has a Mega Boy Scout camp trip, and I will be taking a Mega Solo Vacation (though not at the same time as them because of the puppy).  In June the only member of our family who will spend every night at home is the puppy.

The location for my June Mega Solo Vacation is northern Illinois/Wisconsin and the primary agenda is a massive Frank Lloyd Wright bender.  However when I started planning the trip, I realized that there was too much FLW stuff to cram into one visit.  Clearly this needed to be two trips, so last weekend I focused on the Racine/Milwaukee (MKE) area and in June I'll tackle northern IL/central Wisconsin.

Racine and MKE are home to three public FLW sites:

• Wingspread - the home of the SC Johnson President at the time - I love a good Rich Person FLW home, so I predicted that this would be the star visit of the trip.
• The SC Johnson headquarters - eh, I wanted to go since it's FLW and it's in the area, but how exciting is a corporate headquarters going to be?  I predicted that this would be the least interesting visit of the tour.
• The Burnham Block - I wasn't sure what it was and I like to go into these tours blind, so I predicted that this would be the middle ranking. 

I knew that there was time for more than FLW so I went looking for other things to do in the area.  My top picks were a tour of the Miller Brewery, the MKE riverfront, and lighthouses galore!  I also wanted to check out the Indiana Dunes on the way back if there was enough time.

In addition to a large number of public Frank Lloyd Wright sites, this area is also home to a high concentration of Cool Bloggers, so the secondary agenda of the trip was to meet Cool People.  I reached out to my internet friends and scored a dinner meetup for Friday and an all day hangout for Saturday.

Thursday - wheels up

Wisconsin is further away than my normal long weekend trips, so I headed out the door a day earlier than usual.  At lunchtime on Thursday I kissed the Hubs and the puppy goodbye and headed for the highway.  I fired up an audio book and sat back while the miles flew by.  In theory the drive to WI isn't much further than Chicago, but in reality there is a huge difference between driving to downtown CHI (our norm for when we visit family) and driving through the entire city of CHI, which is the gateway between Indiana and Wisconsin.  It wasn't fun but I got 'er done and arrived at an Airbnb in Racine on Thursday night.  I nuked up the leftovers that I brought from home for dinner and called it a night.

Friday - the adventure begins!

Normally I don't sleep as well when I travel as I do at home, and I always wake up early at dark o'clock.  So I was shocked when I opened my eyes to full blazing daylight.  Ugh, it was so bright that it must be 9 AM and I never sleep that late...I glanced at my phone...wha...it was 6 AM.

The missing piece is that it gets light a lot earlier at the eastern edge of the Central time zone that it does for me at home in the middle of the Eastern time zone.  Also I was staying right near Lake Superior, so there wasn't anything on the east to block the sun.  I spend my free time reading blogs written by people in Wisconsin about blizzards and for my entire time there it was bright and sunny.  It turned out that the most important item that I brought from home was my sun hat.

I didn't have anywhere to be until mid morning, so I brewed up my coffee and headed for the lake front and had a nice little beach walk to start the day.

My first stop of the day was Wingspread, which was the home of the president of the SC Johnson Wax company.  The house gets its name from its four "wings" that spiral out from the center of the house.

In the 1930's the pres commissioned FLW to build a new company headquarters for SC Johnson, and then extended the assignment to a new residence for himself.  Construction of the home lasted for two years, which was long enough for the current Mrs. Johnson to die and for her husband to remarry.  The new Mrs. Johnson never really liked the house, but she was a trooper and the family lived there for 20 years before building something that was more her style.  After they left, the house was converted into a conference center - yes when your house is 14,000 square feet the transition from home to conference center is a pretty easy one.  The large open concept living room/dinning room/office was maintained, and most of the changes were made to the living areas of the house.  Today the building's primary purpose is conferences, but it is open on select dates for tours.  If you want to learn more and you have five minutes on your hands, here is a good run down on the house.

The only thing that I didn't like is that the tour was "self service".  It started with an introduction to the history of the house, then there was a video, and then we were let loose to explore on our own.  I would rather have been guided from room to room to hear about the house in real time. But it is a small nitpick.

After the tour I headed north by a few miles and hit up the Wind Point Lighthouse.  It wasn't open for tours that day, but it was still a gorgeous view from the outside.

Next up it was lunchtime.  Food wise I wanted more than my "I don't know what I want for lunch" protein bar that I always bring on these trips but less than a full meal, so I hit up a grocery store deli for a sandwich and headed north for the Big City.

When I got to MKE, I looked at my watch and saw that it was Miller Time.  Now look, you need to understand that I am an incredible beer snob and that when I crack open a cold one, it's most likely a lah-di-dah IPA and not a Miller or a Bud.  But folks were raving about the Miller Brewery tour, so I decided to slum it.

 

The Miller campus dates back to the 1850s and it is huge.  They warn you up front that this is not a sedentary tour - and they give you a sample of Miller lite to sip on while they tell you this.  After the welcome sample there are two other "beer stops" on the tour and then a final glass of beer out on their patio.  What happens if you don't feel like drinking the whole sample?  No problem, they have a "discard bucket" at every stop.

The tour started with a tour of one of the brewery buildings.  It involved a stair climb, and the stairwell was very hot and the building was very stinky (due to the brewing process).  We were warned about all of these things in advance and people were given the option to sit out if it was too much.  

After that we went to the caves which were the OG refrigeration units back in the 1850s, where we got a sample of Miller High Life (the champagne of beers!).

Our next stop was the Miller Tavern where the sample was Hamm's - a beer that I had never heard of that was on par with the other Miller beers.  Finally we went to the packaging plant, and then back to the visitor's center for our final brew.  This time Blue Moon was on the list, and that's a beer that's classy enough for my tastes.  Beer snobbery aside, the tour was fascinating and you can add my voice to the chorus of folks that recommend it.

Now that I was no longer on Miller Time, I calculated what I could get done before my dinner meetup.   I picked the MKE riverfront and had decently long walk.  It was nice, but strangely deserted so it didn't have the same vibe as the CHI riverwalk.

After the walk there was still enough time to do something else.  I just happened to walk by the Grohmann Museum, and I recognized the name from Trip Advisor's top things to do in MKE.  Okey dokey, so what was this museum about?  The Art of Work?????  Yes, the museum is dedicated to art depicting work over the course of human history.  Given my experience with work over the last few years I wasn't sure if it would be wonderful or wonderfully horrible but it was the former and not the later.  My favorite part was the section on medicine.  And for the $5 admission I don't think that you can not go if you're in the area.

Dinner/Cool Blogger meetup time!  I walked into Twisted Plants, a vegan restaurant, and Kim was there and waiting for me!

The first thing to tell you about Kim is that she is very good at naming things.  When you are a runner named Kim who blogs...there is no better blog name than Kim Has the Runs.  And when you are a vegan married to an vegetarian and you and your husband own a business that sells vegan and vegetarian foods online...there is no better name than Fake Meats.

Kim came with Fake Meats swag!   I will report back as soon as I try these:

Speaking of fake meats...this is the Up in Smoke Burger.  I inhaled that sucker.

After dinner Kim and I weren't done talking - you need to understand that IRL I'm not a chatty person but when two Cool Bloggers meet they are never going to run out of stuff to talk about so we needed a few more hours to finish the conversation.  We went to Grant Park and took in the lake views and walked on the trail.  Before dinner I was at 23,000 steps for the day and when we called it for the night I was at 28,000 steps.

Saturday - an FLW/Cool Blogger kinda day

I woke up bright and early on Saturday and took my coffee to the lake like a civilized person.  Then I was wheels up and back to MKE.  My first stop was The Lake Effect Coffee Co to meet Cool Blogger #2.  We chose this coffee shop because it was close to an FLW site and because it had a cool name.  I usually limit myself to one cup of coffee a day but I couldn't resist and had a cup of their house brew.  It was very good and totally worth it to push my caffeine limits.  But I wasn't there for the coffee.  I was there to meet Engie!

We started our day long conversation and then paused to go to our first FLW tour of the day.  The Burnham block was an early experiment in affordable housing.  FLW came up with a set of plans and options for duplexes and bungalows, and his builder purchased what was then a tract of land in the country and is now a city block in MKE.  He built a row of demo units but had the bad timing to run up against WWI and found that he couldn't sell them.  The plan for mass produced FLW housing was dropped.

Today one of the duplexes is in the process of being restored, and that is where the tour met.  After an introduction we headed down the block to tour one of the bungalows which has been fully restored.  The house is 800 square feet of well utilized space.

The tour was longer than expected and we had to be in Racine in a few hours, so I realized that it wasn't going to work to run around like maniacs and try to see lighthouses.  We did the next best thing and headed to The Vanguard (a Kim recommendation) for a long lunch.  It is a bar with a menu that just happens to include a lot of plant based items.  I went with my heart and ordered the [not plant based] jalapeno cheddar brat, and we got an order of vegan poutine to share.  I was so hungry that I forgot to take pictures, but the poutine was to die for.  After lunch we headed south to Racine and to the SC Johnson Wax HQ.

The backstory that I knew is that FLW designed the administration building, but I didn't know that a few years later he was brought back to build the research lab.  Symbolically he designed a "tower of knowledge".

It's not unusual to have someone watching you on these tours to make sure you don't get up to anything that you shouldn't, but SC Johnson was next level.  We had to wear trackers on lanyards on our necks.  The tracker became annoyingly heavy and was pulling on my neck but I would have sucked it up for the entire two hours if not for the fact that I was with someone who was smarter than me. Engie took the tracker off her neck and put it in her pocket, and I followed suit by wrapping it around my wrist. 

Interior photos were not allowed but fortunately YouTube videos are so here is a quick visual of the campus - when I say quick I mean that it's 45 seconds long and the last 15 seconds are at Wingspread.

The most striking part about the admin building are the "golf tees" that run from floor to ceiling.  When I've seen videos of the room they've always looked like they were a mile tall, but in person they felt shorter.  Yes they're silly until you're in the room and then they fit right in.

The big problem with the "tower of knowledge" is that most of the building is taken up by the labs and only a small amount of space was allocated for the staircase and elevator in the center of the building.  Pretty early on the powers that be realized that while the tower was cool, they were going to get a lot of bad press if there was ever a situation that required an emergency evacuation.  The workaround was that no flammable materials were allowed in the building (so question from the peanut gallery, what kind of research were they doing with purely non-flammable materials?) while a long term plan was worked out.  Eventually safety regulations dictated that there had to be a second staircase in the building but no one could figure out how to do that so the research team moved elsewhere.

And then the tour ended and it was time to say goodbye to Engie.

I decided that my belly had room for one more restaurant meal, and a recommendation in the Airbnb host's guidebook caught my eye.  I had dinner at Sticky Rice Thai in downtown Racine.  I had the volcano shrimp and was very happy about it.

Sunday - all adventures must come to an end

I woke up bright and early again on Sunday.  I got an early start to get on my side of CHI and made my final stop of the trip.  What I remember the most about the Indiana Dunes National Park is that my parents had a poster of it and I know that we went there at least once when I was a young 'un.

I only had a few hours to spend there and I'm planning to make time for another stop on my June trip, so this was just an intro.  I asked a park ranger for a recommendation the best "quickie" hike and he suggested West Beach.

I had a nice climb up and down the dune and chilled out on the beach for a bit.

This dog caught my eye because the body type is the same as Doggo's.  It wasn't until I zoomed in that I saw that the dog was wearing...doggles!  Yes, goggles for dogs.

And with that random dog sighting it was time for the adventure to end.  I got back in the car, fired up my audio book, and watched the miles fly by until I was home.

Let's Wrap it Up

• Making a ridiculously long drive to go on a WI FLW bender: 10/10.  It was so great that I'll be doing it at least twice.
• The price tag of the Racine/MKE FLW sites: 10/10.  Wingspread and SC Johnson were free, Burnham was $15.  You're not going to go broke doing this stuff.
  
• Wisconsin in general: 10/10.  I know that it's not always bright and sunny but it was for the time that I was there so that's how I remember it.
• Meeting Cool Bloggers IRL: 10000000000000000000000/10. Kim's recap is here and Engie's is here.
  
• Getting food recommendations from Kim: 10/10.  I could happily eat my way through the menu at Twisted Plants and I wouldn't mind going back to The Vanguard.  And I've got another rec to check out for my next trip.
• Cutting down my travel list from All The Things to "a reasonable number of things" 10/10.  I would have liked to go to the other area lighthouses and check out more of the sights in Racine but there were only so many hours in the day.  There is no way that I'll fit any of that in to the next trip, but presumably I'll be back in the area someday and those things aren't going anywhere.
  
• Rankings of what I did:
• #1 by a landslide: meeting Kim and Engie.
• #2  SC Johnson HQ!  I would never have expected a corporate headquarters to be the top pick of places visited.
• #3 Burnham Block
• #4 Miller Brewery!
• #5 Indiana Dunes
  
• #6 Wingspread
• #7 Hanging out on the beach in Racine
  
• #8 Wind Point Lighthouse
• #9 everything else in MKE - the riverfront and the Grohnmann
  

Peace out!  Who's been to Racine/MKE?  Who's met other bloggers IRL?