Wisconsin Maritime Museum

I hope my readers got a chance to enjoy this beautiful weekend at the beginning of autumn. Friday Travalon and I just hung out with some neighbors. We were going to go hear Hawaiian music at Mother Fool’s but never got around to it.

Saturday was National Museum Day, and we could get two free tickets from the Smithsonian for any participating museum. Travalon chose the Wisconsin Maritime Museum in Manitowoc, so we hit the road early and got to town just in time for lunch, which we had at a charming Japanese/Thai restaurant. The museum was very cool, with a whole submarine from World War II that we got to tour, and histories of all the shipwrecks that had happened in the area, as well as lots of model boats and ships, and a few real boats. There were hands-on activities for the kids that we tried too, being big kids. We really enjoyed the museum; one of my very favorite things was a dollar bill three sailors spent in Hawaii after signing their names on it, and when one sailor got back home to Wisconsin, his mother had the dollar bill for him. Isn't that mind-boggling? Some other sailor must have gotten it in change and brought it back to Wisconsin. After that we went to Point Beach State Park and walked along the beach, then we drove to Port Washington for dinner at a seafood restaurant on the lake. We walked most of the way out to a lighthouse we had walked out to when we were dating, but it was dark and late so we didn’t go all the way out. We got home around 11:30. What a great day!

Yesterday was beautiful too. Travalon and I went to Curd Fest to enjoy cheese curds and the music of the steel drum band I have mentioned on this blog before, Panchromatic Steel. Then we went on a boat ride out into the lake and back into Six Mile Creek, which was very weedy. The lake is so much calmer since it is no-wake right now while the water level is so high. Most of the other boats are sailboats and a few pontoon boats; the speedboats don’t bother going out when they can’t race around, so the lake is very quiet. After that we watched the Badger game, since we had taped it. I wouldn’t say that the Badgers won so much as the Hawkeyes’ special teams lost the game. We didn’t bother watching the Packer game we had taped because we saw part of it at Curd Fest and knew it turned out badly. I don’t have high hopes for the Pack this season: so far they have won by one point, tied, and lost by two touchdowns. Not a stellar record.

Famous Hat