Skip to main content

Wisconsin

A day trip to America’s Dairyland, Wisconsin! In our readings, we learned that Wisconsin is the #1 cheese producing state in the US. So our first priority was to try some cheese. First stop, Milwaukee Public Market where we tried cheese curds (for the first time) and cheese fries from West Allis Cheese & Sausage Shoppe. Between lunch, drinks, and desserts, we ended up purchasing something from 5 different vendors. 
Here’s what my kids thought of cheese curds: 
And our desserts! + coffee for mommy from Anodyne Coffee Roasting Co.
Funfetti Cookie Sandwich $4.50 from C. Adam's Bakery

Baby Key Lime Pie $3.50 and Strawberry & Lemon and Oreo Cake Bites $2.50 from C. Adam's Bakery

Slushie $2.50 from Kehr's Candies

We thought it would be cool to ride the free streetcar which stops by the Milwaukee Public Market, but didn’t feel like waiting around for it, so instead we walked about 20 minutes to the Milwaukee Public Museum.

💸Cost Saving Tip: Even better than the zoo & aquarium reciprocity is the science/natural history/children’s museum reciprocity - ASTC Passport Program. With an annual family membership from your local participating science or natural history museum (for us, we purchased a Tellus Science Museum membership), you can get your whole family in FREE into most science and natural history museums (and some children’s museums) throughout the United States. It was nice to save $78 on this museum visit.
With the ASTC program, we’ve visited a number of natural history museums, but what stood out to me at this museum was the sheer number of taxidermy animals. It makes sense since the “father of modern taxidermy,” Carl Akeley, made his most notable contributions to this museum. The kids kept commenting on how many animals there were and how real they looked. The kids also enjoyed the exhibitions on Native Americans, a tour of most continents, and a dinosaur show at the planetarium. 

A highlight for my youngest was the butterfly exhibition where the butterflies aren’t shy and are happy to land on you. A large butterfly was “stuck” on him for around 10 minutes, and even after walking fast, the butterfly wouldn’t budge. My son asked, "mommy, can I take it to school with me?" Eventually, we asked for help to remove the butterfly so we didn’t accidentally harm it. 


On our ride back to the airport, our Uber driver recommended Discovery World science and technology museum for the next time we’re here. She said her kids absolutely loved that museum when they were my kid’s age. Another free ASTC Passport Program museum to check out one day!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

New Hampshire

The boys took a trip to Boston to visit family and drove to Maine and New Hampshire. Since I (mom) wasn't there, our rising 6th grader wrote about their time at Hampton Beach, New Hampshire. Here's his unedited writing: 😊  I am going to tell you about New Hampshire. We did a long drive from Maine to New Hampshire. It was crowded, but we found a spot to park and went to the beach. We were playing around until we saw a massive fish!!!! It was so cool and we tried to catch it multiple times, but we always failed. We decided to go catch the crabs near the rocks. It was a really long journey there, and the formation of the beach was different then normal beaches. We finally arrived at the rocks and saw a lot of crabs. We caught several crabs and then had to go home.  With cousins 😍 With Grandma 😍

Oregon

We spent a day in Portland, Oregon eating yummy food and exploring  Washington Park , a one of a kind park with a rose garden of over 10,000 roses, 2,300 species of trees including majestic redwood trees, hiking and play areas with 410 acres to explore, archery range, and several memorials including the Holocaust Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans, and Lewis and Clark Memorial. Our first stop was  Doe Donuts , a vegan donut and ice cream shop! After seeing Phil eat 6 different donuts from here on Somebody Feed Phil season 5 , we had to try them! We got: Portland Fog (organic earl grey glaze, fresh whip made of soy and coconut, fair trade vanilla bean) - this was my personal fav! Maple Bacon (maple glaze, housemade coconut bacon) Maple Corn Fritter (fresh yellow corn inside, maple glaze, sweet corn crumble) Salted Vanilla Bean (organic vanilla glaze, vanilla bean sea salt) Lemon Snowball (lemon mousse, vanilla bean glaze, sweetened coconut) They were delicious, and y...

North Dakota

Our last and final state, North Dakota! This time, our rising 8th grader wrote a report about our trip and some concluding thoughts: In 1883, Theodore Roosevelt stepped foot in what was in the future known as Theodore Roosevelt Park. He felt himself drawn again and again to the park —and for good reason that is. Flying to North Dakota as our last state in this too long journey did not disappoint. From the food to huge blocks of sedimentary rocks and bison, I know everyone was pleasantly surprised by the beauty of North Dakota. This stay in North Dakota with the national park along with other attractions really did grab our attention. Chelita Restaurant As soon as we landed and got the rental car, my family knew we had one goal and one goal only in North Dakota—visit the national park we all know TR raved on and on about. However, our hunger and thirst got to the better of us. We ended up stopping at a local El Salvadorian restaurant off the side of the road. The family business's f...