Bill-on-the-Hill

First things first, a Web Site du Jour that may spare you some of the unpleasantness that we faced on this leg of the trip: http://www.speedtrap.org/, wherein are listed some of the more notorious radar traps on United States highways. Two days of otherwise pleasant busman's-holiday touristing, with a baseball game to top it off, were spoiled by one of these traps, and consequently I have no intention of visiting southwestern Wisconsin ever again.

Propelled by a strong tail wind from that storm that had been chasing us and caught up overnight, we continued northeast through Nebraska en route to our destination, Milwaukee and the home park of major-league baseball's Milwaukee Brewers. First stop on the road was the fairly interesting Strategic Air and Space Museum on the outskirts of Omaha, where we paused for some gawping at old airplanes, something that my atypical wife enjoys as much as I do. By the standards of air and space museums, this one is only so-so, and given the importance of Omaha in military aviation (it was home to the Strategic Air Command, SAC, headquarters), it really should be better, but it's still an interesting place for the warbird junkie to spend a morning. The collection is reasonably extensive (and almost entirely indoors, which was a blessing considering the weather), with good but not great interpretive materials on most of the things exhibited; however, it's a bit one-dimensional, in that it's almost exclusively United States Air Force stuff, with little indication that the other services had military aircraft, let alone other countries (except as bombing targets). There were a number of interactive exhibits on the space program, some of them fairly interesting (and having worked on some of the projects in that field, my standards for "interesting" are reasonably high) albeit not quite as current as one might like. Overall, we were glad we stopped there, and not just to break up the driving, but it's really not on a par with the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian (of course, what air/space museum is?) or the Air Force museum at Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio.

From here it was drive-drive-drive for the rest of the day as we passed into Iowa and on to the Mississippi River. Iowa doesn't exactly have a reputation for scenic splendor, and by and large reality mirrors the reputation, but the northeast corner of the state is actually quite pretty in a gentle sort of way: low, rolling hills with enough relief to produce some vistas, covered by fertile farmland. It reminds me of French wine country, although the agricultural economy is based on corn, soybeans and hogs rather than grapes. The back roads between the small towns of Maquoketa and Marquette (Iowa) are worth going a bit out of your way to enjoy, if you're driving cross country as we were.

I'll complete this shortly, but want to make an interim save.

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Sorry about the bloggus interruptus, it took longer to get back to this than expected. To pick up where we left off:

One thing I didn't mention about northeast Iowa is that it was wet. Really wet. Incredibly wet. The pleasant little town of Maquoketa was severely flooded, to the point that we had to take detours, and more consequentially for the Iowans, to the point that much of the downtown area was under water. There was flooding in many of the rural areas as well, and we were nervous about heading off into the boonies on roads that might have washed-out bridges -- not a totally pointless concern, as it turned out, but the roads we took were OK. Seeing this, and being descended from Illinois farm stock with ancestors who knew how to take care of the land, I was distinctly frosted by the observation that quite a few of the farmers had plowed their watercourses under and planted crops on them. This is an abominably poor land-management practice that severely increases runoff (see above under "under water") and also contributes to the loss of topsoil that's becoming an issue in parts of the Midwest, all for a pittance of extra income from the small amount of land the watercourses occupy. O tempora, o mores. Such things should not be -- but there's plenty in the world to wax indignant about, so no point in dwelling overlong on this one.

We spent the night not in Iowa but just across the Mississippi, in the small, rather touristy town of Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. This is a jumping-off point for those who seek recreation on the Mississippi; I'd spent some time there on family fishing trips as a kid. The town has pretenses of being a "historical" center relating to the early exploration of the upper Mississippi, but my childhood memories were of rather more tourist kitsch than interesting stuff, and we didn't feel obliged to test those memories out. However, Prairie is also the nearest town (at least the nearest with significant lodging) to Effigy Mounds National Monument, which preserves a number of highly significant archaeological sites on bluffs above the river, back on the Iowa side. Fascination with Native American archaeology runs deep in our family -- after all, one of the country's finest archaeological national monuments (Bandelier National Monument) is literally almost in our back yard -- so we wanted to check this one out the next morning. I give it a definite thumbs up. There's a very pleasant 3-mile round-trip trail near the visitor center that leads to some of the more impressive mounds, with fine river views in the bargain, and between the off-season time of year and the still-vile weather (approaching hypothermia-inducing conditions), we had the trail completely to ourselves.

Once done with this hike and refueled with lunch (Huck's in Prairie du Chien has acceptable family dining), it was time to head for Milwaukee. The less said of this leg of the trip, the better, for reasons you can infer from the Web Site du Jour at the top of the page. One thing I will say: if your route of travel takes you through Fennimore, Wisconsin, drive ultra-cautiously, and prepare to be exploited if you do get stopped and have out-of-state plates. Actually, you'd be better off avoiding this small town altogether, if our experience was representative. Enough on that...

So on to the game. Milwaukee's baseball team, the Brewers, plays in a brand-new, rather pretentious stadium (Miller Park) with a retractable roof that is "off" if the weather is decent and "on" if not, the latter definitely describing our circumstances. Because of the lid, it came as something of a surprise that there was still a distinct draft blowing across our seats near field level on the first-base line -- a wind inside a domed stadium?? There were some other design shortcomings to this park, one being atrocious parking congestion (it took us 45 minutes to advance 300 feet from our parking spot after the game, and I do not exaggerate), and another being poor "pitch" to the seats. By this I mean that the vertical separation between successive rows of seats was not as large as it should be, so that if you're sitting in one row and people in the row in front of it are standing up, walking, etc., they interfere with the view of the game. This was an issue for us, as the next row field-ward from our seats was occupied by several young girls who were on their feet for everything -- foul balls, pop-ups, you name it. I should perhaps have just tried to enjoy the view of the girls , but my wife would probably have objected ... and anyway, we were really there to try to see the game. All told, I would rank this park as a below-average place to see a major-league game, out of the 15 of so that we've made it to thus far -- not at the very bottom of the list, but distinctly subpar. Still, for a baseball fan, a below-average night at the ballpark is better than an above-average day at work, so who's to complain?

We spent the night at the Brumder Mansion, a very pleasant B&B midway between Miller Park and downtown Milwaukee that I recommend. One tip if you're considering staying there: it's a three-story house, with steep, twisting stairs to the rooms on the third floor, including ours. Normally this wouldn't bother us, but I'd had arthroscopic knee surgery just a few weeks earlier and was a bit uncomfortable on the stairs. If you have knee problems or other stair-phobic conditions, request a second-floor room when you make your reservations. This caveat aside, it was really a very nice place, and I'll pick up the action from here in my next entry, as we head south to Chicago and points beyond. A hint of what's to come: if you thought the description of the cold and wet at Effigy Mounds sounds uncomfortable, you really won't want to read about watching a White Sox game ...