Boys Weekend

A while back, my oldest son suggested that he, his brother and I have an all-boys weekend traveling to a city none of us had been to before.  With both my sons working fulltime and each having families of their own, it took a while for us to get it scheduled.  But finally, the stars aligned early in October of this year, and we all flew up to Milwaukee, WI.

We arrived on a Friday afternoon and checked into our hotel.  At the time that we booked it, none of us knew our hotel was originally a Gimbels department store right next to the Milwaukee River.  So, it was really nice to be staying in modern accommodations in an old historic building.

Our hotel backed up to a really nice downtown feature of Milwaukee, the Riverwalk where you can stroll along the river for three miles from one neighborhood to another.  We took advantage of it our first night and walked along it to a craft distillery for dinner.  They had a nice rooftop bar where we could enjoy a—used guessed it—an Old-Fashioned cocktail while we waited for our table.

Once we sat down, we started off with some of the food Milwaukee is best known for—fried cheese curds and a big German pretzel.

On Saturday, we took a road trip west of Milwaukee to visit what in my mind turned out to be two architectural extremes.

Our first stop was at the Aldo Leopold Foundation, an institution of which I was completely unfamiliar.  My eldest son had learned of Leopold in graduate school when he was studying landscape architecture and so had chosen to include this on our itinerary.  There is a museum with many artifacts, but the real immersive experience is the tour we took with an extremely knowledgeable guide who personally knew the Leopold family.

I quickly learned Leopold was a man well ahead of his time as he is considered the father of wildlife ecology and modern nature conservation.  We saw the fruits of his efforts on his farm before making our way over to view his shack.  And a shack it was indeed.

In fact, it was a converted chicken coop that had been added onto to accommodate not just Aldo, but his wife and family as well as they all worked together on the farm.  Can you imagine spending many nights a year here with no indoor plumbing, no electricity, and heat from a fireplace?  I’d much prefer our modern accomodations.

Our afternoon stop was in Spring Green to tour Taliesin, the home of Frank Lloyd Wright.

I had read several books about Wright as well as watching Ken Burn’s documentary, so I was familiar with the house and its history, some of which is very sad.  But our knowledgeable tour guide provided us with so much more information.  We got to see some characteristic Wright designs inside…

… as well his drafting studio nearby where he and his apprentices drew up plans for so many buildings.

After driving back to Milwaukee, we had our second great taste of German food at Maders, the restaurant that had been voted as the best German restaurant in Wisconsin.

On Sunday after a nice brunch, we took a nice long walk over to the historic Pabst brewery.

I have taken many brewery tours in both the US and Europe, but never one like this one.  Our tour guide was a retired Pabst employee who intimately knew and shared the story of Pabst.  And quite a story it was.

Spoiler alert: Pabst does not brew its own beer anymore, so we did not tour an operating brewing facility.  What we did tour was buildings now listed on the National Historic Register dating back to the 1800s and part of the multi-blocks of buildings that comprised the working brewery.  We learned the history of Pabst from its very beginning in 1844 up to the point they closed the huge brewery in 1969. And at the end of the tour, we got to enjoy one of their beers fresh with the knowledge of how it became known as Pabst Blue Ribbon or PBR.

Our last stop before dinner was at a natural history museum where we learned much about the history of Milwaukee.

Monday was our last day together and we started off riding their free tram down to the lake front.  We had a very nice walk along Lake Michigan sipping on our coffee.  It was too early to visit their Milwaukee Art Museum and unfortunately, we didn’t have the time to wait for it to open but still enjoyed viewing its building from the outside, which reminded me of the bow of a ship.

Those ribs at the top of the front actually open into a sunscreen with over a 200-foot wingspan (you can click on the link above to see it opened).

After we made our way back towards our hotel, rain began to fall so we hopped inside their historic circa 1895 city hall for an interesting look around.

Our last lunch together we caught a ride (since it was raining) over to an award-winning craft brewery.

While they had a nice beer hall, we chose to sit outside where we enjoyed a last beer together while waiting for our food.

When our food arrived, we not only got to enjoy their award-winning beer, but their award-winning cheese curds and delicious German sausages (sorry forgot to take a photo).

Before heading off to the airport, we talked about what a great time we had had together.  We each shared that we had made some wonderful memories.  And in fact, we had had such a wonderful time, even before our weekend was over, we began to make plans for another boy’s weekend trip next year!