Devil's Lake

Devil's Lake State Park is an hour north of Madison, up near Baraboo. It's actually got some fairly sharp relief, which distinguishes it from the more gently rolling hills of the rest of southern Wisconsin.

D's been coming up here now and then to run up the rock steps to the top of the bluff and this was a nice chance for us to spend an afternoon in pretty spot, get some exercise, and check out some of his world.

There's some neat geology - the lake lies in a gorge between rock cliffs comprised of maroon quartzite that's more than a billion and a half years old. The valley has a much more recent history, some tied to the last glaciers. I added a little more about this over on Gravel Beach.

Madison

The primary reason for our long weekend in Madison was to visit D, but we took advantage of the fact that his apartment is near a large mini-golf course and a frozen custard shop. A couple of years ago (Madison: April 2016), we tried out the indoor course, but this time we took advantage of the nice weather and played outside.

M found us a nice place for dinner Saturday night where D and I could celebrate our respective birthdays (his was a couple of weeks earlier, mine a couple of weeks later) with good steaks. Then M had found us an Escape Room (something new for us), where we spent a frantic hour just barely getting out of the cargo hold of a jetliner sinking in the North Atlantic (no photos, and I won't share the details, other than our group really needed the hints).

Taliesin

Spring Green sounds like the name of a festival or a household cleaner, and maybe it is, but it is also a small town in rural Wisconsin, about 35 miles west of Madison.

Frank Lloyd Wright lived and worked for much of his career at Taliesin, a compound he designed near Spring Green, just above the Wisconsin River, on old family property. There is a working farm and a still-used architecture studio (maintained much as the original, albeit with computers for the students), but the main attraction is the house.

D and I were struck, pretty much on the foreheads, with the low ceilings. Apparently, FLW did this on purpose (we assume the contractors didn't just misread the plans?). Was it because it helped him call attention to the horizontal lines of his designs (form before function?) or because he was fairly short and there was some sort of personal psychological rationale for this? I'm sure there have been theses (in psychology or in architecture?) written on this, but I have not read them.

The site is nicely kept up and the preservation folks are doing their best to try to keep the place from falling down, but clearly there are a few maintenance challenges. Some of these may stem from design or construction shortcomings. On the other hand, the place is getting old and much of this is to be expected.

Despite my skepticism about some of the more practical aspects of this work (he also wasn't very good at designing comfortable furniture), I really like his sense of design and I appreciate the way he built things to fit into their surroundings. Apparently, Taliesin is Welsh for "shining brow," which works well for this home perched near the top of a hill.

Madison

Our three week trip was sort of a big inverted triangle, with weekends spent at the vertices. Seattle, Madison, Taos, and back to Seattle. As usual, I took an awful lot of pictures, except, it appears, in Madison.

Apparently, we arrived in Madison the same weekend as many UW (Wisconsin) students, so it's probably a good thing we weren't staying in the Hampton downtown where we've been the last couple of trips. This time we stayed on the west side of town nearer to where D lives.

We arrived the same day as a couple of friends who were surprising him - and we took everyone to dinner at Dottie's Dumpling Dowry when we got into town Friday night.  On Saturday we toured Taliesen (a subsequent post) and on Sunday we visited Cave of the Mounds. We also celebrated his recent birthday - Mom even whipped up a batch of dirt cake. Traditions are traditions.

Madison has a great network of bike trails (most old railroad grades) - some of which I explored in a big loop on Saturday morning. There's one spot in Fitchburg, on the southwest side of Madison, where multiple trails intersect - apparently referred to as the VeloUnderound. A bike traffic circle with another bike path going overhead on a trestle.

Wind Point

I would have enjoyed spending more time checking out bluffs and beaches and shoreline parks between Milwaukee and Chicago, but we just didn't have time. So we set our navigation to Wind Point and worked our way south through the suburbs towards Racine.

Wind Point sticks out into Lake Michigan, adding interest to what sometimes strikes me as a sort of uninteresting coastline. I guess because it sticks out into the lake, boats were always running into it so they built a very nice lighthouse at the tip. There was a brisk wind, waves, and plenty of sunshine, but there was also a rental car to return in downtown Chicago and a dinner reservation with a friend at six, so we hightailed it back to the Interstate for the drive into the big city.

Milwaukee

We left Madison late Monday morning and headed east toward Milwaukee, where we got sandwiches at Glorioso's Italian Market, which we then ate down at McKinley Park on the lake. Where I could check out the beach.

Monona Terrace

Our weekend in Madison included a brief walk through the Monona Terrace Convention Center. I'd like to come back on a nicer day when there's a little more activity. And when I have more time to explore the building and the nearby shoreline.

Conceived by Frank Lloyd Wright just before the breakout of World War II, the project apparently kept getting put aside for one reason or another for almost 60 years. It was finally built and completed in 1997! -- a relatively new building, but still based on Wright's original concept.

Monona Terrace History

Downtown Madison and the state capitol are built on a narrow isthmus between Lake Mendota on the north and Lake Monona on the south.

Verona

We did an Epic drive-by way back last June when we visited Madison (Verona: June 2015), but this time D spent a couple of hours showing us the grounds and the buildings.  Wow - probably feels like Redmond when Microsoft moved to town. Epic moved out to Verona a number of years go and has been building ever since. There were construction cranes all over the north end of the site, building what looked like a modern version of Hogwarts.

Did I mention that this place is epic! The architectural style is pretty eclectic. All sorts of different styles and themes. There's an enormous amount of whimsical art on display. There were dragons and cowboys and slides. I suppose it's all a reflection of a desire to amuse the demographics of the young techs who flock here, the personalities of the people who run the place, and the burgeoning demand for medical records software!

Madison

We swung through Madison last June, right after graduation, so we could all get a sense of the place and so D could check out some apartment options. But we didn't stay long. D drove back and set up camp in September, but this was our first chance to visit him in his new habitat. We spent the weekend exploring a little of Madison - some with D, some without. And he gave us a great tour of the Epic Campus on Saturday (next post).

We saw a little of the University, checked out several restaurants - and coffee shops, and even played mini-golf across from D's apartment (we played inside, since it was raining, but on a nicer day we would have had the option of an outside course, too). 

I realize it's been a long time since the last post - from Whidbey way back at Thanksgiving. Since then we celebrated the holiday, spent a weekend in Vancouver, and did a bunch of other stuff - but apparently none of it warranted a post. Or maybe the routine stuff at work and around the house has just taken precedence.

Verona

From Northfield, we drove east to Wisconsin, figuring it would be a good chance for us to all check out Madison before D's move in September. It would have been nice to have a little more time to explore the area but it looks like maybe we'll get that in the next couple of years.

I got very few photos of Madison during our brief trip, but I did get some shots of Epic's expanding corporate campus in the farmlands on the west side of Verona.