"Moooo"ving through Wisconsin

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In traditional elementary school style, we both decided to scribe hypothetical letters back to the state of Wisconsin after visiting, much like we were obligated to do after field-trips and guest speakers and such. Mine goes like this:

Dear Wisconsin

As the self-professed 'Dairy Capital of America' I was really looking forward to your acres of cow pasture, tasting your marvelous cheese and touring your beautiful farmland. Instead, all I got was rain, mosquitoes and overpriced public campgrounds. I am truely dissapointed.

Sincerely,

Stephanie

Andras was a little more succinct:

Dear Wisconsin

You suck.

PS: Your cheese is good and the Packers are okay too.

Needless to say, this leg of our trip was not exactly what we had expected.

After waking up first thing in Michigan, we headed out early to make the 200+ mile drive and get us into the festival by noon. We're headed to the Great Wisconsin Cheese Festival in Little Chute, WI to help kick off National Dairy Month. If you didn't know that the month of June holds this prestigous honor, you are probably not alone, but take a drive through dairy-land here and you won't easily forget given the abundance of dairy breakfasts and parades. But the largest festival, and offical kick-off to the month, is in Little Chute and that's exactly where we're headed.

There's not much to see in the upper penninsula of Michigan (well, I take that back. Not much to see from the road, that is, except for the lilacs which grow like large, beautiful, fragrant weeds along the coast) so when we hit some traffic we're a bit surprised.

"Looks like we hit traffic. Wonder where they're all going" (as not one, but FOUR cars drive past us going the opposite direction)

"That turn off was for a cross-country ski area. Maybe they're getting some early season practice"

"Has to be church. Only thing people get up for this early is church"

"Unless they're going to the cheese festival. We got up early for cheese."

"That's right. You pray for your soul, I'll pray for cheese."

We should have prayed harder! By the time we hit Green Bay the rain has started and it doesn't let up. By the time we hit Little Chute, we can't hardly see the road. I am not disheartened. The festival doesn't start until noon, it's only 11:30am. Plenty of time for this area to dry out before the festival go-ers arrive.

But it was not to be. We pick our way through the town, following placards blown over and half buried in mud to the park where the event takes place. It's there that we're informed it's been canceled. Rained out. No festival today.

I am devastated. Why was I looking forward to this so much? Was it the cheese? The festival? That fact that we planned a great deal of our itinerary around this very event because it seemed to cool? Andras wants to drive on out but I refuse to go. Two inches of standing water? Pffh. We're bigger than two inches tall--I want to see for myself. So we don our ponchos and slosh our way down the hillside in the torrental downpour. The two inches of standing water is probably more like three, but at least we're here. We can say we went to the Great Wisconsin Cheese Festival because there were still booths and tents there...even if no one was doing much in them other than pack up. We get directions from the man at the entrance on a good place to eat, and before long we're squeeking our teeth on a freshly fried batch of white cheddar cheese curds (surprisingly good given the name! It's like a mozarella).

But we've already spent too much time mulling around this town. It's still wet and miserable and we should probably just get on our way. We get reports over the radio that water-spouts are a possability on the lake near the campsite I had originally scouted out for us, so we head west trying to drive out of the storm. At Bighorn State Park, the ranger informs us that the mosquitos have been particularly bad this year, and we shrug off her warning assuming that we've already seen 'bad mosquitos'. Ha! We're out of the car no more than two minutes before we're running back to the car with a swarm of 60-100 mosquitoes following us back. We keep driving.

Our moods have shifted from dissapointed to bad to worse. By the time we reach Wildcat Mountain State Park, we don't care that it's over twice as expensive as we've been paying or that the campsites are little more than picnic tables in a wet open field. We just want this day to be over.

The next morning things get a little better. The rain has stopped and our drive through Amish country is plesant and relaxing. We stop at Old Country Cheese Factory hoping to learn more about the cheese making processes, but at the very least to taste some fresh Wisconsin cheese as we were unable to yesterday. Situated outside of Cashton, the Old Country Cheese Factory accepts milk daily from over 230 surrounding Amish farms and many of their products are certified organic. Although they no longer allow tours in the factory, we can see muenster being packaged from the viewing windows and see the milk being curdled and separated from the on screen monitors. Our favorite by far as the muenster, but the ten year old aged cheddar also scored big with us. Munester, originally created in Wisconsin, can be identified by it's marbled orange and white exterior and is mild, smooth and creamy inside. Another new cheese to our palate, block cheese, is only made in Wisconsin and is a milder form of limburger. Much milder--in fact this cheese is actually palatable. Naturally we had to get some curds--the form the milk takes right before it is pressed into cheese. They should squeek if they are fresh, and squeek they do. Even though they're normally served hot, we snack on them cold our way out of the state.

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Photos

Great Wisconsin Cheese Festival
Two inches of standing water cause the festival to get canceled, but that didn't stop us.

Wisconsin Cheese
One of the few cheese manufacturers in the area using Amish dairy products.

Little Chute, WI
Host town of the Great American Cheese Festival

Comments

[Mom]

I love your commentary. You are an absolutely wonderful and hilarious writer! I am enjoying your trip as much as you are!

[Nicole]

Wow!
this is amazing! i want to go, but i dont think my mom wants to go though, haha!