Fried cheese curds are delicious

and will make your stomach hurt. Especially when followed by fried mozzarella sticks and beer batter French fries. But as Brent says, you gotta try it while in Milwaukee. He also says this about beer. Which would explain why we bought 8 different kinds of local brews for the 6 of us (and no, the local store did not let us mix and match the 6-packs). Which also explains why Milwaukee, despite being perhaps the only place it rained for a significant amount of time this trip, was one of the best stops yet.

Still exhausted from the trying long drive across Wyoming, South Dakota, and Iowa, we were delighted to find that Brent had arranged a perfect mix of planned Bus events and do-nothing-but-relax time for our stay in Wisconsin. We started the visit off with a grease-up at Villa Roma, where reporters from several local TV stations joined us to film the greasy job (check out the media page on our website for some of the coverage). They even got a view of veggie-power at its not-so-finest when we were forced to replace our fancy Rosedale filters. Our filters, it turned out, were still fighting the water we’d picked up back in Montana and had decided that they’d had enough. But never fear, greasers like us know what to do and always have a back-up (or rather, Lucas knows what to do and the rest of us know when to follow his lead). Out came the chase car filter and the plastic bucket for a great visual for the cameras. Later we even ended up reverting back to the old stand-in: pillowcases! It all works.

Back to the Milwaukee story. After leaving Villa Roma and our moment in the spotlight, we headed down to Pier Wisconsin for a gig at Discovery World. Though the rain kept many visitors away, we had a great time exploring the awesome kids museum and listening to the music coming from the Irish fest next door (also the source of my fried cheese-induced heart burn). Happy and tired, we went back to Brent’s lovely house for Villa Roma pizza dinner. But the fun wasn’t over yet! Oh no… Next stop: the Brewers game! Fourth row seats, beer, and roasted nuts made me so happy I barely watched the game. I just know that the Brewer mascot went down the slide over and over again (yes, they won). The game was followed up by a stop to eat custard. Not just one type of custard, but every kind on the menu. Have you noticed a trend yet? Brent + Milwaukee= lots of great “this is the best ever” food. Mmmmm!

After a very hard days work (obviously) we spend the next two days playing. Brent invited us all up to his lake house in Green Bay, where we did nothing but read, sleep, grill, swim, water ski, wakeboard, jet ski, sauna, and watch movies. Fantastic! Thank you to Brent and his family for providing us with one of the most relaxing (and delicious) weekends of the summer!