Does anything say “Wisconsin” more than Lambeau Field? Along with a supper club and cheese curds, of course.
We wrapped up 335 miles of pedaling from Milwaukee to and around Door County to Green Bay in front of Vince Lombardi, Green Bay Packers co-founder Earl Lambeau and the Lambeau Leap.
Over six days, I waded into Lake Michigan, climbed the amazing Eagle Tower for its sweeping views over the tree line, pedaled past countless corn and soybean fields and even beer gardens in Milwaukee County parks, ate a one-pound prime rib and so much more.
(You can read the individual trip reports for day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4 and day 5.)
On our final day, which began in Sturgeon Bay and totaled more than 50 miles, we got a quick lesson in one wave of U.S. immigration and the search for a better life. We pedaled through tiny Namur (pronounced Nay-mer), named after a much, much larger city in Belgium that’s now the capital of the French-speaking Wallonia district. (There it’s pronounced Nuh-moor).
Back in the 1850s, times were tough in Belgium. (Sounds like certain countries today). Wisconsin, which had become a state in 1848, advertised cheap land for farming. Bit of false advdrtising there … the land first had to be cleared of forests, as the first Belgian immigrants discovered in 1853. And the weather was harsher than in Belgium. But clearly many persevered (or at least theirs are the stories that are told). And Wisconsin needed them.
We learned all this from historical markers outside the Belgian Heritage Center in Namur, just a feew miles west of … Brussels.
Trivia: That 1871 fire was the same day as the Great Chicago Fire and killed between 1,200 and 2,500 people. The signage calls it the deadliest U.S. natural disaster ever. Not at the low end (Katrina killed 1,392) but certainly otherwise.
What else did we spot?
I’ve never seen purple apples before, and I was too polite to swipe one and taste it. Maybe this is a Spartan apple? An Arkansas black?
And this is part of a temporary art installation on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.
Overall, bicycling in Wisconsin was a treat. The trails (of which there are far, far more than we experienced), the quiet roads, the regular views of Lake Michigan. And the one-pound prime rib. I’d go back just for that.
Exploring by bicycle 