With a specific obligation in Florida pending and many people to see along the way, we finally left the U.P. and began our meandering, criss-cross of the eastern states southward journey.  First up, a long run down to Green Bay, Wisconsin to visit our friend, Nick, who we met last year during out short stay in Sault Ste Marie.  We pulled into the Oneida Casino, which from our 2017 stay we knew operated a small RV park on property, providing electricity for $15 a night.

Our RV site at Oneida Casino

We registered and paid for two nights, and maneuvered into our spot, only to find that I was a couple of feet short of being able to connect the shore power cable to the pedestal.  No problem, just pull forward a bit.  Unfortunately, somewhere between thinking that and climbing back into the driver’s seat, I decided to completely reposition, and while pondering how to do that managed to forget that I still had the shore power connected to the rig.  As I maneuvered back I ran over it, pinning it down, then pulled forward, stretched it out, and completely ripped it loose from the RV connection point.  Not a good start to our stay.

That white part nxt to the red shore power end piece is supposed to be connected to the RV.  

It was too late in the day to locate a repair place, so we might as well just get on with our Green Bay plans.  First up, the Wednesday evening farmers market, We had learned of this event from Matt, our mushroom guy in Marquette, who declared it the best evening market in the Midwest.  It did not disappoint.  Occupying several blocked off streets in the downtown area, it had a couple of hundred merchants and a LOT of attendees.  We purchased flowers (there were dozens of flower vendors, many from the same family we suspect,) cheese (of course,) golden beets, kale, fresh bread, a brisket sandwich, craft beer, and, finally finding Shiitake Creek’s booth, an assortment of fungus.  This is a great market, and we highly recommend it if you are in Green Bay on a Wednesday.

The bulk of our goodies from the Green Bay market.

Having previously made arrangements with Nick, we headed to the local Moose to meet up.  We had a great time!  This lodge is one of the more welcoming ones we have visited, everyone was gracious and eager to hear about our travels and tell us about their city.  They had a lively table shuffleboard tournament going on, and generally seem to be a very active Moose.  They also provided us the name and location of the go to RV repair shop in town so we could get our problem fixed.

We also learned about booyah.  No, not the expression of triumph, but rather the very regional (almost specific to just Green Bay) chicken and beef stew, often made in very large batches.  We love us some regional fares, and are willing to try just about any.  Our time in the UP turned us on to pasties, for instance.  Once we expressed intrigue and interest, one of the Moose members, Lee, went out to the freezer and gave us couple of quarts from his last batch.  Booyah!

Booyah indeed.

We had a relatively quite Thursday; just a bit of gambling at the casino, a shorter stop in to the Moose, and a few phone calls to Van Boxtel RV to make arrangements to repair our shore power connection the next morning before we continued south.  We ended up paying for two nights of electricity without being able to use it.  Ah well, we arrived at the repair center just before they opened, putting us nearly first in line.  They had us up and running after a couple of hours, which meant that we were really starting our drive day about when we normally would: late morning.

Our huge site at Big Foot Beach State Park.

We continued south towards Burlington to visit Chris and Amy and the boys.  Along the way we made a short detour to the outskirts of Milwaukee to finally return our broken bike rack to LL Bean.  Having previously received an email confirmation from their corporate office regarding the return and refund, we had no trouble (other than parking); they took the rack and no questions asked refunded the cost to our credit card.

Us with Elijah.

We split our time for this visit between Big Foot Beach State Park on the shores of Lake Geneva and Chris and Amy’s driveway; two days in each location.  This allowed us to have a camping like adventure complete with pizza, a campfire, and smores with the kids on the first night, and save money and spend more time with them on the last two.

Chris and Koda

Big Foot Beach campground is nice: most of the sites are spacious with plenty of trees blocking you from your neighbors, just like we prefer.  It is, however, pricey.  On top of the $33 a night for (non WI residents) camping cost, they also hit you with a daily vehicle entry fee of $11, pushing the total cost up to $44 a night.  They do offer an annual vehicle pass, so if you plan on staying at Wisconsin state parks for more than three nights, that is the way to go.

Trying to teach Elija a judo move

The park was fine, but our driveway camping was great.  They have a very long driveway that was easily capable of accommodating our 35′ rig plus a car, and Chris hooked us up to a standard 20 amp outdoor circuit to keep our batteries charged.  The weather was cool enough that we had no problem living without AC for our two nights there.  Thanks for the great visit, guys, hope to see you all soon.

Wish this had come out better focus: Rose, Amy and Jude.