By Patrick F. Cannon

I have a long history of travelling from the Chicago area to Wisconsin. I first crossed the border in (I think) 1948 with my brother Pete to attend summer camp at Camp McLean in Burlington. In hindsight, the idea was to get rid of us for a couple of weeks of peace for our parents. We took a bus from the Irving Park YMCA, with foot lockers full of required gear, some of which never made it back to Chicago.

            It took about half the day to get there on those pre-expressway roads. For someone born and raised in or near big cities, it was like travelling into the wilderness. For much of the way, there were actual trees lining the two-lane highways. The camp itself seemed to be in the middle of a primeval forest. Actually, it was on the outskirts of Burlington, now a city of some 11,000 souls. But the camp was on the shores of a lake! Among other skills I picked up was how to row a boat! I learned to live in a barracks-like setting with little privacy. Life in the Army later in life was no shock to me.

            My next foray to the Badger state came with my first wife Mary’s family, who owned a cottage near Lake Geneva. It was largely built by my father-in-law, but never quite finished. We fondly called it “Grizzly Acres.” It had the great advantage though of being part of an association that owned frontage on Lake Geneva, so it had a beach, picnic area, and docks for a few boats. You could also walk along the lake front and see the  summer mansions of the Chicago rich, including the Wrigley’s, Swift’s, and Schwinn’s. To give you some idea of their scale, the former Harris mansion (of Chicago’s Harris Bank), later owned by Richard Driehaus, sold for a state record $36 million. No wonder Lake Geneva was called “The Newport of the Midwest.”

            My late wife Jeanette’s father’s family was from the Manitowoc/Two Rivers area, so we often travelled there for family events. It wasn’t much further to Door County, which we visited several times. Surrounded by Green Bay on the west and Lake Michigan on the east, and full of charming little towns, it’s famous for its “fish boils.” Well, you have to be famous for something!

            Milwaukee is only 90 minutes from Chicago, and I’ve been there many times. My wife Mary and I had friends who moved there from Chicago, and we often visited. More recent trips have included visits to the spectacular Milwaukee Art Museum, designed by Santiago Calatrava with 217-foot sunscreen “wings” that open and  close twice a day. It must be seen to be believed.  One holiday season Jeanette and I stayed with my daughter Beth and son-in-law Boyd at the legendary and holiday-decorated Pfister Hotel.

            Just this last weekend, Beth, Boyd, and I attended a birthday event in the Devil’s Lake area for his brother Bart and Bart’s father-in-law Duane, and their families. The three of us stayed at a farm B&B, whose residents, in addition to  host Adam, included many chickens, ducks, one turkey and a pot-belled pig. Because of the unusually warm weather, the Fall color was minimal, but the landscape thereabouts is glorious.

            On Saturday, many in the group visited Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin, the home he built when he left Oak Park in 1910. Taliesin means “shining brow” in his mother’s family’s Welsh language, and the stunning house does indeed sit on the brow of a hill. It’s instructive to visit the home of America’s greatest architect, but another highlight of our trip was breakfast at Candy’s Café in Merrimac (pop. 527). When we arrived, only one table was occupied, by a group of local farmers (I think). They had obviously known each other for years and probably gathered regularly.

            Only the cook was there when we arrived. She may have been Candy. Or Candy may have been the waitress who arrived about 10 minutes later. Everyone there, except us, knew one another. The food was great, and breakfast was about $5 cheaper per plate than the Chicago area. To top it all off, Merrimac has the only free ferry in Wisconsin. It crosses Lake Wisconsin, which is  really just a widening of the Wisconsin River. Inexpensive breakfast, free ferry. How can you go wrong?

            On the way back to Chicago, we stopped in Middleton (just outside of Madison) to have breakfast at Sofra Family Bistro with our old friends from Oak Park, Helen, and Paul Julius, who now live in the area. Sofra’s specialty is Albanian sausage and eggs. Quite tasty, and still a couple of bucks cheaper than Chicago. I can’t wait to tell my barber, Frank the Albanian. He probably thinks you must go back to the old country to get a taste of home.

Copyright 2025, Patrick F. Cannon