Home of the Badgers & America’s Dairyland
After spending the summer in the high desert of New Mexico and Arizona, we were yearning for some moisture in our lives so we packed up our bus “Wanda” and headed for Wisconsin. All we knew about America’s Dairyland is that it’s famous for all things cheese, it’s in the midwest and it is home to a beautiful area called “The Dells” which we were excited to visit in the fall. When we rolled into town, the vibe could be felt immediately! It was Labor Day weekend, warm, sunny and as it turned out, the weekend all the freshmen moved onto campus. Madison is a college town true and true and if you weren’t a badger fan when you got to Madison, you would be soon! In addition to enjoying a beautifully different scenery, we were able to make some great progress on Wanda. When we left New Mexico, we had solar and shore power. We learned that we could last a many days “off-grid” out west, but in Wisconsin it rains. As a matter of fact, it rains a lot! This left us pretty reliant on campgrounds to give us the ability to plug in for power, as our solar only worked for a few days with such cloudy and wet conditions. We were also able to start working on our plumbing and we added some much needed storage. We also created a closet and bathroom area with a shower and composting toilet. The work in New Mexico was critical, but the progress we made on Wanda in Wisconsin made Wanda feel like home! Being from Colorado, our choices for fall leaf peeping colors were simple; yellow. The aspens are spectacular in autumn but they are extremely limited in the color scheme. As luck would have it, as Wisconsin was experiencing its only week of fall, we were off visiting a friend in Moab, UT and we missed it entirely. Upon our return to Wisconsin, we were welcomed with temperatures that had dropped to highs in the teens and lows in the single digits. We had missed one of our top reasons for traveling to the “Forward” state. And, most importantly, we were freezing our tushies off. Lucky for us, we reached out to a friend originally from Wisconsin who had relocated to Denver who has a friend currently residing in Wisconsin who was extremely kind enough to allow us to park Wanda on their property and plug in to their electricity. Not only were we warm, but we had also made 3 new friends. Lessons we learned from this adventure include:- There is such a thing as too much cheese on a pizza
- We had not adequately prepared “Wanda” for Wisconsin winters
- Some of the nicest people in the world call Wisconsin home
