August 13, 2008
When we crossed the line from southern Wisconsin into Illinois, we immediately met with two things: Lots of road construction, and a $1 tool both. On the interstate. I find something about this innapropriate, but I may just be naive. We learned our lessons very quickly when I decided to check an exit to see if it had any motels, and got charged again for getting back on the interstate (only 60 cents this time, not accepting any bills).
The interstates are just that: the backbone of roads that travel across the entire country from state to state. It seems to me that Illinois is taking advantage of that. Maybe it's fair because they have more freeways going in and out of their state, all centered around Chicago, and they need more money to keep up the roads that perhaps get more traffic from out of state. I don't know. Still, it's not a nice way to be greeted. It doesn't exactly encourage you to move around and explore the state (as so many tourism industries would love you to do).
Despite annoying tolls, the real frustration today wasn't in Illinois. Over 3 hours of our time today was devoted to simply tracking down a place to buy cheese. I place all blame on Kevin for mentioning a place called "Brennon's", which was supposed to have "the best cheese and sausage in the state". In case you've never been there, Madison is not only the capital of Wisconsin, but it's own local labyrinth. The capital building and all of downtown is squeezed between two lakes, which might be alright except all but one of the streets are not parallel to the diagonal strip of land drawn by the edge of the water. Why? Because it makes a pretty square pattern around the capital building, which I might add is in the exact middle of everything, making a nice road block to add difficultly to the already frustrating one way streets. I figured I would just sorta head downtown, and look around for the Brennon's that google maps said there was. According to one local, there wasn't a Brennon's in this part of town. Regardless, we ended up going 5-6 miles through more Madison streets, these ones plagued by turn lanes and forks that made no sense. This location, we were assured, actually existed.
Well, we were about to give up when I saw the yellow lettering I recognized from pictures I had seen online. When we walked inside, I was eagerly anticipating some kind of holy land of cheese, but I realised quickly that if it indeed was, it would be pearls before swine. Gpa and I aren't cheese afficienados, so we wouldn't have any appreciation for what we were tasting. We got ourselves a guide, and ended up buying some of the "World Champion Cheese". They had cheddar aged 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 9 years. We bought some cheddar and a kind of "butter" cheese we really liked the sample of. One sign in front of the champion cheese read "2004 Cheese gold medals: Wisconsin 18, California 0. Whose cows are happy now?" Over 3 hours and many frantic turns later, we had our cheese.
Tomorrow we head into Chicago for a full day of sightseeing. We're trying to figure out a way to keep cool the cheese we didn't open, which we plan on bringing home. I suppose the mini fridges found in about half the motels around here will have to do.
-Kings of the Road
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