We left Kettle Moraine outside of Milwaukee and drove to Lake Farm Park Campground, a county park outside of Madison, Wisconsin. It was a nice park with electric only sites. After setting up, my first order of business was finding a laundromat. The closest one took me into downtown Madison, and I quickly discovered I loved this quaint university town, which also happened to be the state capitol. As I drove into town the drive took me along the river with a beautiful view of the state capitol and riverwalk area. The town reminded me very much of my own hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia, which is also a university town. There is just something charming about a university town! Madison somehow manages to have a quaint, charming feel, even though it is a large city with almost a quarter of a million people. It is called The City of Four Lakes since it is in the middle of Lake Mendota, Lake Monona, Lake Waubesa and Lake Kegonsa. It definitely had a different feel from Milwaukee which seemed much more industrial with freeways heavy with traffic, especially tractor trailers. Our first evening we drove into Madison and had dinner at a restaurant near the capitol grounds called “The Old Fashioned”. It was full of students and townsfolk celebrating the beginning of the weekend. Bill noticed one of their specialities which was a hamburger with bacon and a fried egg on top. He decided to try it and later declared it to be very good. It reminded me of an item on the menu at a restaurant back home in Charlottesville called The White Spot near the grounds of the University of Virginia. I had a BLT and the tomatoes were grown by local farmers and were delicious. We enjoyed seeing the capitol building at dusk and went back and got another picture after we ate when the building was fully lighted at dark.
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While at the campground we decided to test out our new trekking poles and went for a 3 mile hike around one of the lakes at the campground. It was a beautiful fall day…not too hot and not too cold. We did have some cold nights while we were in Madison with the temperature reaching 40 degrees one night. No worries since we have both a heat pump and a furnace in the RV.
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Madison continued to impress us while doing some shopping. The Walmart near the campground had an underground parking garage. You access the shopping area of the store by escalator or elevator. When you have finished your shopping you put your cart full of purchases on a special buggy escalator which takes it down to the parking garage level. This underground parking is especially nice in a cold climate like Wisconsin. They don’t have to worry about plowing their parking lots and their customers never get rained or snowed on. The check out person told us that employees were allowed to park in the garage during the winter which made it very nice for them as well.
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Not used to entering Walmart by elevator or escalator
Bill putting our cart of groceries on the buggy escalator
Buggy going down!
On our way out of Madison we stopped for gas at a station not too far from the campground and were surprised to see compressed natural gas pumps at the station. The first ones we have ever seen!
$1.99 per gallon