Guess who we saw in Green Bay and Lambeau Field?!?

We left Wisconsin's Door County this morning, totally unaware of who we would see today. But before we left Door County, we got to experience a little more butterfly magic. We had another new butterfly! But the most exciting thing this morning was watching a caterpillar become chrysalis. Last night we saw that a large caterpillar had assumed the "J" position and was hanging upside down from a leaf. 

This morning we got to see the amazing process as it wriggled out of its striped skin and became a lumpy chrysalis. We have wandered into more of God's wonders here at this special Boondockers Welcome stay! It was hard to leave!

While we had enjoyed electrical hookups and water at this stop, we had to stop by the local KOA and pay to dump our tanks. Then we were on the road towards the city of Green Bay, Wisconsin. That's when we got a phone call from our son, Blake. He and his wife were also on the road towards Green Bay. We were planning to tour Lambeau Field. They were planning to tour Lambeau Field. We were planning to eat lunch in Green Bay. They were planning to eat lunch in Green Bay. Why don't we meet and do those things together? So we had a totally unplanned meet-up with our loved ones over 800 miles from home!

We were a little ahead of them on the road, so we had time to find a parking place for the pickup and trailer. Then we did a little exploring around the famous Lambeau Field.

One of the statues out front was the namesake of the Super Bowl trophy--Vincent Lombardi. He led the Green Bay Packers to five world championships in seven years. Two of those were the first two Superbowls ever played.

We also found the statue of Curly Lambeau. He was the founder of the Green Bay Packers in 1919, and was a player, coach, and general manager during his career here. He was playing on the team that won this team's first world championship.

Also out front is an interactive statue that invites visitors to do the "Lambeau Leap" into the welcoming crowd of Packers fans.

Blake and Jamie arrived, and we went inside the atrium that holds a replica of the Lombardi trophy. It was too big to fit easily into one picture, but we left these three blurry tourists in the picture just to show how big it was.

Before our tour started, we had just enough time to check out the Packers store, and take a picture with an assortment of cheese head hats.

We bought tickets for the 1:00 Champions tour. Our entertaining tour guide first reminded us that this is the home turf of the team that has won more world champions than any other. The Green Bay Packers claim 13 world championships ranging from 1929-2010.

It was so much fun to share this view of Lambeau Field with two of our favorite people!

Green Bay hosts the only team in the NFL that is publicly owned. Our tour guide was one of those proud owners. It's also a place where people put their babies on the waiting list for season tickets, hoping that a seat will come available by the time that baby becomes an adult. This was a magical place with fans known for their loyalty.

Our tour took us high up in the stadium. We got to walk beside the giant G that is their most visible trademark. This G is lit at night, and is the tallest thing in this small city. Locals can find their way home by following the glowing "G" in the sky.

While most of the die-hard fans must suffer the extreme cold of Wisconsin winters to attend a home game, a few can watch the games in warmth behind glass panels. This was the sweet suite view of Lambeau Field.

Our champion tour included some time enjoying the momentary luxury of the Champion Suite. Game tickets here include an unlimited buffet. We were just glad to have a chair to sit down for a while during this hour and a half tour.

No tour is allowed inside the Green Bay Packers locker room. A picture was posted in the hall, but that's as close as we would get to seeing it. Our tour guide pointed out the giant "G" carpet in the center. That's where the team will gather in a circle before every game. There they will pray not for victory, but for safety for all the players. That special carpet travels to all the away games for the same prayer.

One of the highlights of any Lambeau tour is making the trip down the cement tunnel to the field. We didn't have the smoke, spinning lights, or the loud music that the players enjoy on game day. But we were led down the tunnel by our very enthusiastic tour guide.

As we broke into the sunlight, we got our first ground floor view of the famous field.

This is not astroturf. This is REAL grass, and they are very protective of keeping it pristine. Signs warn visitors not to even think about walking onto that grass. So how does an open stadium in a part of the country known for its cold temperatures keep a real grass field growing in the winter?

There are 43 miles of plastic tubing underneath the ground that carries warm water and antifreeze to keep the grass green and growing even during a Wisconsin winter. During the long days of summer, this grass is mowed every other day. In the shorter days of winter, giant grow light are rolled out to mimic the sunshine necessary to keep grass green. The grounds crew will be mowing this green grass on the field this winter while another crew will be shoveling snow in the stands at the same time.

Now that she knew more about this pampered grass, Denisa bent down to take a close-up. Another member on our tour bent down to touch it, and was chastised by our guide. They are serious about protecting every blade of that grass!

Have we mentioned how fun we thought it was to share this time with our son and daughter-in-law? We left the field to climb through the coveted seats in this always-sold-out stadium. They still have those uncomfortably cold aluminum benches, and each ticket only gets 18-inches of space. If you requested a season pass today, there would be 157,000 people ahead of you on the waiting list--all glad for the honor of squishing into that little uncomfortable seat to watch a miserably cold football game.

We like to eat like the locals. When we asked the girl at the visitor center for lunch recommendation, she didn't hesitate to steer us towards the Booyah Shed. It's a tiny local place just a mile from the stadium. Booyah is a meat and vegetable stew that is the Green Bay signature meal. We had the Booyah/Sandwich special and a generous slice of carrot cake before we split ways with Blake and Jamie. They were spending a couple days with her relatives before we will meet up with them again on the shores of Lake Superior.

We started our 2.5-hour drive north on some bumpy two-lane roads into Northern Wisconsin's Nicolet National Forest. It was 68 degrees as we headed north and we're so glad to be where it is cool this July! We were even more glad to get to spend time with Blake and Jamie this day. We would have never guessed who we would get to see in Green Bay!

Iconic Wisconsin Day--Cheese, Dairy, and Lake Michigan

We finally got a day with an air quality number under 100! With deliciously cool July temperatures and clear air, we really didn't have many things planned. But somehow, we always seem to fill a day with fun. We started with a text message from our Boondocker Welcome host telling us there should be two butterflies coming out of their chrysalis this morning. What a way to start the morning--watching monarchs emerge after their magical transformations. We had already wandered God's wonder before breakfast!

While we were watching the butterfly, Ramelle was watching our excitement.

After watching an hour of butterfly magic, we cooked some breakfast and took off on this day when we didn't have much planned. We drove to the nearby Potawatomi State Park. We've given our Wisconsin annual state park pass a work out! Our first stop inside the park was the 75 foot-tall observation tower perched on a 150-foot bluff. We climbed the steps for the view of the water and the tops of the trees. A local volunteered to take a picture of the two of us together at the top.

Then he explained what we were seeing. Closest to the shore was Sawyer Bay, which feeds into Sturgeon Bay on our right, which feeds into the larger body of water of Green Bay, which is part of Lake Michigan. That's an iconic view of this iconic Great Lake!

We also were enamored with the little islands in front of us. Privately owned, they included some great landscaping and beautiful homes. 

When we stopped at the boat ramp, we got a closer look at the island houses. We talked to another local, who knew the family that has owned that favorite island for generations. The state would certainly like that island back.

The storm clouds were building as we sat on the shore. But that didn't seem to bother the blue jay that hopped in front of us.

After the rain storm erupted and sent us back to the pickup, we drove to another spot inside Potawatomi State Park. We took a selfie using the park's selfie shelf with views over the grassy meadow below.

This was the eastern terminus of the iconic Ice Age Trail. We had never heard of this 1,200-mile hiking trail before this summer. Now we have seen parts of it at several state parks. It marches all the way across Wisconsin and ends at the western edge of the state. It's called the Ice Age Trail because it "commemorates the glaciation" that formed the Wisconsin landscape. The U.S. Congress voted it a National Scenic Trail in 1980.

We walked into the forest on the Ice Age Trail just a little ways before the raindrops started again and ended our 1,200-mile journey early.

The only other thing we had planned for this day was a trip to the cheese factory just a few miles down the road from our camping spot.  What could be more iconic than visiting a cheese shop in Wisconsin? The Renard family makes all kinds of cheese, and they offer visitors a generous set of samples in their shop. 

They also have a little cafe, and we thought this was a great place to try an iconic Wisconsin food--fried cheese curds.

We had heard that the real test of quality was how far the fried curds can be stretched. These are some high quality curds!

We made our cheese purchases, and headed towards the town of Algoma--on the opposite side of the peninsula. We made the drive to tick off another lighthouse on Denisa's list. We arrived at the harbor to take the cat walk to the Algoma Pier Lighthouse at the end. But there was no cat walk and no light?!? We found out that both had been removed a month ago to be refurbished. The iconic mascot of the town of Algoma should return when it looks better.

On the same pier was a permanent Christmas tree. It's a memorial to a boat captain that delivered Christmas trees to the citizens of Algoma every year. While this trip was focusing on all five of the great lakes, this will be our last view of Lake Michigan. What could be more iconic than visiting Lake Michigan while in Wisconsin?

Denisa had found information in the Algoma tour booklet about local tours. She made a phone call, and suddenly we were approved for a private tour to a local dairy farm. What could be more iconic than visiting a dairy in Wisconsin? We arrived at 3:00, and got a very interesting tour given by the grandaughter of the founder of the Heim's Dairy. Our first stop was the old barn where they used to milk just 24 cows at a time.

Kiley is in charge of the calf program, and we could see her heart swell when we approached one of the calf pens. 

These little heifers were fed automatically when they approached the bottle feeder filled with the mother cows' milk.

A new barn had the younger calves in individual pens, and fed with an automatic bottle delivery system.

Kiley also took us to the maternity ward, where the pregnant cows were kept so they can be watched carefully until they give birth to their calves. She let us open the doors into the nursery where the calves that were 1-2 days old were still getting their legs under them.

These female calves will be raised on mother's milk, complete with the cholostrum that is important to newborns. They will get the best nutrition and care, because they will become the next generation of milk cows for the dairy. Denisa was trying to figure out how we could fit one of those baby calves in the trailer to take home. Denisa was raised on a farm where her job was bottle feeding any baby calves that were orphaned.

It's important for dairy cows to have a calf every year in order to keep her milk production going. While they aren't milked during the last couple months before the calf is born, they will go back to the milk barn soon after. That brought us to the newest barn--the circular milking parlor.

Imagine a slow merry-go-round with room for 60 cows. They happily stepped onto the carousel and started eating the special food. As they rotate, the udders were cleaned before the milkers were attached to the teats. 

About halfway around the circle, the milkers will unlatch. It's all done automatically based on the decreased flow of milk when the udder is empty. You can see the blue hoses on the left have already released, while the ones on the right were still milking. 

Each cow got to ride until the end of the circle, when she was escorted back to her cool barn.

Each cow will take a spin on the circular milk parlor three times a day. They milk at 6 a.m., 2 p.m., and 10 p.m. We learned that the average cow produces 85 pounds of milk each day.

All of the milk that Heim's Dairy produces goes directly to the BelGioioso Cheese factory down the road. They'll take two semi-truck loads of fresh milk to the factory every day. It was interesting to us that the family doesn't save any milk for their own personal consumption. The Heim family buys their milk at the grocery store just like the rest of us.

The circular milk barn was new to this dairy as of May, so the cows and the crew were still getting used to it. Kiley walked us right up to the line for ground views, then to an upstairs conference room for overhead views. It was so fun!

Our tour also included the maintenance barn, and one of their latest pieces of equipment. This trailer carries their fleet of over-sized drones on top. It can transport the spray and the drones to any field to make spray application to their crops. We found out that airplane crop dusters are becoming a thing of the past now that these big drones can do the same job cheaper and fly closer to the crop safely.

Kiley took us by the piles of feed needed for their 1,650 dairy cows for a year. Instead of baling the alfalfa, they chopped it and put it into piles that were covered with white tarps and weighted with old tires. We had heard of silage made of corn, but we had never heard of haylege made of alfalfa.

Our last stop was the big barns that house the dairy cows. They've found ways to keep it cool in the hot summers, and warm in the cold winters. We didn't see any of the flies that make cows crazy, and it was a very clean place with a nice temperature. They added spinning brushes to the pens when they saw how popular the test brushes were. Every mama cow deserves a nice massage after a spin on the rotating milk parlor.

Technology abounds in the dairy. Each cow had a number on her ear tag. But she also had a stylish necklace that monitors her 24 hours per day. That necklace can monitor breathing rate, temperature, location, rumeration, etc. 

Wow! That was such a fun hour! Before we headed home, we stopped by the nearby Glen Innish Farm. We heard that lavendar was in bloom, and we wanted to smell it for ourselves.

Lavender isn't as iconic to Wisconsin as milk and cheese, but Denisa is a fan of all things flowering in every state.

We also found some interesting spiky purple flowers by their farm store that made for good pictures.

We bought a glass of lavender lemonade, and made the drive back home. We've had a great four-day stay in Door County. This last day was an iconic trip with Wisconsin cheese, dairy, and views of Lake Michigan. We ended with another of our favorite Wisconsin past-times--butterfly releases--in the evening.

We had two new butterflies to bring out into the windy world. This was number 54 and 55 for Ramelle this summer. 

Thanks Door County and our Boondocker host for an iconic visit!