Dietz Summer Road Trip

We took off from home (Wendell, NC) on Saturday July 1^st and headed to PA to drop off our dog, Max, and a quick visit back at home. After a bon voyage pizza party with the Dietz family, we got a good night sleep and left from Mars, PA (just north of Pittsburgh) for new land!

Our drive on July 2nd took us out of PA, across the top of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and finally into Wisconsin. Neither of us have ever been to Wisconsin together before so we were excited to cross another state off the list! About a 9-hour drive in total and since we were staying just one night we wanted to check out Milwaukee.

 

 

We arrived around 5:30pm local time. Unfortunately since it was Sunday, we missed out on a few things. The tours of the Miller Valley factory ended at 3:30pm, and the public market was closed as well. However we managed to make the best of it and enjoyed some nice cool weather to walk around the easily accessible downtown.

 

 

Since the Miller Valley brewery tours were closed, we settled for the next best thing. Dinner at the Miller Time brew pub. Indulging in some of our favorite macro-brews (aka Miller Lite), we both agreed it tasted better drinking it right there where its made! Plus if that wasn’t good enough, they served all their local brews in a boot.

 

 

If you don’t really care for brews, they have baby boots as well!

 

The other thing we were most looking for were genuine, local fried cheese curds. First thing on the menu was indeed the curds! We ordered those almost before we could sit down and oh my goodness they were awesome! Better than any mozzarella stick we’’ve ever had. They were cheesy and fried, but not too heavy on the batter. Luckily we snapped a picture because we licked the plate clean.

 

 

The curds were the star of the show. We got chicken parmesan sandwich and fish tacos that were also good, but the curds are worth the trip alone.

 

After dinner we walked along with River Walk boardwalk area. It’s a really nice pedestrian walkway that follows the Milwaukee river and leads you into the Historic Third Ward area. We planned to check out the Public Market but it was closed so we snapped a nice picture from the outside. Back on the river walk, we found the Milwaukee Brewing Company. We got to sit right outside and watch the party paddle boats float by. (side note: if about 10 people want to come back to Milwaukee with us sometime, we are totally going to rent out one of these party paddle boats. What better mode of transportation for a pub crawl than a paddle boat bar?!)

After a careful examination of the menu we saw that if you download the Milwaukee Brewing Company app, you can get a free beer! Using their free wifi, we downloaded the app, found the code and each enjoyed a beer on the house. It tasted great and the price might of made it taste even sweeter!

 

 

We got back on the river walk and walked to the other end of the River Walk as the sun started to set. They have sculptures and statues along the river walk, as well as some light displays. The best by far was the bronz Fonz statue! (yes, Henry Winkler) Ayyyyyy!

 

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At the end of the river walk we got an uber for a quick ride to the Pabst Brewery. The brew pub was open all night so we ended the evening there in a bright and spacious pub. Since we couldn’t leave Wisconsin without eating a little more cheese, we ordered the meat and cheese plate to end the night. Again, it might just taste better because we are on vacation, but we both agreed that the cheese was bomb!
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For only one night, and for it being a Sunday, we thought we got to enjoy as much of downtown Milwaukee that we could. It was pedestrian friendly, relaxed, and not hectic. We would definitely love to come back!