HAPPY HOLIDAYS

WOO HOO!

Thursday, 16 August 2012

Milwaukee - The home of HD - Happy Days and Harley Davidson


Wednesday 15 August 2012 – Milwaukee
Day 125 and 33 to go
Paul was awake bright and early with the traffic noise this morning waking me with the bedside light as he read the paper that had been delivered. We watched morning TV before getting our day underway with a shower and packing our bags.
At 9.30am we wandered downstairs to pay up and to hop in a taxi to the car rental across town. Once there we collected our blue Dodge Avenger and entered the Chicago traffic. By now the morning rush was over and it wasn’t too difficult to move across the city to the north bound highway and make our way from the state of Illinois and cross the boundary into the state of Wisconsin, the dairy capital of America.
Sticking to the highway didn’t afford us a great view but every now and again something amused us; like the roller coaster park and the 5 waterslides emerging from a multistorey building.
As we reached Milwaukee we were confronted with a mass of spaghetti highway to navigate before we entered the parking area of our hotel. We were able to check straight in to our room where we gladly dumped our bags and ordered lunch as we were both hungry having not eaten since lunch time yesterday. This also gave me the opportunity to catch up on my all time favourite soapie “Bold & the Beautiful” Yay. I wonder when I will see this episode again in Perth?
At 1pm we got the walking shoes on and legged it to the Harley Davison Museum, only a 15 min stroll from the hotel. We paid the entrance fee and then wandered the 2 storey complex. It contained paraphernalia of the inception of HD in 1903 to today. There were hundreds of bikes on show along with bits of bikes and displays of Harley Davidsons used by the army, police, post office and in movies.
We wandered around taking it all in. There were some interactives that had us interested and laughing. Mind you some of the bikes had us laughing too. Some were so outrageously customised we wondered what on earth they were thinking.
When we had completed the general tour we had a wander around the shop to see what they had on offer, but there was nothing that really took our fancy so we moved into the Worn to be Wild exhibit based on the Leather Jacket. The exhibit highlighted the link between leather and the bad boy image as well as that with movie and rock icons.
When we had walked around we came out and went across to the bar for a drink. From here I could see a pirate ship floating down the river so I walked out to check out before returning to Paul and my drink.
Once we had finished our drink we walked back to our hotel room to grab the car keys and head out to the two Harley Factories on the outskirts of the city. We drove passed the Milwaukee Brewers home ground, another massive stadium with a retractable roof.
We located the first Harley Factory and did a drive around before heading on to the powertrain factory where we parked and walked to the front door to take some pics. With that done we returned to the homeward bound traffic and back to the hotel room.
We hung out in the room for a bit before heading out at 6.30pm to find dinner. We walked along a main road and then located a pub to have dinner in. We enjoyed our meals before wandering back to the hotel.
Paul rang home finally getting hold of his Mum for a quick chat. We watched TV for a bit and then it was time for bed.


























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