It’s been a while since I’ve had a vacation, and one of the presents I gave Diana this valentines was a trip to see the American Players Theater which is centered in Spring Green, Wisconsin. There are also a bunch of other tourist-friendly things around that area and Diana enjoys the place, so we decided to take a mini-vacation over an extended Independence Day weekend.

Our first day was a travel day, and our first long trip in the Yaris that we got last year since Christmas. Most of the trips that we take are long enough that we are travelling by plane and leaving the car at home. Since I knew I wasn’t going to be getting my normal exercise while on vacation, I got up early and did a walk around the neighborhood. Lately I’ve been listening to the Critical Hit Podcast while I exercise, because when I have 5 days of exercise a week, I quickly run out of podcasts. Usually I find something to listen to a long backlog so that I don’t run out of entertainment. I had a good walk and then we got ready to go.

The drive to Spring Green was pretty nice. It was very hot outside, which made us very thankful for the air conditioning in the car, which actually works quite well in our tiny car, and didn’t seem to impact the mileage that much. The last part of the trip took us off of the highway and through some of the highways around the country in Wisconsin, going through some of the tiniest towns that I have seen in a while. It made me think about how these tiny towns actually pay for things, because they have some pretty nice streets and like streetlights (well, one streetlight) in some of them. Regardless, there was some nice views on the way to the hotel.

We’re staying at the Usonian Inn, which is unique in the world for being the only motel which is built in the Usonian style of architecture. Looking at it makes you think that it is not really nice on the outside (although that is debatable), but it looks very nice on the inside and is quite interesting with lots of straight lines. Even with the small room that we picked, there are a lot of interesting elements. I took some pictures. The hotel itself is also a very eco-friendly hotel, and is one of the only ones in the areas which is kept on a couple of the green registries. While it’s a little more expensive than a run-of-the-mill hotel, I think I would stay there again.

After we got situated, we wanted to get something to eat, so we drove along the road looking for stuff. We did a little random driving and went through another tiny town – Lone Rock – which was a little depressing because there wasn’t much there. After we got through the town we drove over a couple of nice bridges though which took us over a river (which was quite high) and a drive along a cliff which provided some quite nice views of the Wisconsin countryside.

We ended up in Dodgeville to get some grub and some vacation supplies. We ate at one of the last remaining Country Kitchens which are rare nowadays. We overheard from the hostess that there was quite the scandal with the CEO or someone high up at the company got convicted for embezzlement and all of the company owned stores had to be closed, leaving only the franchise stores left. There are only a few left - less than 40 I think was the number they said. All of the franchise stores are individually up for sale as well I think she said. It was interesting to hear of this story which impacted quite a large chain of restaurants.

I had some ribs and fries which were just what I needed since I had only had some cheese curds since breakfast. It being a vacation, I’m letting myself eat freely instead of trying to be strict to the super low carb ketogenic diet that I am normally eating. To that end, I ended up getting some sweets for dessert and munching on as well. I’m hoping that it doesn’t make a big impact on the scale when I get back on July 4. I’ll be going on an extreme carb cut for the first couple days of next week, trying to go actually zero carbs to see how quickly I can start burning the fat.

After some supplies, we were both very tired, so we went back to the hotel and plugged in everything to recharge and watched a little TV before drifting off to sleep. Friday is the day where we will have a full day to spend in Spring Green and see the play in the evening. We might end up going to some other spots, or put them off until Saturday. It’s set to be another over-90 day pretty much all day long, so maybe not. Until then.