Road Trip Day 5: Cheese Curds and Horse Racing

Yesterday, I mentioned the different ways that the residents of Green Bay honor their football team.   Today, as we got ready to leave, we saw a couple more signs of fervent fans.

The breakfast room at the hotel was filled with people wearing Packer football shirts.  There was a young boy, about 10 years old, who had prosthetic legs decorated with Green Bay Packer stickers.

Driving through Green Bay, we also noticed that the trash cans in front of people’s homes were green and yellow.  Green Bay, Wisconsin is the smallest city that has an NFL team and the residents are very proud of their football team.

We left Green Bay and made our way north to Door County, which is a narrow peninsula that rises above Green Bay.  It is dotted with small towns, orchards, dairies and fishing villages.

We spent the morning in Sturgeon Bay visiting the local farmers/craft market and the local museum’s rummage sale.

Have you ever heard of cheese curds? Friends of mine who have visited Wisconsin before, have told me to try cheese curds, which are chunks of solid cheese, which forms from the whey during the cheese-making process.  Once the curds form, they are pressed into molds to form cheese.

In the midwest, cheese curds are a popular snack.  It is said that they ‘squeak’ when you eat them.  To be honest, I wasn’t sure I wanted to eat something that squeaks.  But, this has been a road trip of ‘firsts’ so I bought some curds at the farmers market.

We spent the afternoon driving south toward Madison, Wisconsin just in time to watch the horse race on television.  Sadly, our favorite, California Chrome, did not win, but we did enjoy a simple dinner of food bought at the farmers market earlier today.

A fresh baguette, cheese curds and carrots make a great dinner while watching the Belmont Stakes horse race.

And yes, the cheese curds do ‘squeak’, but they are delicious!

Tomorrow, we are off to explore and I promise to take lots of pictures!  

Noelle Johnson, aka, 'AZ Plant Lady' is a author, horticulturist, and landscape consultant who helps people learn how to create, grow, and maintain beautiful desert gardens that thrive in a hot, dry climate. She does this through her consulting services, her online class Desert Gardening 101, and her monthly membership club, Through the Garden Gate. As she likes to tell desert-dwellers, "Gardening in the desert isn't hard, but it is different."