On Wisconsin!

3 hours ago

It's not happening as quickly as I would like, but slowly my wife and I are filling in the map we have of the United States. This year was actually pretty special for us as we got to add five of the little wooden pieces to the map that was given to us for Christmas a few years ago. Sadly, there are still a lot of open spaces to fill, but I am confident that given time, we can change that. While I wouldn't put any one state above the others among the new five we visited together this year, Wisconsin is a little special mostly for the fact that we hauled our travel trailer there and camped this summer.

I had been to Wisconsin a few times myself through the years, but as I mentioned, this was the first time we had visited the state together. The rules of our map are that we can't add pieces if we haven't been there together, and we also can't add pieces if we are just in the state for a layover or something like that. For example, a year or two ago when we went to Vermont, we had a connecting flight in Atlanta. We never left the airport, so Georgia still remains unfilled on our map.

Wisconsin is a pretty cool state as far as states go. I mean, cheese, beer, and bratwurst, what can you really hate about that? Plus, the state has a lot of natural wonders that make it quite impressive. Maybe not as many as Michigan, but still enough that it is worth going there. We just got back from Texas with @mrsbozz's sister and brother in law, and we have already started throwing out ideas for our next city to visit. Milwaukee was in the list of places to check out some day. During our trip, we stuck mostly to the northern parts of the state, where the western shoreline of Lake Superior is absolutely amazing.

If you ever get the chance to visit there, I highly recommend it! The water is so pristine, the fish is amazing, and it is just a magical place. I definitely want to take the time to explore more of the state if I ever get the chance. I've heard the Dells area is pretty cool if not a bit touristy, and kind of commercialized now.

Believe it or not, this is actually the penultimate episode of my #threetunetuesday series that is covering the fifty states of the United States. We started all the way back at A with Alabama, and now here we are just about a year later rolling our way into Wisconsin before we move along to Wyoming to wrap things up. In case you forgot, each of the three songs I am going to share needs to have Wisconsin in the title or lyrics. It might have been easier if I could just reference a town in the state, but nope, I decided it needs to be the actual state name.

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Believe it or not, Wisconsin was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be for this post. Somehow in the back of my head, I thought there were a lot more songs that either mentioned Wisconsin or had it in the title, but I was very wrong. I honestly struggled a bit to find the songs that I am going to share today. Nancy Griffith is actually a pretty cool artist and she can write some really insightful lyrics. I can appreciate that not everyone might like her style, or the twang of her voice, but if you don't like this song, at least dig into some of her slower stuff. "Pearl's Eye View" is a new song for me, but it does have a reference to Wisconsin in it, so I figured I would share it here. Plus, I am pretty sure I have never shared any of Griffith's songs before, so I thought that might be a cool thing to do as well.

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I've mentioned it before, but I always seem to get Tom Waits and John Waite messed up. I know anyone who knows both artists probably thinks I am an idiot for that, but that's just how it is. Sorry. Anyway, in a pretty big departure from the kind of music you might be used to him playing, "Diamonds on My Windshield" is a kind of jazzy tune that is spoken more than it is sang. Kind of in the vein of George Thorogoood or something like that. If you listen closely, it does mention Wisconsin, so it fits the bill for this post. Oddly enough, it seems like so far both of the videos I have shared today were from about 11 years ago. I can promise you the last one will be a bit newer.

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For this last one, I decided to go a totally different direction and give you "Wisconsin Death Trip" by Static X. I'll be the first to admit, I haven't listened to a lot of Static X in my lifetime, but it felt like a good idea to include it here. If nothing else, I would like to think that these posts over the past year have kept you on your toes. I like to sometimes throw in a little bit of the unexpected. I feel this song fits really well with that. These are all so different, that I wouldn't expect you to be able to pick any of them as your favorite, but I hope you at least enjoyed the variety!

Get ready to cross the finish line next week when we roll through Wyoming!