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Oct. 25th, 2008 10:20 pmAs my lovely ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
moiracoon put it several times over the course of the last fourteen hours' activities, this was a wonderful puppy day.
We were northbound out of Kenosha at about 8:00 and made it to Green Bay about 11:30. There was a stop on the way at the tourist information kiosk in Manitowoc where we read about the car ferry and picked up other assorted interesting touristy literature. It was actually the same spot where I made my first stop on my trip to the Keweenau with Kuma months ago, and that was oddly exciting to me. We also noted a Goodwill store that we decided we had to patronize on our return trip.
We got lunch at a mall food court in Green Bay after finding a distinct lack of places that didn't involve fighting mall crowds. Who knew this many people lived in Green Bay? From there, though I wasn't able to find the museum by the directions I'd written down, Moira located it merely by remembering where we'd passed railroad tracks and following them. She's a very bright raccoon!
We got to the museum about fifteen minutes in front of the movie we'd come to see, so we wandered about the main building looking at some really well done dioramas, old railroad tools on the wall, and what looked like HO scale model locomotives in display cases. Cool stuff! I didn't see a Big Boy, model, but there was an Allegheny on the shelf.
Shortly we went in to the theatre and found seats for the movie. As my dad and I were looking at the museum's website yesterday evening, we realized that they were going to be showing Nosferatu, with live organ accompaniment! Though Moira was already interested in going to the museum with me, that had very much sweetened the deal. I was a little disappointed to realize that, rather than an actual organ, the organist would be playing a MIDI keyboard with sound sampled from a real Wurlitzer. But it was still a really great experience. This was the first time I'd ever seen a silent film with live music, and it was great! I want even more to go see some of The Chicago Silent Film Society's productions. And I really want to hear a live organ!
From there, we walked into the museum's enclosed train pavillion where I got my first look at a Big Boy. I'd been imagining what one of these would like like in real life for months. Seeing it in front of me, the experience was pretty close to what I'd expected. That is to say, I looked at this behemoth of steel in front of me and tried to fit into my head the idea that it could haul thousands of tons of cargo at a mile a minute. I made a valiant effort, but that's a big idea for a puppy head! This is the largest land vehicle I'd ever seen, and boy do you know it when you look at it. In case you didn't want to wade through the Wikipedia article I linked to up there, the Big Boys were 132 feet long and weighed over 1.2 million pounds, or six hundred tons, in operation. I was simply dwarfed by it.
The feeling persisted inside the cab of the giant, which was open to the public. There was room for four men to sleep comfortably on the floor between the engineer's seat and fireman's seat. It was just huge! One of the highlights of the trip was sitting in the engineer's seat elbow out the window, looking forward along the side of the mammoth boiler and imagining the sights and sounds of the locomotive in operation. What an experience that must have been.
We walked outside and climbed the six story observation tower to look over the grounds. I was surprised by how much smaller the facility seemed than the Union Railroad Museum. I had somehow been expecting something bigger. I wasn't terribly dissapointed as there were really fantastic things there, both in terms of rolling stock and in displays and information, but for size and sheer variety, the Union museum wins out.
As we walked back through another barn, this one open ended, past more steam locos, Moira pointed out another shortcoming. There just didn't seem to be as much signage on the equipment to provide context for what we were looking at. Again, it wasn't a huge disappointment; there were a number of signs about and I had a really great time looking at everything. But the Union museum seems to slap a sign on anything that isn't actively trying to get away, and a lot of the fun and thoughtful moments I had there were evoked by reading all the signage. Moira and I both wished that the explanations there in Green Bay had been just a bit more forthcoming.
And then we were on our way home. We stopped at the aforementioned Goodwill in Manitowoc. I was happy I did as I found not only a Christmas present for my 'coony-girl, but another IBM type M keyboard! This was an odd Goodwill and rather overpriced for the most part, but $4 for a type M isn't bad. The rest of the keyboards were all junk and priced the same though, so whoever is pricing things is simply oblivious.
And then we stopped for dinner at a place I saw a sign for on the way up; Pizza Ranch in Oostburg. The food was pretty good. The atmosphere...was bizarre. As we walked in, we saw, under a huge yoke on the wall, a verse from Matthew about how 'how light my yoke' or something to that effect. Didn't look too light to me! And directly next to it was a great big coil of rusty barbed wire. I suppse the wire may just be part of the 'ranch' theme that the non-religious portion of the decor was following, but the placement was unfortunate. Elsewhere, above a box on another wall, full of christian oriented pamphlet materials, was what looked like a miniature version of those bear traps you see in Bug Bunny cartoons. More odd religious references were about the place, between the old tools on the walls, and christian rock was playing on the overhead sound system. The place was also pretty well packed. Either the food was completely stellar (and it was pretty good!), or there is simply no other place to go in Oostburg on a Saturday night. I'm leaning more toward the latter.
And that's about the end of this edition of how I spent my Saturday. Moira napped on the way home and I got us back to Kenosha by way of Milwaukee. The only thing I should add is that after enough gentle poking (thanksankhorite! *grins*) I have finally tracked down my Yahoo login info and created a Flick account. I haven't really sorted anything yet and I only have four pictures up so far, all from today. Let me know what you think? Here's the link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/31766447@N04/ I'd love some feedback! And tomorrow I'll figure out how to add in the few people I know who I know have Flickr accounts. Tonight, it's bed time. This dog is pooped.
But first, one final note. Moira, my love, I had a superlatively wonderful time with you today. Thank you so much for your company, your enthusiasm, your joy, and your love. I love you my dear one.
moiracoon put it several times over the course of the last fourteen hours' activities, this was a wonderful puppy day.We were northbound out of Kenosha at about 8:00 and made it to Green Bay about 11:30. There was a stop on the way at the tourist information kiosk in Manitowoc where we read about the car ferry and picked up other assorted interesting touristy literature. It was actually the same spot where I made my first stop on my trip to the Keweenau with Kuma months ago, and that was oddly exciting to me. We also noted a Goodwill store that we decided we had to patronize on our return trip.
We got lunch at a mall food court in Green Bay after finding a distinct lack of places that didn't involve fighting mall crowds. Who knew this many people lived in Green Bay? From there, though I wasn't able to find the museum by the directions I'd written down, Moira located it merely by remembering where we'd passed railroad tracks and following them. She's a very bright raccoon!
We got to the museum about fifteen minutes in front of the movie we'd come to see, so we wandered about the main building looking at some really well done dioramas, old railroad tools on the wall, and what looked like HO scale model locomotives in display cases. Cool stuff! I didn't see a Big Boy, model, but there was an Allegheny on the shelf.
Shortly we went in to the theatre and found seats for the movie. As my dad and I were looking at the museum's website yesterday evening, we realized that they were going to be showing Nosferatu, with live organ accompaniment! Though Moira was already interested in going to the museum with me, that had very much sweetened the deal. I was a little disappointed to realize that, rather than an actual organ, the organist would be playing a MIDI keyboard with sound sampled from a real Wurlitzer. But it was still a really great experience. This was the first time I'd ever seen a silent film with live music, and it was great! I want even more to go see some of The Chicago Silent Film Society's productions. And I really want to hear a live organ!
From there, we walked into the museum's enclosed train pavillion where I got my first look at a Big Boy. I'd been imagining what one of these would like like in real life for months. Seeing it in front of me, the experience was pretty close to what I'd expected. That is to say, I looked at this behemoth of steel in front of me and tried to fit into my head the idea that it could haul thousands of tons of cargo at a mile a minute. I made a valiant effort, but that's a big idea for a puppy head! This is the largest land vehicle I'd ever seen, and boy do you know it when you look at it. In case you didn't want to wade through the Wikipedia article I linked to up there, the Big Boys were 132 feet long and weighed over 1.2 million pounds, or six hundred tons, in operation. I was simply dwarfed by it.
The feeling persisted inside the cab of the giant, which was open to the public. There was room for four men to sleep comfortably on the floor between the engineer's seat and fireman's seat. It was just huge! One of the highlights of the trip was sitting in the engineer's seat elbow out the window, looking forward along the side of the mammoth boiler and imagining the sights and sounds of the locomotive in operation. What an experience that must have been.
We walked outside and climbed the six story observation tower to look over the grounds. I was surprised by how much smaller the facility seemed than the Union Railroad Museum. I had somehow been expecting something bigger. I wasn't terribly dissapointed as there were really fantastic things there, both in terms of rolling stock and in displays and information, but for size and sheer variety, the Union museum wins out.
As we walked back through another barn, this one open ended, past more steam locos, Moira pointed out another shortcoming. There just didn't seem to be as much signage on the equipment to provide context for what we were looking at. Again, it wasn't a huge disappointment; there were a number of signs about and I had a really great time looking at everything. But the Union museum seems to slap a sign on anything that isn't actively trying to get away, and a lot of the fun and thoughtful moments I had there were evoked by reading all the signage. Moira and I both wished that the explanations there in Green Bay had been just a bit more forthcoming.
And then we were on our way home. We stopped at the aforementioned Goodwill in Manitowoc. I was happy I did as I found not only a Christmas present for my 'coony-girl, but another IBM type M keyboard! This was an odd Goodwill and rather overpriced for the most part, but $4 for a type M isn't bad. The rest of the keyboards were all junk and priced the same though, so whoever is pricing things is simply oblivious.
And then we stopped for dinner at a place I saw a sign for on the way up; Pizza Ranch in Oostburg. The food was pretty good. The atmosphere...was bizarre. As we walked in, we saw, under a huge yoke on the wall, a verse from Matthew about how 'how light my yoke' or something to that effect. Didn't look too light to me! And directly next to it was a great big coil of rusty barbed wire. I suppse the wire may just be part of the 'ranch' theme that the non-religious portion of the decor was following, but the placement was unfortunate. Elsewhere, above a box on another wall, full of christian oriented pamphlet materials, was what looked like a miniature version of those bear traps you see in Bug Bunny cartoons. More odd religious references were about the place, between the old tools on the walls, and christian rock was playing on the overhead sound system. The place was also pretty well packed. Either the food was completely stellar (and it was pretty good!), or there is simply no other place to go in Oostburg on a Saturday night. I'm leaning more toward the latter.
And that's about the end of this edition of how I spent my Saturday. Moira napped on the way home and I got us back to Kenosha by way of Milwaukee. The only thing I should add is that after enough gentle poking (thanks
ankhorite! *grins*) I have finally tracked down my Yahoo login info and created a Flick account. I haven't really sorted anything yet and I only have four pictures up so far, all from today. Let me know what you think? Here's the link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/31766447@N04/ I'd love some feedback! And tomorrow I'll figure out how to add in the few people I know who I know have Flickr accounts. Tonight, it's bed time. This dog is pooped.But first, one final note. Moira, my love, I had a superlatively wonderful time with you today. Thank you so much for your company, your enthusiasm, your joy, and your love. I love you my dear one.
