The Upper Midwest

Corn

The facade of the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD

In 2025, United States farmers produced 17 billion bushels of corn on 99 million acres of farmland. Corn is the largest volume of all the crops grown in the US, and the US is by far the world leader in corn production.

We saw it growing in every state we visited on this trip, except in the deep Southwest. We've even seen it in Hawaii, where they have ripped out almost of their sugar cane and pineapple fields to grow corn.

We started to see huge cornfields just a few miles east of the Badlands in South Dakota. As we continued it became even more prevalent. On either side of the road, for as far as the eye could see, for miles and miles, there was nothing but corn. There weren't many farmhouses, which told us these were corporate farms, not family farms.

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Corn and windmills.

We stopped in Mitchell, SD, to see the famous Corn Palace, which has an exterior made entirely of corn. They create new corn art based on an annual theme. For 2026 it was the 250th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence. The art panels were meant to highlight the nation's advancement and history.

Detail showing different colors of corn in the art.

They sold corn dogs at the Corn Palace, Phil had to have one. It was good with some mustard!

We crossed the Missouri River at Chamberlain, SD, and stopped on the east side of the river at a rest stop. There we saw the Dignity of Earth and Sky statue; a remarkable tribute to the Native Americans who lived in the area for millenia. It is quite beautiful.

Dignity of Earth and Sky.

We spent the night at a hotel in Sioux Falls, then woke up early to be on our way to Madison, Wisconsin. Driving through southern Minnesota and most of Wisconsin we were treated to more cornfields, now sometimes puncuated with wind turbines.

Wisconsin

We made it to Madison, checked into our hotel, then went for a wonderful dinner at the Tornado Club Steak House, an old-style supper club a block from the state capitol building. Before dinner we walked to the Monona Terrace Convention Center, which was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. We went up on the Terrace, overlooking Lake Monona, where there were some wonderful views of the city and the lake.

View from the Monona Center.

The next morning we woke up early and drove a little west to see Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright's Wisconsin home. It is an amazing place, incorporating many of Wright's design concepts and being in harmony with its natural surroundings. There is a lot to unpack about Wright's personal life that we learned on our tour; but for now we'll just say the home is quite beautiful and very different.

An entry into an adjunct area of the house.

Looking into the dining area.

The main living room. There is no air conditioning in the house, it was kept cool by regulating the window openings at the tops of rooms throughout the house.

One of Wright's lighting designs.

The dinner bell.

Taliesin was originally built in an era when there were still horses and carriages delivering visitors. This was originally the horse watering trough, which Wright turned into a splashing water feature.

This was designed for a string quartet to sit and play to entertain guests to Taliesin. Turned out to be a poor design because they kept hitting each other with their bows and the music wouldn't stay on the stands.

Frank Lloyd Wright's bed is behind the big easy chair.

We then headed east to Milwaukee. Ann had been there briefly for business and Phil never had, so we wanted to see it. We had a nice VRBO in the Bayview section of town, south of downtown. We had a great tour of the Miller Brewery on our first full day there, and baseball tickets the next day. We did Milwaukee right!

Our VRBO in Milwaukee was at this intersection, which we thought was pretty cool. Austin is where we lived when we were first married.

The world's biggest High Life bottle.

The cave where kegs of Miller beer were aged and stored in the early days of the brewery.

The Miller Brewhouse.

Miller is a union beer!

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A packed American Family Field. The Brewers were playing the Twins, so it was a regional rivalry game.

We also got back on the Top Chef tour, eating at two of Chef Dan Jacobs' restaurants. The first was within walking distance of our VRBO, called EsterEv. It was an amazing meal, ranking with the best we've had on the trip. Chef Dan even came to the table to say hello and brought us a couple of choclate chip cookies!

The next night we went to DanDan, an upscale Asian fusion restaurant in the historic Third Ward. It was very good as well, and there was a lot of food! We brought some back to have later on the trip.

We went to South Shore Park the first day we got to Milwaukee. It's very pretty there.

The next morning we wanted to go back to the South Shore Park to take a walk along Lake Michigan before we left town but a thick layer of fog had settled over the lake and there was nothing to see. So we headed south to Chicago earlier than we had planned.

There was more corn to be seen! But the two cities are quite close to each other so it didn't take long for civilization to overtake the cornfields. We got off the interstate at Skokie and headed toward the Lake to see what we could see. It turned out to be town after town of multimillion dollar homes and small parks along the water that one has to pay to enter in a car.

Chicago

We kept driving through Northwestern University, which has a beautiful campus right on the Lake; into the city itself and past Wrigley Field, then on to our VRBO. It wasn't time to check in yet so we drove over to the Fulton Market District (close enough to our VRBO that we could have walked) and had a nice lunch at Beatrix. After checking into the VRBO we walked to a local grocery and bought some breakfast staples.

That's one of the things about neighborhood living in a city: you can almost always walk to get whatever food and services you need. But when you can't, some cities now have robot delivery services! We saw them all over the place in Chicago.

Robot food delivery on its way.

It was Phil's birthday so we picked a great Top Chef restaurant, Joe Flaim's Rose Mary in the Fulton Market district. The food was outstanding!

We engaged in a little PDA outside Rose Mary while waiting for our Lyft; a couple of European young women walked by and took our picture.

The next day we did the next best thing to going to a ball game at Wrigley - taking a tour of the stadium. We went on the outfield warning track in front of the ivy-covered wall, sat in the centerfield bleachers, went into the visitor's locker rooms and up into the press box where Harry Carey held forth for so many years.

In front of the ivy-covered wall.

The visitor's locker room has been in this same spot since the stadium opened in 1914. Amazing to think of all the greats who were in this room.

Where the bats, helmets and gloves go.

Not sure why the dugout has a phone to the press box but they do.

The Cubs four gold gloves.

The tour ended with a visit to the Cubs dugout, which had been cleaned but there were still sunflower seed shells everywhere. It was an awesome thing to do and we highly recommend it.

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The dugout.

That night was another Top Chef dinner, this time at Stephanie Izard's Girl and the Goat. Ann got us seats at the Chef's Counter, where we could watch everything going on in the kitchen and interact a bit with the line cooks. It was an amazing experience and perhaps the best food we ate on the trip.

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The cooking line at work at Girl and the Goat.

Our meal at Girl and the Goat. Somehow it was still Phil's birthday. Food was Amazing!

We did a walking tour of Chicago history, architecture and food the next day that included walking thorugh a downpour with tornado warning sirens going off. It was a little off-putting that our guide almost deliberately wasn't prepared for that, but we were able to make it into the city's underground walkway system without getting completely soaked through.

Walking along the Chicago River.

Inside the Chicago Cultural Center, which used to be the main public library. This room was built as a monument to the Grand Army of the Republic, the battles are embossed in gold above each doorway.

One of the Tiffany glass domes in the Cultural Center. This is where people used to check out their books when it was a library. They don't build public buildings like this anymore!

The Bean. We couldn't get closer to it because it's made of steel and there was lightning about.

The Chicago Symphony practicing for a concert later that evening in the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park.

We were able to see some of the city's great old and new downtown buildings and public art, then had a Chicago Hot Dog and Italian Beef sandwich at Luke's, a downtown institution. We took a short ride on an El Train to the Merchandise Mart, a nearly century-old market area created as a "central marketplace where retailers could come to buy their wares all under one roof." It's pretty amazing.

A Tiffany ceiling in the old Marshal Field department store building, now housing a Macy's.

A signed portrait inside Luke's.

A short walk away is Lou Malnati's Pizza. Lou is the son of the original owner of the famous Pizzeria Uno and makes his own version of deep dish pizza. Again, very good. After the Chicago Dog and the Italian Beef, one slice was all we needed.

That night we finished our Top Chef tour of Chicago at Monteverde, an Italian-themed place with two Top Chef finalists working there, co-owner Sarah Gruneburg and Executive Chef Bailey Sullivan. We sat outside, which was a little different but enjoyed the food very much.

We walked back to the VRBO satisfied that we had done Chicago right, at least for now. There is much more to see and do, however, so we will be back!