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June 18 - United States: Milwaukee, WI

We left Chicago early and drove an hour and a half to get to Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  There, we spent a "Jon Day".  The first stop: The Miller Brewery.

Frederick Miller's Plank Road Brewery

Jon's been looking forward to this for days.  In fact, since we'd visited the Anheuser-Busch Brewery last week.  So we walked in and got tickets for the brewery tour, which had about 30 people on it and two tour guides.  The guides were a riot and made the tour very enjoyable.  We walked through the production line and saw some cool statistics: 2000 cans filled per minute, 1400 bottles filled every minute.  That's a lot of beer.

After the production floor they took us to the "Miller Caves", which is where Miller used to store the beer kegs before they'd moved to a larger storage facility.  Pretty cool stuff.

Jon Going Into the Caves

Immediately after the Caves, we entered "The Inn" where we would taste some honey beer.  We sat at a table with a couple from El Paso who were visiting their families in Madison, WI.  They weren't very talkative, so Jon and I chugged our beers and crossed the street to the other Miller bar.  There, we could get two more tastings and sit out in the sun.  To me, they all tasted like beer.  Jon claimed there was a difference, but I suppose that I'm just not as in-tune to beer as I am to wine. 

Then we drove to our hotel room and later left for Miller Park.

Miller Park - The Wilwaukee Brewers vs. Houston Astros

Miller Park

The [ark was beautiful.  It has a retractable roof that was open for our game and that's great - it was a spectacular evening.  The Milwaukee Brewers were playing the Houston Astros, and we had the cheap seats in the bleachers.  Jon had bought them over the Internet, and there was one thing that they hadn't revealed: The Obstructed View!  We sat down and said, "You have GOT to be kidding me!".  The yellow foul pole was blocking most of the field from us.  So after a few minutes of trying to lean to look at the field, we moved down a row and over a bit.

Our Original View

The New Seats - Look!  A Ballgame!

The Brewers have a mascot named "Barnie Brewer".  Unlike other mascots, however, Bernie stays in a little upper-corner of the ballpark in a place known as "Bernie's Dugout".  He shows up there at the beginning of the game, and then slides down a huge slide whenever the Brewers hit a home run.  (Which wasn't often).  

And when the Astros switched pitchers, a man came out on a Harley and rode around the field.  Why?  We still don't know.  Nor do we know why the four Wieners came out and did a race around the front of the field.  But I have to admit it was pretty funny.

The Wiener Race

We left in the eighth inning because the Brewers were up and we were actually kind of tired.  So we went back to the hotel and crashed.

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