Beer and a Big Mall

Thursday August 9 - Milwaukee to Minneapolis

Today started raining and chilly in Milwaukee.  Di wore jeans and we both needed our rain jackets.  The rain couldn't stop us though, from visiting the mother land, our Mecca, Miller Valley.  We got a great tour of the plant with a really fun video and even a special guest, Mr. Fred Miller himself!

Miller High Life, " The Champagne of Beer" was the first and oldest beer for the company. 

They made a replica Miller park with High Life packs!

Their shipping dock was the size of 5 football fields! Every single pallet is placed 

on a truck within 24hrs!

Heres a video of their Packing line!

Prior to refrigeration Fred Miller made caves to keep his beer cold!

At the end they provided us 3 FULL size samples! I had the honor of finishing Di's also! 5.5 beers in 10 minutes...yeah I didn't drive to Minnesota!

After a stop in the souvenir shop, we headed back on I-94 West towards Minnesota! 

It was rainy most of the way. We've been pretty lucky so far, only 1 day of rain. The tour guide at the Brewery did say they were in a drought, so rain was a good thing. About a 6 hour drive from Milwaukee to Minnesota. Our destination for the day:

So yeah, it's a pretty HUGE mall. 4 floors, an Amusement Park and an Aquarium! We thought Woodbridge mall was big. The mall is celebrating it's 20th anniversary this weekend. We walked every quadrant on every floor.

Each floor had a food court and restaurants. There were 4 Lids stores! 4! Just for baseball hats!

Every floor had it's own theme and every quadrant had different decor. The 3rd floor had one quadrant of just restaurants! Everything from Bubba Gump Shrimp, Buffalo Wild Wings, Rainforest Cafe and a few local ones in between. We decided to have Chinese!

After 3 hours, which seemed like 10 minutes we decided to head into Minneapolis to find our hotel.

Tonight: Twins-Rays at Target field!

Beer Capital of the World...well it was at some point!

Day 3: Brew City! aka Milwaukee

The drive to Milwaukee was not all that scenic. Pretty flat, lots of fields. We're listening to some books on CD courtesy of Aunt Cathy (THANK YOU). The books really help pass time in the car. We finished a book on Red Auerbach and currently working through a John Grisham book. 

 From Battle Creek Michigan (Where we crashed after the Tigers game) to Milwaukee we passed a few more notable places. Gary, Indiana and Chicago, Illinois!

Chicago looked impressive and we can't wait to visit later this week!

Miller Park was really easy to get to. Right off of a major interstate: I-94. Easy to park and only $10! We can't even get close to Citi Field back home for $10. The LIRR is $12 a head! 

It was a 1:10pm game. The parking lot was full of tailgaters cooking up Brats, BBQ and drinking tons of Miller beer. Very fan friendly/tailgate friendly ball park. Everyone was drinking and not trying to hide it. They even had huge recycling containers and concrete dump areas for fans to dump their hot coals! 

Bernie Brewer

View from center field bleachers

The game was great. We sat upper deck but right behind 1st base. Not a bad seat in the place.  The retractable roof was open and it reminded us a lot of Seattle's ballpark.  Walking around the stadium they had the broadcast on throughout and we think it was the great Bob Uecker.  

They are all about their sausages in Milwaukee and they were everywhere, Stosh the polish sausage, Guido, the italian sausage, Cinco the chorizo, Brett the bratwurst, and Frankie Furter, the hot dog!  Out in the parking lot before the game and racing around the infield in the 6th.  Very fun.  I want to see a race between the sausages of Milwaukee and the pierogies of Pittsburgh!  Yum!  

Cinco, Stock, Guido, Frankie Furter

The Brewers came back in the 8th inning with a game tying hit by Carlos Gomez (former Met) and a game winning double by last year's MVP Ryan Braun.  

Brewers 3 Reds 2.  We are 3-0 so far.

As we were leaving the stadium it started to sprinkle on us and when we got back to the car and looked at the stadium the roof was already closed!  We totally missed it but it was really quick!

We went downtown for dinner at Water Street Brewery right next to restaurants who had been featured on Man v Food and other travel shows.  After dinner we drove down to the lake and walked around.  Really pretty at Veteran's Park overlooking the Milwaukee skyline.  Milwaukee is definitely known for its beer.  Miller is made here as well Pabst, Blazt, and Schlitz (God bless you!) and a number of local breweries.  Cool town and great ball park.  Thanks Wisconsin! Next stop Minnesota!