Why Milwaukee?

Sometimes people ask me, "Why Milwaukee?"

That is a complicated question with many facets to the answer. Family, the neighborhood, access to services, and... 

Weather.

Here is a chart for the actual high and low temperatures for Houston and Milwaukee this month.

You can draw your own conclusions. 

(The vertical line is the date we arrived in Houston. Data is from the Weather Underground, Charted via Microsoft Co-Pilot)

Interesting little tid-bits

 I am not sure if mentioned that the House had an "Ice Door" that opened directly into the kitchen Ice Box from the back door.

You can see it here:

Well,  you can also see it in the wall, once we take off the plaster:

That is the east wall to the kitchen. I am not sure if it is the top gap, or the bottom gap. I am guessing the bottom gap, as it would have been easier from the other side to lift the blocks of ice into the ice box.

The house also had a milk chute, which you can see here:

as well as here:

The dishwasher was set in front of it, and there were motion detector lights set in the door facing the garage.

I don't think that we will rehabilitate that.

The tile harvesting seems to be possible:

Where they were

What it looks like

That is very encouraging.

Back in Houston

 We knew this day would come sooner or later.

Delaying it as long as possible, with a trip to New York and watching a show in Milwaukee ("Come From Away") just meant that we were pushing up to the limits of daylight. And after the switch back to "normal" time, we had to get up earlier, or drive faster.

So we ended up getting up earlier. But in reality, we didn't really come too close to driving in strange cities in the dark.

We left Milwaukee sometime before 9:00 AM on Saturday, November 8th:

It's nice to start on a Saturday, as it gives you more options around Chicago. But we went our usual route anyway.

The last view of the Bogk House before we left Milwaukee

The first stop was the Haze Smokehouse, a BBQ joint in La Salle IL. A dog friendly BBQ joint:

Next stop, St Louis:

Doreen's college buddy who lives in St Louis was otherwise occupied, so we had a night in the Gateway City all to ourselves.

It was cold, but scenic.

The next day, we made our way down to Pocahontas, MO

We've stopped there on almost every trip. There is a nice park on the Black River, and if you are lucky (we were not this time) Green's BBQ will be open (it's by the airport) and you can have a nice picnic. Mr Green once put together a plate of Que for Lulu as well. A dog lover.

One thing I did not realize until this trip (shame on me) is that this park is almost exactly (within a couple of miles) halfway between the Bogk House and the Stevenson House. 

Imagine that!

Then we made it to Little Rock, another great place to stay.

They have a free trolly in Little Rock, that goes between downtown Little Rock and Dog Town (North Little Rock) and you get a history lesson as well. I highly recommend it.

This is the house we stayed in, run by the Baker Hotel:

Our last day was a long day - almost seven hours:

We stopped in Marshall for lunch at a local burger joint called Jucy's. And it was.

Then Houston. Made it in just as dusk was coming on and rush hour was building up.

Look out Houston, they'll be thunder on the hill.