A Day Trip Away - Lake Geneva, WI - Ride Report

[Goodwin 1st MRB]

My summers are usually full.

For some strange reason - I get busy in the summer. I'm talking in the "oh, I have a full time job a part time job and have 2 other clients who want websites done like yesterday and my kids want to spend time with me on their summer vacation" kind of busy.

I coach diving in the evenings (7-9) and on Friday mornings through the week in addition to my regular 7am - 3:45pm job so that alone is a huge time sink! Then top it off with my kids and making sure they get quality time with dad and clients who think the world will end if their website isn't updated right away or their stuff adjusted on their site, etc. and I struggle to find a way to sleep more than 4-5 hours on a given night just to keep up with the 'must be done' portion of my life.

With summer winding down, my extra jobs have dwindled off - kids are back at their moms - things are slowing again to a point I can get a decent nights sleep. I bought a motorcycle about a month ago to help with commute between jobs and to do some sport touring.

My wife and I are new to sport touring. She's new to motorcycling all together (I grew up riding since age 11) - but she's decided to jump into the world of street with both feet along side me. So with our new (to us) Bandit sitting in the garage (for the past month, except for a few commutes to work), I was anxious to actually go somewhere on the bike.

We thought about it and decided on Galena, IL / Dubuque, IA initially. About a 2-3 hour ride depending on traffic coming out of the Chicago burbs. We called around for hotels but couldn't find any - almost 100% of the hotels were fully booked! After some long consideration we decided to scratch that plan and go with something a little closer. Kirkendall will have to wait a little longer until we see each other again. We were told Lake Geneva was a fun town so we decided to head out in search of it. As it turns out, my wife has a friend who has a summer home there, so she advised us of some good places to eat and said we could swing by a little later in the day. Done deal - Lake Geneva was our destination; to top it off, the map said it would be an easy ride with just 2 main roads to get us there.

Originally we thought about staying overnight, but at just 1.5 hours away we figured a day trip was in order.

It was a chilly morning (around 60-65 degrees); but we made it there. We were both getting ready for a short stop, when we saw the sign; we had arrived!

Stopped in to get some breakfast at a place just down the street from this joint behind us. It was called "Simple" and it was really, really good!

After breakfast we decided to head out and just ride around the area - maybe catch a glimpse of some of the huge mansions we saw around the lake on our way in. After we drove around a bit, we found this gem of a road - gorgeous multi-million dollar homes lined this heavily wooded amazing country road that twisted up and down over hills. A LOT of fun to ride, even more fun to look at the houses!

After cruising around the area for a bit we decided to stop and take a break near the downtown area. The parking was cheap, and the motorcycle spots were within a block of all the downtown shops, art museums and touristy stuff.

Across the street was a little shop that had these metal sculptures out front. Kind of cool up close, the dragon one was really neat as well (it's a bit further back on the right).

Went to the kitchen store and my wife (art teacher) really liked these rainbow-esque glasses. They were neat, but plastic. My wife won't eat off plastic plates or drink out of plastic cups - I don't get it.

We were near the pier, so we decided to take a boat tour - they had a 2 hour tour that went the entire length of the lake, or a 1 hour tour that did about 1/2 the lake and focused more on the mansions/history to the lake. We did the 1 hour tour.

This house was gigantic. It's hard to tell from this picture, but it was still being built. We were looking on our phones on some of the real estate apps (Zillow primarily) to get an idea of prices. All the houses on the lake were multi-million dollar homes. Taxes ranged everywhere from $16,000 and up. There were additional 'lake taxes' or something to that effect that ranged from $60,000 and up. That's right, the owners of these homes pay around $60,000-$120,000+ just in taxes, each year!

Then we saw this - the largest house on the lake. While there was one single family house that was 7 stories, this 4 story house actually was larger (also single family originally). The insane detail in this thing was wild, marble walls, custom painted / carved ceilings by a painter from Europe, amazing floors - a table in the dining room that could seat 100 people! The roof originally had a bunch of willow trees growing on it in huge pots, but the roots eventually broke through to the roof and caused some structure issues so they were removed. That was in addition to the 14ft. deep Olympic sized swimming pool on the roof (which is still there). The sheer size of it was insane - both my wife and I thought it was a hotel or resort of some sort when we first saw it; it was simply too big to be a single family home (or so we thought). The history to the house was really cool as well. One of the basements was originally used to hold huge chunks of ice harvested from the lake, then a series of fans and ductwork blew the chilled air through the house (primitive air conditioning). It's the huge stone house on the left in this picture.

After the tour we went to my wifes friends house and hung out for a bit. Then we headed home. It was a fun little ride - 1.5 hours up to the lake. Had the weather been a little warmer it would have been more enjoyable, cloud cover all day and it never got over 68 degrees with a constant breeze.

We didn't have any bike issues, so all in all - a success. Figured anyone considering that as a destination might enjoy.

Cheers!