Trip to the Land of Cows

Cameron & I went on a trip to Kenosha Wisconsin a few weekends ago and it was really great! It's only about 30 minutes away, and we got to go to the jelly belly factory on the way (yummy!!)! Why Kenosha, Wisconsin you ask? What could be up there besides lots of cows (and nasty ice cream-there is NO good ice cream here!) Well, not only does it have a cute name, but the city boasts 3 museums, 2 of which are FREE.

 

I am so FAT in this picture...but anyway...It is only about 15-20 minutes to the jelly belly factory (home to not only jelly beans, but a wide variety of candies as the tour says) and we were in Wisconsin 10 minutes in, surprisingly. Cameron had a half day of school Saturday so I picked him up and after we had lunch at home we headed off. The factory isn't as big as I thought it would be, but they do have a fun little train thing that pulls you around the big warehouse and stops every 2 minutes for a historical video (did you know it was Ronald Reagan's love of jelly belly beans that made them famous? He even sent them into space on the shuttles)! The best part is at the end when they hand you a free assortment of 60 delicious flavors....yuummmmm!! I forgot how much I absolutely love jelly belly! I don't think I've eaten them for years, but let me tell you, they are FAR better than the average jelly bean (they paid me to say that ;) )! Anyway they had a bagillion (yes that is an official amount) flavors but since they were all $9 a pound (which is like 2 kristie or 1 Cameron handfuls of beans) we opted to purchase the "belly flops": beans that had been deemed unfit for the jelly belly name because of some kind of defect and were being sold in bulk at the back of the store. LOL They taste the same, you just don't get to pick the flavors you like (and unfortunately we got a TON of coffee and licorice flavored beans-yuck!)

Our next stop was the Dinosaur Museum in Kenosha...that is, if you really want to call it a museum. Really it is one big room full of carnivorous therapods (meat eating dino's that walked on two legs). It was full of some quite nice specimens despite it's size. Besides being a kind-of museum, it is also the laboratory for an archaeologist and his team who have made some neat discoveries. I found out while here that Disney didn't completely lie in the movie "Dinosaur"...there were in fact Carnatores, though not as big as Disney made them out to be. I had tried doing research after seeing the movie years ago and came up with nothing, probably because only one specimen has ever been found.

Sorry this pic is so bad...my camera is kind of crappy. Anyway...this is the history museum in Kenosha. It's a neat little museum right on the waterfront surrounded by cute condos. We only got to see about half of what they had due to time constraints (they closed on us), but what we did see was pretty neat. They have a reproduction of a mammoth skeleton found in the area nearly a hundred years ago, as well as an impressive collection of local Native American artifacts (you would have loved all the types of arrow heads dad!).

The trip was pretty fun and we plan on going back to the history museum. When we have some money we'll visit the neighboring Civil War museum (it costs to get in). On the way home we found a drive-in movie theater, making the end to a near perfect day. :)