Wisconsin Welcome with Beer and Cheese

Potosi Brewing Co.

We stayed at another Harvest Host last night and our first one that’s a brewery, the very old Potosi Brewing Company on the Wisconsin River. It was our great luck that the tap room has an outside dining area, so we sat out there and were waited on (thank you Potosi!) for the first time since mid-March.

The beer selection was good enough that we each had three types (IPAs for me, barrel-aged for Tracy) throughout the afternoon/evening and bought a case for friends. The fact that the trip to our bathroom and bed was just a few yards away made this a brilliant exception to our no-dining-in rule.

Banjo endured the heat with us so I walked her around the little town that night. People here drive ATVs the way people in campgrounds drive golf carts, which is wild to see. Wish I’d taken a photo! One family pulled up to the brewery in their ATV with the child in back wearing a helmet.

It would have been a nearly perfect stop except that we ate too much fried food, drank too many big beers, and then (unrelated) couldn’t get the truck hitched up to the trailer properly the next morning for love nor money.

Even from this shot you can see the trailer dips down at the hitch in the parking lot, and no matter how straight Tracy reversed the truck right at the hitch, as soon as the male part of the hitch met the female part, we had to raise the trailer, or the hitch would swing to the side and make the connection impossible. It’s supposed to sway, but when you’re driving, not when you’re connecting.

After what felt like a couple of hours standing in the hot sun with grease on our hands and calves and offers of help from the hapless landscapers nearby, we finally finagled and forced it it all together. Whew. Being stuck at a brewery wouldn’t have been the worst thing in the world, but having to FaceTime with a technician from the hitch company would have been embarrassing. With how tricky that hitch can be though, you betcha we’re going to be in the same situation again one day.

Lunch Along the Wisconsin

There is so much good food around here, but we have a hard time stopping on a dime at roadside markets.

This one was right at a crossroads though, so we grabbed fresh cheese (the sticker said it was “hand crafted” four days ago, which the squeak told me so) and drove to the river for lunch.

Now to find smoked fish. Onward.