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Wisconsin 
Famous for: Dairy Cattle, Ice Fishing, Fine Beer
State
bird, robin. State flower, wood violet
State
tree, sugar maple
As
many cows as humans call Wisconsin home. About four million of each in
this rich, rolling farmland, 
America's
"Dairyland" is more than just one giant pasture. Beyond the massive red
barns and silvery silos lie endless pine forests, some 15,000 sky-blue
lakes, postcard-pretty valleys and dramatic bluffs.
Milk and Beer is the main production of Wisconsin. Remember the song sang by Jerry Lee, it started out what made Milwaukee famous. He was talking about beer not milk in this case. Milwaukee has festivals yearly.
Between 1884 and 1912, the Ringling Brothers Circus kept winter quarters in Baraboo, thirty miles northwest of Madison. The Circus World Museum, an enormous collection of memorabilia and daily performances including an old-time circus show.
Few cities are as closely associated with a sports team as Green Bay is with the football Players the Green Bay Packers.
MILWAUKEE , the "Deutsch Athens" of southeastern Wisconsin, is a combination of the down-home and the sophisticated, known for its lakeside and ethnic festivals and huge breweries . Visually it's a mix of elegant Teutonic architecture, rambling Victorian warehouses and tasteful waterfront developments. Its prime position on the shores of Lake Michigan, at the confluence of three rivers, made it a meeting place for Native groups long before white settlers moved in, while the opulent mansions lining the lake commemorate the industrialists who helped make this Wisconsin's economic and manufacturing capital. By 1850, less than two decades old and with a population of twenty thousand, Milwaukee already had a dozen breweries and 225 saloons. The contemporary estimate of six thousand bars - one per hundred residents - is not necessarily apocryphal.
Southern Wisconsin , passing over rolling hills and deep dales. The immensely likeable lakeside college town of Madison doubles as the state capital. Cozy Madison area communities like New Glarus or Mount Horeb , and historic settlements like Little Norway , attest to a mixed European heritage. Wisconsin Dells has a picturesque setting, but may appeal only to those who revel in tacky attractions and Americana. Stretches of the Mississippi River , undulating down the western border, are designated as The Great River Road , a scenic highway that runs from near Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.
Northern Wisconsin has no large cities (and few small ones), and no interstates. It's a lake-studded wilderness, covered by enormous tracts of forest. Canoe its rivers, fish for record-breakers or ski or snowmobile cross-country trails without having to fight for space. Bayfield and the Apostle Islands in the northwest are the obvious destinations, but Hayward, southeast of Superior, is home to the amazing National Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame (mid-April to Nov daily 10am-5pm; closed on weekends after Nov 1; $5). You're invited to "Walk through the biggest fish in the world!" - a four-story, 500-ton, fiberglass monster.
Eastern Wisconsin is a melange of the industrial and the maritime, with a nod to agriculture, shaped by its proximity to Lake Michigan and the smaller Lake Winnebago . Of its towns, Appleton was the birthplace of escapologist Harry Houdini, Green Bay is home to the legendary Packers, and Oshkosh is a household name for its overalls and baby clothes, but it's all best seen as a prelude to the most romanticized part of the state, Door County .
MADISON , just over an hour west of Milwaukee, was little more than a wooded, mosquito-infested swamp when it was selected to be the political nucleus of the Wisconsin Territory in 1836. Today this stimulating, youthful metropolis is one of the most beautifully set cities in the US, with a handful of diverting museums.
Downtown is neatly laid out on an isthmus between lakes Mendota and Monona, with the sumptuous white granite State Capitol sitting benignly on a hill at its center, surrounded by shady trees, lawns and park benches. Capitol Square itself is the site of a fun farmers' market (May-Oct Sat 6am-2pm); browse late for bargains. Madison Civic Center , close by at 211 State St, houses a professional repertory theater (box office tel 608/266-9055) and art museum (tel 608/257-0158) and also presents concerts and touring shows. Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Unitarian Meeting House , 900 University Bay Drive, in the late 1940s. With its sweeping, dramatically curved ceiling and triangle motif, it's definitely worth a look (May-Oct Tues-Fri 10am-4pm, Sat 9am-noon; $3). The lakeside Monona Terrace Community and Convention Center , 1 John Nolen Drive, is a more recently realized example of Wright's grand vision (daily tours 11am & 1pm; $2, free Mon & Tues). Surprisingly intimate and full of architectural detail, the Center, with its curves, arches and domes, echoes the State Capitol building just a few blocks away.
If the capitol is the city's governmental heart, the University of Wisconsin (average enrollment 46,000) is its spirited, liberal-thinking head, now mellowed since its protest heyday in the late 1960s. The Memorial Union , 800 Langdon St (tel 608/262-1583), holds a budget cafeteria and pub, the Rathskeller , with tables strewn beneath huge, vaulted ceilings and live music most nights. Out back, the spacious UW Terrace offers beautiful sunset views over Lake Mendota. Capitol and campus are arterially connected by State Street, eight tree-lined, pedestrianized blocks of restaurants, cafés, bars and funky stores. Williamson Street, on the city's near-east side a few blocks from Monona Terrace, happily evinces its countercultural community roots.
