We got there in the evening, stowed our stuff and took off for dinner in the nearby smaller city. Friends had given us a recommendation and we followed it. Pretty good dinner in a small, very crowded eatery advertised as a "pub".
Our lodging provided breakfast and we sat down with two other couples for pancakes and homemade yogurt with a blueberry sauce and homemade maple syrup. We introduced ourselves. One couple was from Virginia and were visiting relatives. The other couple spoke with an accent and was from Scotland. They were visiting their daughter and her American husband. You live in Scotland - how did your daughter meet her husband from Wisconsin? They met when they were both working in Japan!
I wasn't too shocked. The pub manager had explained the night before that a Japanese firm had acquired a local factory and that he had far more Japanese customers these days than he used to have. But still: a little bed and breakfast out in the woods of Wisconsin and we have Virginia and Scotland represented with a connection to Japan.
It is definitely a new-ish world where the old is still around and yet the new and different pops up here and there all the time. At dinner last night, the place was crowded. No wonder, it is shutting down for the winter this weekend. It is a popular place and everybody comes. Besides, there were four weddings being celebrated on the grounds or the paddlewheeler on the lake. We had to sit at the bar. A young healthy man struck up a conversation. He was a manager but also in his last year at the U of Wisconsin - Madison, 130 miles away. He was a political science major there. These days, you never know who or what you will run into.
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