RV Shenanigans! Podcast from Millers in Motion
The RV Shenanigans podcast is your go-to audio adventure for all things RV travel! Hosted by Ryan & Lauren Miller of Millers in Motion, this podcast dives into the ups, downs, and downright hilarious moments of life on the road. From navigating epic road trips and campsite mishaps to discussing RV gear, maintenance tips, and travel inspiration, RV Shenanigans brings a mix of expert advice and laugh-out-loud stories. Whether you’re a seasoned RVer or just dreaming of hitting the road, this podcast delivers relatable tales, helpful tips, and plenty of good vibes to fuel your wanderlust. Tune in, buckle up, and get ready to keep the wheels rolling and the adventures coming!
RV Shenanigans! Podcast from Millers in Motion
Wisconsin Dells RV Guide: Waterparks, Eats & Camps
We RV’d to Wisconsin Dells and turned the trip into your complete guide—what it’s really like to tow in, which campgrounds to pick (and avoid with big rigs), classic mini golf, the Upper Dells boat tour, can’t-miss breakfast spots(Paul Bunyan’s Cook Shanty!), and a bucket-list supper club (Ishnala on Mirror Lake). We also share weekday crowd hacks, road-closure gotchas, height/grade notes, and what we’d do differently.
What’s inside
• Driving in: detours, county roads, shoulders, weekday hack
• Where we stayed: Sherwood Forest RV Park (tight turns, big-rig section, steep hill)
• What to do: Upper Dells boat tour, Ducks, Pirate’s Cove & Timber Falls mini golf
• What to eat: Paul Bunyan’s Cook Shanty (donuts!), Courtyard Café, Ishnala supper club, Cow’s Corner (Rome, WI)
• RV sizes that fit, parking tips, budget & our honest verdict
Imagine this. The most cheesy, corny version of like a Disneyland. Well, I'm not even gonna say Disneyland, like six flags you can imagine. Throw some RVers in there, all the Midwest bars and food, so all of that stuff. And what do you get?
SPEAKER_02:The Wisconsin Dells.
SPEAKER_00:That's what we're gonna talk about coming up on the RV Shenanigans podcast. Welcome back to the RV Shenanigans Podcast. My name is Ryan.
SPEAKER_02:I'm Lauren.
SPEAKER_00:And uh yeah, we're gonna talk about some destination stuff. So obviously, this is the relaunch, it's like 2.10, 2.1 of the RV Shenanigans Podcast. Nothing's changed since the relaunch of 2.0. We've just moved everything onto the channel. So again, if it's your first time here, welcome. Please do us a favor if you're watching on YouTube and consider hitting that subscribe button. I think as of this morning, with no videos posted to it, we're at seven. Two of them are us.
SPEAKER_02:I was gonna say the other two are our moms.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, we post it. No, they don't know how to do that. Um they they get what we tell them to get. Um, no, we we just we would appreciate it if you especially if you're coming over from Miller's in Motion, our main channel, if you would consider subscribing over here. This is our deep dive into all things RVing and RV travel, whereas over there we strictly live on the travel side. So if you're ever curious the hows, the whys, the planning portion of some of our RV trips, this is where you're gonna find that. Plus right, plus deep dives into other things.
SPEAKER_02:So all the details on the places we've gone that we can remember. Come come learn with us.
SPEAKER_00:It's also a casual interview kind of a situation. We are more laid back than a lot of podcasts. We just kind of chill and have fun and talk about stuff. So uh, if you're listening to us on your drive day, we would love to know that and where you're going. That's always I'm always curious where we're being listened to and where you're going in the process of. Because if you're on YouTube, great. You get to see everything we're talking about, but we really design this as like a travel day companion kind of a thing.
SPEAKER_02:So but don't watch us on YouTube whilst driving. That would be unsafe.
SPEAKER_00:Please no, just that's only for me. I'm kidding.
SPEAKER_02:Moving on.
SPEAKER_00:I wanted to see her face when I said that. So the Wisconsin Dells. I think it's important to talk about here what is the Wisconsin Dells as of like a broad, overreaching, like why would anybody want to go to there?
SPEAKER_02:That's a fair question. Uh the first time I went, I thought it was like this combination of family-friendly Disneyland-ish, plus a little bit of I'm not gonna say tacky, but price gouging? No, no, not the first time we went. That's true. But um I'm gonna go with tacky. Okay, I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_00:But cheesy, corny, tacky, like Vegasy, crappy Vegas.
SPEAKER_02:Vegas has gotten fancier, but meets Disneyland, think 90s Vegas, and a lesser budget.
SPEAKER_00:And when she means lesser budget, she's like much, much, much lesser.
SPEAKER_02:Yes. So, anyways, that's my description of it with love, Wisconsin.
SPEAKER_00:It has a special place in our heart. We're we're never overly enthusiastic about going back to a lot of like we like once we deep dive a location, we're not big into let's go back every year. Right. It's just not how we roll. Like, I love going to Walt Disney World. And when's the last time you and I went together?
SPEAKER_02:Oh, it's been several years.
SPEAKER_00:It's been more than that. Amy was like 12 or something like that, and she is now almost 20, which is terrifying. Yeah, I think it was and so it it it's one of those things, and I grew up going there because my whole family's from Wisconsin. In fact, I even wore this shirt on purpose.
SPEAKER_02:But your family has this habit of like returning to the city.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, they've got three spots they like, that's it. Right. Well, and so my family grew up, so my parents grew up in Madison and Janesville, Wisconsin. Um, my whole family's up there, my cousin still lives there, a lot of my family's still there. Um, I was born here in Texas, and so we went up a lot. We typically were in Wisconsin at least two to three times a year, holiday stuff, that kind of thing, Thanksgiving. And then in the summers growing up, we went to the Dells almost every year. Rental. That's right.
SPEAKER_02:So you're an expert.
SPEAKER_00:I'm an expert from back then. Then there was like a 20-year gap when you went between college and now, and then we've only been back a handful of times. I'd say since we've been together, we've been twice.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Once, right after we got engaged, we used it as a jumping off point to see family that she had never met before, and then recently on the RV. So um Wisconsin Dells is located reasonably centrally in the in the in the United States. It's not in the state of Wisconsin. Um, to give you a reference point, it's probably about three hours from Milwaukee. It's about an hour and a half from Madison, and it's probably about another hour and a half, maybe two hours from the Green Bay Appleton area. That's the big cities in Wisconsin. That's it. Um, there are other towns, obviously, but um, yeah. Wisconsin's a different place when you're getting up there as far as the traveling portion of it.
SPEAKER_02:There's more that I agree with.
SPEAKER_00:There's not a lot of huge interstates. There is. There's 90 and 94, and that's it. That's all they got.
SPEAKER_02:But when we say three hours, we don't mean three hours on the interstate.
SPEAKER_00:No, and I think that's one of the things in the RV portion of this that we're going to really talk about is, you know, they're there because it's a state that freezes over for a majority of the winter, they're built differently than say Texas, where we don't freeze over everywhere, um, hardly ever, kind of a thing. And so they don't have the flyovers, they don't have the massive interstates, and so it's a lot of state highways, it's a lot of back roads. Texas, we call them farm roads. I think they call them county roads there. Um, why they're numbers and or why they're letters and not numbers, I don't know. It confuses me still. When you get turn on double zero. Nope, that's an O. Okay.
SPEAKER_02:But when we were driving up with our RV, um, there was actually a detour. There was one of the roads was closed and it was not well marked.
SPEAKER_00:And it was well marked for cars, but when you're in an RV, there's always that question mark, right?
SPEAKER_02:Right. So like it said basically the road was closed, turn here instead. But then there was never a sign that said continue here. And so we didn't know if we were just supposed to like turn at the next one and then it would put us on the other side of construction or if we were supposed to keep going. And with an RV, that's a very difficult decision to make.
SPEAKER_00:And I will say, we we went on this trip. This was after we sold the Valor, so we're in the Delta, so much smaller, much more maneuverable. So we were lucky in the sense that we didn't have the Valor.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Because the Valor would have made that drive a lot more stressful. It was just more inconvenience.
SPEAKER_02:There and like the turnarounds were very few and far between. So, like if you had made the wrong decision, trying to retrace your steps would have been very difficult. So we're trying to pull up, there's very limited internet access, right? Trying to look at Google Maps, we're trying to do all these things, knowing you can't just pull off onto the shoulder because there's no shoulder.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And I think the other thing too is like understand when you get when you have that happen in like an interstate's closed, right? Like let's say you're going through Oklahoma or something. Right. You get off onto state highways, and then you use state highways to bypass and get back on. Well, we're not on interstates. We're on state highways. And so the option off of state highways is local streets.
SPEAKER_02:Farm roads, local streets, counting.
SPEAKER_00:You're going through farming lane, you're going through neighborhoods, you're going, and you're gonna go through like I'm using this term very loosely, like downtown, but think old timey Main Street downtown, not downtown Dallas or I.
SPEAKER_02:Narrow, maybe short, maybe don't make turns.
SPEAKER_00:Not necessarily there. I wouldn't make turns in those areas with an RVE.
SPEAKER_02:Exactly. That's what I'm saying.
SPEAKER_00:I will say though, Wisconsin's a farming state. It's predominantly what they do. It's it's cattle in terms of dairy and and farming. And so most things are actually like I didn't necessarily have an issue driving my dually around.
SPEAKER_02:No.
SPEAKER_00:The Dells, even even in the Dells. Now, granted, it's a touristy area, so the parking lots are just very big. And so you can kind of cheat that by going to the back. We were there during the week. That's our pro tip, by the way. Um, if you RV and you have the ability to skip the weekends, go in the week, it's always less crowded in these types of scenarios.
SPEAKER_02:But those little farmlands and ranches made it really cute to drive through all those questionable county roads.
SPEAKER_00:It's beautiful. It was adorable being stressed out if I'm gonna make this next turn or not. No, and Wisconsin is a very charming state. There's the rolling hills, you have a lot of the stuff when you get over by the Wisconsin River, and so yeah, beautiful, green, lush.
SPEAKER_02:It was awesome.
SPEAKER_00:And and once you come into the Lake Delton, Wisconsin Dells area, um, more than likely you're gonna come from the south. There's an off chance you come from the north if you're Canadian, I guess. Um, but there's not, yeah. I mean, the chances of you coming from the north are pretty small. Even when you come from the west or the east, you still end up coming in from the south.
SPEAKER_01:True.
SPEAKER_00:Um, just kind of how the highway system works there. So getting in, once you get into the Dells area proper, it's not bad, but it is busier.
SPEAKER_02:It is, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And so there's Dells is kind of broken into two areas. You have what I call the New Dells and the Old Dells. It's the old downtown Main Street area, which is a different street than now the main drag, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_02:With like the big, big hotels and amusement park type stuff.
SPEAKER_00:Correct. And so it's it's pretty, it used to be a little bit of a gap between the two. It's filled in, it's gone. That gap's gone. Um the there's spots where that main drag in can get a little tight. It's not overly bad. I wouldn't, I wouldn't even not, even if I had the valor, I wouldn't question going down it. Right. Maybe take it a little slower in spots. There's some spots that are from the original time that that area was built that are a little tighter. And once you look at the area, like a map at it, if you see where like Noah's Ark is and that kind of stuff, that's the original where that grew out, and then it kind of you know accordioned out from there. So it gets a little tight, just the lanes are a little smaller. That's all it is. It's not the nice big wide ones when you first come into town. Yeah, and then they widen again.
SPEAKER_02:And the good news is that the speed limit really goes down. So most people are only going like 30 miles an hour, so you're not doing quick things, and it's straight.
SPEAKER_00:The the thing you have to watch out for, especially in that area, is more the people looking around walking.
SPEAKER_02:Yep, the pedestrians.
SPEAKER_00:And on top of that, people driving, trying to figure out where they're going, where they're at, because you get a lot of that too. And not seeing the Midwest doesn't have great drivers, but we'll let you interpret that as you wish. In their own world? No, well, you get to the Dells just like any other thing. Like if you're driving for the first time in a downtown area, what are you doing? You're driving, but there's also the ooh.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I'm trying to figure out where you're going.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And so there's that, and obviously, most people that don't drive or tow an RV know comprending. And so they don't realize you need a little extra room or a little extra berth, that kind of stuff. So that's driving into the Dells. Where did we decide to stay?
SPEAKER_02:I I don't say this right. I can't remember the name of it. I want to call it Peter Pans, and I know that's not right.
SPEAKER_00:You are close in theme only. Sherwood Forest. Not Neverland.
SPEAKER_02:The guy on the sign looked like Peter Pan.
SPEAKER_00:And Robin Hood. Okay, fine, whatever. Which is where Sherwood Forest comes from. Oh boy. Apparently, Lauren needs to brush up on her literature. Um, okay, so we stayed at Sherwood Forest, what was it? RV Park and Campground. And I remember in the video we shot, which we did a Miller's in Motion video over not just the campground, but the Dells as a whole. Yeah, if you want to see some of how and I ask, why campground? It's because they allow tent camping. I didn't know that. That or the cabins is what what was it?
SPEAKER_02:No, it was tents.
SPEAKER_00:It was tent.
SPEAKER_02:They do have some cabins too.
SPEAKER_00:Yep, they have cabins. They have sheds that they call cabins. They're small.
SPEAKER_02:Rustic cabins.
SPEAKER_00:Get the newer ones, just saying. Um, if you if you can figure out which one's the newer ones, I would grab that one first.
SPEAKER_02:But definitely like summer camp theme vibes.
SPEAKER_00:I would say most, there's always the resorts, right? There's always gonna be so like in this area, it's um uh what was the Christmas Mountain Village is a resort and uh Ho Chunk Casino, and that's weird still.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, that we're not making fun of that. That's the name.
SPEAKER_00:It's it's it's like a wind star if you're from Texas or any other Native American casino. And so it's been there forever. Uh it's just grown just like all those other casinos have. And so my I know my mom used to go there all the time. And so um they have their own RV park. That's gonna be nice, concrete, wide sites, all that stuff. Yeah, everything else in the Midwest, because it gets so cold, they don't it like they're closed, those campgrounds close for five months. Right. Sometimes six, sometimes four, because of the cold. And so cold concrete doesn't love cold, it cracks. And so a lot of these parks just put down gravel, um, chip seals, whatever they call it, a lot of times, like in between that, and and not concrete. And so the chances of you getting like a concrete pad in anywhere in the Midwest is is on the rarer side of things, right? And so, with that also being said, Sherwood Forest has been there for a hot minute.
SPEAKER_02:That's what I was gonna say. For the amount of time it's been there, I feel like they were taking pretty good care of it.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I agree, yeah. And it's it's one of those things too that inevitably RV parks up there, the turnaround between winter and summer, it's things get literally destroyed in the winter. Absolutely. Because of the harsh conditions. And so for them to turn that around and be able to use it for the summer requires a lot of effort. So a lot of times with the upgrades, you don't like something's got to really break so that they have to completely replace it and pay someone to come in and do it, versus that kind of stuff. Like the pool's a really good example. Like everyone's like, oh, the pool's heated in the summer. That makes no sense, and it's closed in the winter. No, it's so the pipes don't freeze in the winter. That's the real reason why it's heated.
SPEAKER_02:But like every day there were people out on their little utility vehicles doing projects.
SPEAKER_00:So this is an old park, it was cut, it's coming up on its hundredth anniversary. Yeah, it's been around since the late 20s, early 30s, sometime. It's better, it's a staple. I remember it when we when I went as a kid being there. Because you know, like most RV parks aren't gonna be in like the main area. This kind of is.
SPEAKER_02:It kind of is. It was walking distance to several things, which is why we picked it, to be completely honest.
SPEAKER_00:We we could have gone, so Christmas Village is where our first choice that one was sold out, and I would say, but you're gonna drive in for everything, right? Um, if you Sherwood Forest had some availability, we went over Memorial Day weekend and the week following. Yeah, so our issue wasn't during the week, it was better than a doornail during the week.
SPEAKER_02:It was, it was kind of nice.
SPEAKER_00:Our issue was our first night or two, and so we were struggling to find somewhere that had availability for those first two nights, and I really dislike moving the rig midweek if I have to.
SPEAKER_02:And I know we went on Memorial Day weekend, we should have known better, but that was the way the schedule lined up, and the week was fine. It was only really a day or two ago.
SPEAKER_00:I was gonna say we landed on Memorial Day, yeah. So it that was a fun maneuvering task. Um, I will tell you, if you are considering, like if you're if you're listening to this podcast or watching it and you're considering going to the Dells, here's my disclaimer of Sherwood Forest. I would a thousand percent go back.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah, I would too in our rig now. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I would not uh if there's only a handful of sites that I would be okay taking a bigger RV to.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, and mind you, we have a 30-foot travel trailer for reference.
SPEAKER_00:So I would tell you that anything I would be fine, I'd fine, I'd be fine taking up to a 35-foot travel trailer or something that's below like 11 feet-ish or down in height.
SPEAKER_02:There's a lot of trees, some really tight turns in there, and a giant hill.
SPEAKER_00:Now, there is a pretty big section. We saw some 40-foot motorhomes in there. Right. Um, we saw some big 42-foot fifth wheels. Um, it's just limited. It's on the kind of northeast side of the park. If you're looking at a map, because they're all they're not facing north to south on the map, it's the kind of west side or the left side of the map. Because you can, when you go into the park, you can take a quick left there. Uh, you go down, there was that loop back by where the dumpsters were. That's right. Down the hill. If you're going to anywhere else, you are either in a very small and kind of the the original park right there, which is on the older side. And otherwise you're going up. I don't even know how to describe that hill.
SPEAKER_02:That w with our dually and our travel trailer, we were like, oh, okay.
SPEAKER_00:I don't think we could have gotten up it with the Valor. Well, let me rephrase that. I think we could have gotten up it, but I would have dragged something.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00:A jack would have gotten messed up. I would have dragged the back end.
SPEAKER_02:I was gonna say the back end was what I was worried about.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And so I wouldn't go up there with anything over like 34, 35 feet and travel trailer land. And I'm gonna say that with a disclaimer, depending on the distance between your rear bumper and your tires.
SPEAKER_02:And the other thing was when you got to the top of the hill, the vision was very limited. Yeah, and so you if and it turned in the middle of it, remember, and there was kind of a drop-off on one side.
SPEAKER_00:So not kind of a drop-off. That was a big old honkin drop-off. And mind you, we're unrecoverable drop, let's call it that.
SPEAKER_02:Exactly. Like rocks on either side, big giant boulders on one side, drop-off on the other side.
SPEAKER_00:And a 30-foot drop, depending near the top.
SPEAKER_02:It was it was kind of tight, a little puckering.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and so like I didn't, I I had plenty of room in ours. I will say that and that's why I'm saying like we're we're just under 30 feet at 29 feet and some change. And we tow with literally the biggest truck out there. It's a 22-foot F-350 dually.
SPEAKER_02:It's not the biggest truck. There's 450.
SPEAKER_00:It's the biggest truck you can get that's non-commercial. No, that's the same size, the truck's the same size as the 450.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, it is? I thought the wheelbase was different.
SPEAKER_00:The wheel base is a little wider, but it's not, but the front wheel base doesn't have anything to do with the back wheel base. It's it's reasonably the same footprint, turning the same thing. Same lengths, same all that stuff. Well, that doesn't matter in this scenario. Okay, we digress. Just accept that a 450, 350 are really, really similar.
SPEAKER_02:Very close in size.
SPEAKER_00:They're both 22 feet long. That's what we're going for here. Um, but it's it's I love the park. I would go back.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I would too.
SPEAKER_00:If you don't, I don't know that I would take a gas-powered motorhome up there for anything.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, maybe if you I don't I don't understand like a class C if it could make it. I wouldn't take a class A up there.
SPEAKER_02:Um not up the hill.
SPEAKER_00:It's too, yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Yeah. So you can get in, just know big rigs, stay in one area. If it's full, go somewhere else.
SPEAKER_02:I agree with that.
SPEAKER_00:Don't let the camp people talk you into something else. Because uh know your rig. Just be very cautious going in. If you go watch our main video on the channel, we actually break that down pretty extensively. I know this is a deep dive, but we've been talking for 18 minutes. We barely talked about actually what we did in the Dells. So um go check out that video and you'll know all the things about that park. But I would go back and see the things, but I would definitely go back to that park.
SPEAKER_02:Um we never swam in the pool, but I'm kind of okay with that.
SPEAKER_00:No, so the Dells pools, any pool in Wisconsin is kind of an afterthought because again, it freezes for so long. And so it's not necessarily that big of a thing up there, right? And on top of that, you're also on Mirror Lake and Lake Delln. So the Dell sits between two lakes, there's a section where they get very, very close together. Um, and most people go for that. That's what a lot of the locals go for, and then they just happen to do the amusement parks. In fact, if you've ever seen the movie Grown-Ups with Adam Sandler, there you go. That's kind of maybe not that chaotic, obviously. No, not that chaotic. But that vibe. Yeah, it's very much so. A lot of Midwest families use it as a regional vacation area. It's kind of a rent a cabin, rent a lake house, rent that stuff. You've got you can play on the water, but then you also have things you can do in town. Just there are more attractions here than some towns that do that kind of a thing.
SPEAKER_02:So there you go.
SPEAKER_00:Um, with that, let's get into the fun stuff.
SPEAKER_02:All right.
SPEAKER_00:Not that this wasn't fun. Um, but what were the reasons? What were our anchors? Like, what did we really want to do? And I say this we plan trips. We always kind of go, okay, we want to go to this area, and these are the handful of things we want to do. We call them anchors. And then around those anchors, they're the must-do's. If we can get into all of them, we go. And then we fill around those anchors. Sometimes it's one anchor, sometimes it's six. Like Nashville. Nashville was just two or three anchors, and then we filled around it.
SPEAKER_02:Exactly.
SPEAKER_00:And the Dells, it's hard because I don't know they're on the same caliber as anchors.
SPEAKER_02:No, I don't think so.
SPEAKER_00:And and even the ones that were anchors, I wasn't worried about getting in or not. Like we didn't have to have a ticket or anything.
SPEAKER_02:Right. And so also our food base. Our anchors for the first time we went, I think were totally different than the anchors for this time. So like the first time, I wanted to do the ducks. I wanted to do, you know, boat tours and things like that.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and meeting my family, I would consider an anchor too. And so we had to spend time away from the Dells or they had to come in, depending on the scenario.
SPEAKER_02:So this time, definitely seeing family was up there. And then you have to play mini golf and you have to eat cheese curds.
SPEAKER_00:Well, you don't have to eat cheese. If you're lactose intolerant, you don't have to do it.
SPEAKER_02:We're not going to come around.
SPEAKER_00:Um, unless there's vegan curds now. Up there, it'd probably shoot you if they tried to do that.
SPEAKER_01:No.
SPEAKER_00:No, but I will say, like, we wanted to do things we hadn't done before, and there are plenty of things to do. And so we wanted to do a supper club. Specifically the number one supper club in the state, which we'll get into a little bit later. But um, you want we wanted to go visit my cousin and hang out with him, which we actually got to do twice, which was fun, a little added bonus. That's right. Um, mini golf is on there. I don't know that I would call it an anchor, but I do. I I I one of the anchors I would say that kind of it's it's a little all-encompassing, but just kind of relax and walk around. Like, since we've gone from full-time to part-time, that's been one of my like I want to go to relax more and less. I don't I don't feel like I have to go a thousand miles an hour all the time because we live in the RV where we used to live in the RV. We'd go somewhere fun, and you would just kind of like getting out of the RV was the relaxing thing. Now, the trip and being in the RV is actually relaxing because we don't live in it.
SPEAKER_02:We RV'd, we've RV'd for what, three years now, and this was the first trip where we actually had a campfire. That's how relaxed you were.
SPEAKER_00:Almost by accident. I don't know how it started. No, I'm just kidding. No, our neighbors had wood. They were leaving because of Memorial Day, and they were I got chatting with them one day when Lauren was inside, and they were very super nice and said, We have extra firewood, would you guys like it? Otherwise, we're just gonna leave it in our site. Sure. And then we came back from lunch or whatever we did, and there was a huge pile by some firewood left, or it means they overbought for like three weeks.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:For like a three-day trip.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um, and so we we did our first campfire, and that inspired us to move on to propane fire pits because we don't do campfires because of our allergies, and we can't breathe for like two days afterwards. And so propane, all good, no smoke. So, um, any other anchors?
SPEAKER_02:No, I think that encompasses it for me.
SPEAKER_00:Sure, Noah's Ark wasn't an anchor. World's largest uh water park, by the way.
SPEAKER_02:Not this time. We did that last time.
SPEAKER_00:We did do that last time. We did the quickly whole thing. Yeah, we did literally every ride they had in what, like four hours? Yeah, it was a little chilly.
SPEAKER_02:It was nobody.
SPEAKER_00:So it was very not crowded. So um, okay. Well then as far as like attractions, what did we do that really stood out to you? I attractions is a very all-encompassing thing. It is because like pretty much everything we did that's not food.
SPEAKER_02:Right. And that's kind of we did all the things, and so I'm sticking with my answer. Mini golf.
SPEAKER_00:Well, but I know, but so mini golf, we did Pirates Cove and Timber Falls. We've done them before. Lauren has two pictures from that original trip we went back on when we first got engaged, and we kind of tried to recreate them in a very poor effort.
SPEAKER_02:Pirates Cove is more well put together, I will say. They have a variety of courses, and they will gladly tell you how difficult they are and and everything.
SPEAKER_00:Difficult does not equal fun.
SPEAKER_02:No, it does not.
SPEAKER_00:I would say, like, we just assumed the harder one would be more fun. It and I would say it was actually probably one of the more boring ones. Yeah. And so just I not necessarily the easy, but somewhere in the middle, I would say, is pick one of the middle courses or the medium courses. Agreed. Um, those are the ones that have a lot of elevation changes and a little bit more fun. Some holes are hard, some holes are not.
SPEAKER_02:Um, whereas Timber Falls, I'm gonna toss that one also into the rustic rustic category.
SPEAKER_00:Or rustic.
SPEAKER_02:Needed a little bit of um upkeep, if you will.
unknown:A lot of bit.
SPEAKER_02:A lot of bit, but that's part of what made it fun. It was kind of like Happy Gilmore, where you had to like play the terrain, and it really tested you. And then at the end, there were goats you could pet.
SPEAKER_00:I'm gonna note that's our second Adam Sandler movie reference in this podcast now. So we're gonna go for five. I'm just kidding. I have to do that.
SPEAKER_02:And there was a donkey you could pet too. So there were goats and a donkey.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. I'm sure that was in Billy Madison somewhere now. So there's three. Um, so yeah, uh Timber Falls, we have a picture of Lauren being in an area she's not supposed to be in, and I'm not sure why it became one of our like pictures. I think it was just because it was like how we were back then.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's because we're it's where my ball was, and we were just trying to disregard all the the rails, all the rules.
SPEAKER_00:Excuse me. So, um, but yeah, mini golf's a big thing there, I will say. Um we walk up and down, like we we enjoy walking. And one of the cool things about the RV park is we could walk to most of the things we're talking about, not all, but a lot of them. But a lot of them, yeah. We could walk to both of those miniature golf places, and you could walk to the old downtown area, which we went down there two or three times.
SPEAKER_02:Several times, and then they had this nice little boardwalk along the lake, and it was kind of scenic and pretty. So it's very long.
SPEAKER_00:Something we didn't do, but I would say is worth doing, and I kind of wish we had done it again, um, was the Upper Dells boat tour.
SPEAKER_02:Right. There's an upper and a lower.
SPEAKER_00:Don't uh if you've never been before, do the upper. If you're just looking to get out for a little less money, yeah, fine, do the lower. But the upper is much better.
SPEAKER_02:It is.
SPEAKER_00:Um, so that's where if you ever see videos, most of the time they're from the upper, because that's the one that goes to Stand Rock and goes up into the state nature area and all of that stuff.
SPEAKER_02:That's the one where you actually get to get off the boat at one point and do some walking around, and it's just really pretty.
SPEAKER_00:You don't sit on the boat the whole time, the boat's probably half of it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and it's not like one of those speed boat scary things. This is like relaxing that too. This is like relaxing Midwest, you know, boat door.
SPEAKER_00:The the puddler. Yeah, it is. Um, and you can do the speedboat thing too. It that does not stop. It is a it's more of a see pretty things as we terrify you.
SPEAKER_02:That is a different experience.
SPEAKER_00:Uh it looked fun too, though, in its own right.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, I also liked doing the ducks.
SPEAKER_00:The ducks are fun. It's just when you've done them. Like I'm pretty sure my mom can still have that thing memorized.
SPEAKER_02:She probably does, but I've only been once and I thought it was fun. So I recommend doing the ducks once.
SPEAKER_00:So we didn't do a lot of attractions. This really was more of a relaxed trip for us. Now, I'm gonna throw this in as our transition from food or into like the places we ate and the food and stuff. Okay, but I also view it as a little bit of an attraction.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Um, when my family gets together, we eat all the time, constantly. It's very evident by all of our statures.
SPEAKER_02:It is, it is true. That is whole.
SPEAKER_00:My cousin has a restaurant and bar or a grill and bar.
SPEAKER_02:Grill.
SPEAKER_00:It's fancy because it's got the E on the end.
SPEAKER_02:It's the grilly and bar.
SPEAKER_00:Sorry, Kent, if you hear this. Um, no, it's called Cow's Corner. It is not in the Dells. That's my disclaimer. It's probably 45 minutes north.
SPEAKER_02:About an hour. About an hour.
SPEAKER_00:So it's literally straight north on 18, I think, is the highway, which runs right out of the Dells. In fact, what's funny is he's on the same road that our campground's on, just almost an hour away. There are no turns, just a few roundabouts.
SPEAKER_02:But I will say, like, unbiased, that was some of the best food we had, too.
SPEAKER_00:I agree. So everything's homemade, it's all right there. Unbiased. It's completely biased. He's my cousin and we like him.
SPEAKER_02:No, but like legitimately, we had what the cheese curds, I think.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's the only place we actually had curds, by the way. Right. Well, fried cheese curds from a restaurant. I mean, I've bought some.
SPEAKER_02:Some of the restaurants that were in town at the Dells just um a little commercialized.
SPEAKER_00:Midwest is not known for their robust flavoring profile.
SPEAKER_02:No, it's not. And so I thought that the food at his restaurant was flavorful and fresh.
SPEAKER_00:Fried cheese curds and ranch is a stretch flavor-wise, just to give you a ballpark of an idea. So just know like we're big on very large flavor. And so, like, whether it's spicy, we like spicy. If it's, you know, whatever, we we like like typically more than most people. Old flavors. And so things at some restaurants in some areas, especially tourist areas where they have to play it safe, um, come across as a little bland for us.
SPEAKER_02:Well, and I think a lot of the chain restaurants and whatnot, it you could tell that it was frozen at one point too.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So so, but we we went up to Cal's Corner. Um, if you are in Central, so it's if you know where Sand Valley Golf Resort is, um, just south of Stephen, it's south of Stevens Point, about 30, 45 minutes, north of the Dells, about 45 minutes to an hour. Um, it's in a ironically, in Rome, Wisconsin. Um, it's kind of funny because there's a Rome, Texas, and there's all these other things, but um, he is it's just a good place, and they're expanding, it's bigger, it's growing.
SPEAKER_02:So stop in, tell him we said hello.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and then I'm sure play the slot machines or something. Every time somebody says hi from one of these things, he's confused at first, and then he calls me or texts me or something, and so keep confusing him. Yeah, um, it's fun. Uh, but so that was fun, and then transitioning into food. Boy, did we eat. We did, but it's it's the main attraction in the Dell.
SPEAKER_02:Kind of.
SPEAKER_00:So we have our bucket list places, and so I I said like we wanted to try a supper club. I have a breakfast place that we always wanted to go to. I regret not going to the other. Breakfast place.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's what I was doing.
SPEAKER_00:But that's more of a nostalgia thing. I have no idea if it was gonna be good or not. We knew the other one was gonna be good. So I'm we're just gonna go in chronological order. So as far as like food we ate, the first place we went to that's worth mentioning. And if it's not worth mentioning, we're not talking about it.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Um, was the I forget the name of it, but the breakfast place on the main square that we went the very first morning.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, that's right. That was good. I'm gonna pull it up while you're talking.
SPEAKER_00:It's a very mom and pop, which is kind of a rarity now in the Dells. Most things are owned by, well, Mount Olympus, which is a huge resort conglomerate thing. Um, but it is a mom and pop. They took over an old restaurant that was there. There was a fire down there at some point and they revitalized this whole area.
SPEAKER_02:It's the courtyard cafe.
SPEAKER_00:Yep, it's in the courtyard on the main the old downtown main street.
SPEAKER_02:That was unexpectedly good.
SPEAKER_00:It's about a half mile, but you can walk there three quarters of a mile.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, something like that.
SPEAKER_00:But you can walk there from the campground, and we did mainly because Wisconsin breakfast is our no joke.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, right. If you get the right one. Um, and so and this was one of them. Well, like if you go to Denny's, that's different.
SPEAKER_00:Right, yeah, sorry. If you go to a mom and pop right, yeah. Go to Denny's, it's exactly the same as every other Denny's.
SPEAKER_02:They were friendly, the coffee was good, the food was really good.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it I'm pretty sure, you know, my cholesterol. I had to go on a pill right after that meal. But it's just it's just solid food. I got a skillet which had like eggs and hash browns and sausage. So much gravy.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, there was a lot of gravy. And it was very good.
SPEAKER_00:But that's my preferred gravy. You like cream gravy. I do. I like sausage gravy, which is cream gravy with sausage in it. But um, and then trying to remember from there what was the lunch places. I'll just keep going with breakfasts.
SPEAKER_02:I was gonna say, I don't really remember the lunch places being memorable.
SPEAKER_00:So we'll just and we didn't go out for lunch a lot. We typically would eat that back in the rig to kind of that's the beauty of RVing. We kind of cut costs, so we'd go back and have a sandwich or leftovers or whatever we happen to have around. Plus, we always had to go back and check on the pups. They made the trip with us. Um the breakfast place I wish we had gone to is called JB's. It's right across from the flamingo hotel. And yes, there's a massive flamingo out front and Noah's Ark, then main entrance to Noah's Ark. Yeah. Um, it's just on the other side of the road. I remember as a kid going there.
SPEAKER_02:So we need somebody to go and tell us if it's still good or if it's just nostalgic to us.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I but I we'll we'll I can test.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, okay. Never mind.
SPEAKER_00:Maybe I'll do that next week. No, I'm just kidding.
SPEAKER_02:There you go.
SPEAKER_00:Um, spoiler, I'm gonna be potentially in Wisconsin next week for a few days. Um it's I again, it's just I remember sitting there as a kid with cousins and my parents and aunts and uncles, and sitting there, and that was our breakfast place. My parents weren't big on cooking. No, my mom did it, but it was more out of necessity than enjoyment. I enjoy cooking. And so we eat at home a lot because I like to cook. Um, there, when we would go on vacation, we ate out every single stinking meal. Yeah, y'all did. No matter what.
SPEAKER_02:Legitimately, when I went with them the first time, my pants did not fit coming home. We were only there for a week.
SPEAKER_00:You are welcome.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it was it's an issue. All right, but breakfast in the Dells.
SPEAKER_00:The best by far. The best you and also most gimmicky at the same time. It is one of those rare moments when gimmick equals quality. And I don't even know good quality is probably the right word, but it's just good.
SPEAKER_02:And they have something that we have never cooked.
SPEAKER_00:The donuts. Oh, it's not just a donut place. So it's not Paul Bunyan's Cook Shanty. This thing, like Sherwood Forest, has been around for freaking ages.
SPEAKER_02:And yes, there's a big blue ox in the front.
SPEAKER_00:It started. I was looking at the thing and the sign, it started in the 60s.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, I thought it was older than that.
SPEAKER_00:No, well, no. Not a lot of the Dells is from that era.
SPEAKER_02:But you know, it's been there. They have served the same food, I'm sure.
SPEAKER_00:Literally, nothing's changed.
SPEAKER_02:I they may have the same waitresses. I don't know.
SPEAKER_00:Maybe some of them, not ours, but ours. Ours looked like she was 20 or 18 or something, so not ours.
SPEAKER_02:But like, oh man, there's the benches, some of them at the tables, and it's just it's it feels like okay.
SPEAKER_00:If you've ever been to like Fort Wilderness and you walk in, they theme it to this kind of stuff. It's like they went in and themed it after this place.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:They they literally made this feel like a Northwoods shanty.
SPEAKER_02:But it's family-style food, they bring out there's not a lot of options. It's breakfast.
SPEAKER_00:No, the only thing well, there are no options.
SPEAKER_02:Right. There's you can choose what you drink.
SPEAKER_00:I'm sorry, yeah. Coffee, water, or juice. Lots of options. Oh, and it's Wisconsin, so naturally they have Bloody Marys and backcasts. If you're unaware, Wisconsin likes their alcohol.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, they do.
SPEAKER_00:And so there is no time that's off limits up there, especially in the Dells, because it's a vacation area.
SPEAKER_02:So and you can buy the donuts to go. The donuts are amazing, fresh.
SPEAKER_00:Don't get the ones that are day old that are a few bucks less. We made a boo-boo. Also, they don't save for very long.
SPEAKER_02:At the cash register, they're gonna say, hey, fresh donuts from today, or these from yesterday that are like half off. Don't fall for it. Get the fresh ones. We screwed up and make sure to eat them within like 24 hours. They're just not as good otherwise.
SPEAKER_00:It's one of those things, honestly. If I go eat there, and then if there's another day we just wanted donuts, I just swing in to the because you can just run to the gift shop real fast and just grab them and go.
SPEAKER_02:And yes, for reference, this shanty restaurant does have a gift shop. Um, think about like the front, like Cracker Barrel kind of has on steroids, if they it's a thing. Very similar to that. Just it's just an experience. It's an experience. You gotta go.
SPEAKER_00:Cracker barrel is like old country store-esque. Well, that's what they call it. Yeah, but this is more like backwood shanty version, which is similar but kind of more knick-knacks.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And it's a little tight in there. Don't break things.
SPEAKER_00:She looked right at me when she said that. So um, yeah, but that's by far my favorite breakfast place. It's for me though, it's also like when I go up, I tell my dad, like, I'll fly up to Madison where he is, and we'll go play like Sand Valley. We go right through the Dallas. I'm like, we should go early enough to have breakfast at Paul Bunions. He's the opposite. He doesn't like any of it.
SPEAKER_02:It's keynote.
SPEAKER_00:So I don't care. We eat his breakfast every other day.
SPEAKER_02:That oh, that's true.
SPEAKER_00:For like a week-long thing, I have seven mornings of him. I can have one. And so, but yeah, we do the menu is very simple. It's bacon, sausage, sausage patties, sausage links really aren't a thing in Wisconsin for some reason. Um, eggs, they do biscuits and gravy, but they well, they always give you the biscuit, but they also ask if you want the biscuits and gravy because not everybody eats it, it's more of a southern thing. Yeah, but they do have it up there. We get it because I like it. Um, pancakes.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and donuts.
SPEAKER_00:And then the donuts. The donuts are like the appetizer.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, that's true.
SPEAKER_00:They are which is actually genius because you fill up on it so you don't eat as much of the other stuff that costs more money.
SPEAKER_02:But yeah. So a couple of breakfast places.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, and the donuts, they're just a like cinnamon sugar donut. It's oh, that's true.
SPEAKER_02:There's no options either, it's not frosted.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know if it's baked or fried. I couldn't tell you my life depended on it, but it is a yeast-based donut. Um, and it's just covered in like a cinnamon sugar. That's it. It's really simple and it's just good. So um yeah, it's not like a donut counter when you go in and it's like all these options now. Um, that does it for breakfast, I think. The rest of breakfast is we just ate at the end.
SPEAKER_02:And lunch. I wasn't impressed with lunch.
SPEAKER_00:But say we didn't eat, we ate at a brewery, it was just okay. Yeah, we ate at another place that was just kind of okay, and those were more crimes of opportunity because we were out running around and nothing we'd recommend again. No, I again if you land there, good for you. Get a burger, nothing bad or wrong with it. It's just kind of mediocre. But dinner. Dinner. Why don't you fire off on dinner? But leave the big one for the end.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, because that's the only one I remember.
SPEAKER_00:Perfect. Um, yeah, we again we we cook a lot, and so we kind of downplayed that. Now, dinners, we did one. Um, we ate dinner at my cousin's place, which I said was very good. It was so then we'll just do the one. Okay. I would I would argue that this is more than dinner. That's why I was gonna leave it to the end. But if we're at the end, that's fine. So it was Lauren's first supper club.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, so comment below who has been to a supper club. Who even knows what a supper club is?
SPEAKER_00:It's a club where you have supper. Sorry. It's what she deals with.
SPEAKER_02:Put down your hot coffee before you spill it, cackling over there.
SPEAKER_00:If you can't tell, I'm not like if I'm even close to talking, I'm not left-handed. I have to do this whole move.
SPEAKER_02:No, I have not been to a supper club before. I didn't even really know what it was. Um, but apparently it's it's supper. Um, it wasn't even really a club. You didn't have to like pay dues or anything.
SPEAKER_00:It's just, but that you used to, and that was the point. And so um it it's also one of those things, some of them that still are membership only, but the smart ones stopped that. Yeah. Um so we went to Ishnala, which is the number one supper club in Wisconsin. And I would say a lot of it is the venue. So I think supper clubs, it can be anything. I mean, there's there's two main ones in the Dells. Um, there's the the Dell Club, D E L. That is like the main drag. It's more of like a almost like hotel, restaurant, and bar that's been converted. The idea between a hub. Good thing we don't talk on a podcast. Um the idea behind a supper club is that it's a much slower, elevated experience. Right. And so your meal doesn't necessarily take a ton longer to come out, but it is designed to where when you get there, you don't go sit down right at your table.
SPEAKER_02:Imagine this in Wisconsin.
SPEAKER_00:They start with a drink and end with a drink and drink in between, too.
SPEAKER_02:That's right.
SPEAKER_00:Um but no, it's designed where you can come and relax. They might have like some soft live music. It's not a concert venue, but like think a dude with acoustic guitar in the corner, not even singing.
SPEAKER_02:Say like tasteful conversation type music.
SPEAKER_00:Now, what makes Ishnala special, and we'll talk about the Supper Club experience while we talk about Ishnala, is it is actually in a state park. The house has been there for a very long time. It was originally a house, it's expanded on since then. It sits on Mirror Lake. There is nothing around it.
SPEAKER_02:Nothing.
SPEAKER_00:And there's nothing. That drive in, I think, is a mile and a half from the main road.
SPEAKER_02:It is beautiful.
SPEAKER_00:Yep. It is, it's probably one of the prettiest dinner venues I've ever seen.
SPEAKER_02:I agree.
SPEAKER_00:As a whole. I mean, there's some cool stuff out there, but given that there's the isolation factor. Um and this one restaurant has how many bars?
SPEAKER_02:Oh, what, four or five?
SPEAKER_00:I think it was five.
SPEAKER_02:But so the drive in is very kind of narrow, and I'm gonna call it wild, like wildernessy. It reminded me of like Cade's Cove Loop in the Smokeys.
SPEAKER_00:Like it's narrow, minus the valley portion, yes.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, um, and it's just like there's a lot of Well, here's a really good example.
SPEAKER_00:So this venue in the area around it was used in the filming of a movie called Public Enemies with Johnny Depp. It was the John Dillinger movie that he did. So if you go to that movie and you watch the shootout scene in the woods, it's at night, so it's a little tough. That's where they filmed it. Okay, was along that road. That was the road that they were using um when the cars would drive by. Ah. And so it's very wooded, it's very that area. Um, but it is also very scenic, quiet, pretty, smells nice. Absolutely. All of the things, and then you pull up to a very janky parking lot.
SPEAKER_02:It was. That was a little interesting.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, it made sense. And like this is barely bigger. Like, I don't know how two cars passed each other on the road.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:I think a lot of it's because there's not a lot of in and out at the same time. Sure. And that's why it's okay. Because a supper club typically has one or two seatings, not seven, like some restaurants.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:And so most people come between four and five o'clock, maybe six o'clock at the latest, and they stay till seven or eight. And then between eight and ten, they start to fail, file out.
SPEAKER_02:I think when I was looking at their website, they open at something like four o'clock. And they said that basically, if you a lot of the time, if you aren't there, like when they open, you're gonna be waiting hours.
SPEAKER_00:So, and we'll get into like hot tips at the very end, which is coming up, but they are typically very busy. This was a little different, I think, because it was the week after Memorial Day. And I think they got bombarded over the weekend. Maybe this is also Memorial Day is kind of like the opening weekend for the Dells because they're coming out of um in in the spring, out of winter.
SPEAKER_02:Out of snow season.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And so it's warm enough now. It's now that's good and bad because they're training people still. Like it they rely a lot on college kids and that kind of stuff through the summer, and so they have to train a lot of people every year. Um, but it's also like you have Memorial Day, everybody's got to go back to work. So by Tuesday, it was it was better than a doornail. I mean, there's stuff happening, but most things were open.
SPEAKER_02:But did well for us. We're okay with that.
SPEAKER_00:So we start off the evening, and I'll tell you that this is a three-story restaurant, it's technically a house. It looks like two from there, but it goes down. It does. It sits on it, it's got its own private beach, not like go swim in it beach, but they do like bonfires when it gets the appropriate temperature.
SPEAKER_02:I think that's where like the music stage was down there. They had some chairs you could sit in.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, there's these stairs going down. There's a bar down there that wasn't open when we were there because that area it was a little wet and rainy, and so they didn't open that. There was a what they call the out overlook bar, which was halfway down over on the left that had a bunch of its own sitting. That's kind of where we camped out. Um, and then you've got the main bar that was upstairs, kind of attached to the restaurant, and then you had another one downstairs there. So, um, and then there was another one somewhere else that I don't really remember. I think it was on the far side. Maybe I think it was a lot smaller than we didn't venture over there. No, we didn't venture to a lot of them, to be honest with you. Um, but yeah, we sat there. Their most popular thing is the old fashioned. I will tell you if you're known for it. If you're a fan of old fashions and you go to Wisconsin, brush up on your Wisconsin version of old fashions, it's gonna confuse you. So old fashioned started in Wisconsin. Every other version of it, it's similar but not quite the same. Um Old Fashion's up there, unless you clarify, come with brandy, not whiskey or bourbon, depending on which one you like.
SPEAKER_02:Don't be surprised.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And on top of that, so they they've done a better job of asking if you want a brandy old fashioned or a whiskey old fashion. But then you also have sweet or sour. And so if you like a traditional fashion, you like sweet as an FYI.
SPEAKER_02:There you go. Learn something new every day.
SPEAKER_00:If you want something that's a little bit more bitter, then you want sour. I'm not a fan of the sour ones. I also don't like, they also put this huge freaking garnish on top. So my go-to order is a I'll do a brandy old-fashioned, but I like the whiskey ones a little bit better. A whiskey old fashioned. I pick a specific whiskey. I like bourbon trace or um Woodford Reserve and no garnish because I don't need a maraschino cherry and an orange slice poking me in the face as I try and drink my drink.
SPEAKER_02:That's the only fruit you're gonna get up there.
SPEAKER_00:Is that fruit? Yeah, your only fruit's technically a garnished drink.
SPEAKER_02:It is.
SPEAKER_00:You may get a gherkin and a bloody merry if you order one before 10 a.m. There you go. Um but yeah, I think you just got a glass of wine. Yeah, you're not a I kept it. You're not a big liquor person to begin with. And so um, but yeah, we had two down there, one just us because we got there before him, and then my cousin and his family met up with us, and my second cousin, what is Cal? Cal's Corner, his restaurant's named after his son, Cal, who is a junior?
SPEAKER_02:I don't know.
SPEAKER_00:He goes to the University of Wisconsin Madison.
SPEAKER_02:His rural smart.
SPEAKER_00:He is like a terrifying amount of terrifying amount of smart, yeah. Yeah, somebody else is like that that I know.
SPEAKER_02:Getting multiple degrees, going to law school, the whole nine.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, engineering school. Or was it law school?
SPEAKER_02:Or both.
SPEAKER_00:It might be, I don't know. It could be both. Kids on the move. Um yeah, I'm pretty sure he's gonna be president one day somehow. That'd be cool until they look up Kent's past, then he's screwed. I'm just kidding. Um, and then uh we had dinner. It's very think prime rib, think roasted chickens. It's Wisconsin chicken, the plural. Um no, but like that's the kind of meal vibe they have, like seafood, like salmons, and it's just elevated.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think I had a steak. I'm not keen on ribeye, so I had a leaner steak, and but everything we have was very good.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I don't remember what I got. I probably got a steak too, knowing me. Um but we just kind of the whole point though, I think we think we sat at the actual table for about an hour and a half to an hour and 45 minutes.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that was a while.
SPEAKER_00:And then we had another 30 to 45 minutes. We hung out outside, and then we went back to the bar um with my cousin, and we hung out there for another 30-ish minutes. We went back, had one more drink, chatted a little bit more.
SPEAKER_02:But that's like what everybody does. It takes a long time, and so they're all just meandering about.
SPEAKER_00:And that's kind of the beauty of the supper club thing is it's really a slow down, relax, enjoy what you're doing, which I would argue this country needs more of. Of just slow down, have dinner, have a conversation, and enjoy it. Put your dang phone away. Right. Even though we were so a lot of people ask in the main video why didn't we film more of it? It's because it's kind of frowned upon, that's why. Um, I mean, they like the promotion, but at the same time, too, it's you didn't see people on their phones, let alone have a camera.
SPEAKER_02:Right. And we wanted to enjoy that time with with family and soaking it up.
SPEAKER_00:And so that's why we got a little more of a broad overview and outside pictures and that kind of stuff. So, all right. Anything else from Ishnala that you're like, gotta do this, gotta do that. Hot tips, any of the food things?
SPEAKER_02:No, it was just it was really pretty, it was relaxing. It was. I would I would take that over any of the in in the Dells dinner restaurants we'd look.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. All right. So would you go back to the Dells again?
SPEAKER_02:I've been twice, I've done the things. I think I'd rather go somewhere else now.
SPEAKER_00:So I tell you, I would, but only in conjunction with something else.
SPEAKER_02:Well, and I would only to see family.
SPEAKER_00:Oh sh well, and that's the hard part is like right, it makes no sense. Like there's nowhere where where Kent is unless you're at Sand Valley Golf Resort. There's only one other little hotel up there, and it's like a little boutique Airbnb, not my vibe. Right. Um, and there's no RV parks.
SPEAKER_02:So I would go that direction to see family. I would not go that direction for vacation or attractions.
SPEAKER_00:If we were doing like a cross-country trip and like we happen to be up north for something, like and this doesn't apply to our lifestyle right now, but like down the road or if you're a full-timer, I'd stop in for a few days and have just relax and have some fun.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, but we drove two days just to get there and two days back, and I just don't know that it's worth quite that for us.
SPEAKER_00:Not for us anymore, not after we've been there so many times. Um, and so especially me. But yeah, I agree. But if you happen to be up in the area or you're looking for a layover somewhere else that's a little more on the relaxing side, go go to Ishnala. Sorry, I just kicked you.
SPEAKER_02:Go to Cal's Corner.
SPEAKER_00:Go to Cal's, yeah. I mean, there there is some good places to find food, not all of them, but like your Ishnala's, Cal's Corner, Paul Bunyan's. I mean, you can get through, I would say three-ish to four days and eat really good meals. Yeah, it kind of dies after that.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, a little bit.
SPEAKER_00:So um, would you, if you went back, would you rather stay in a hotel or take the RV?
SPEAKER_02:I liked the RV.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, we lean towards the RV to begin with. Obviously, this is called the RV Shenanigans Podcast, but like we talked about, and there's gonna be an upcoming episode about Nashville. Like Nashville, we talked about if we went back, we'd probably just go stay in a hotel downtown, do a show, stay for a couple nights and come home kind of. Exactly.
SPEAKER_02:But no, they're in the Dells and Wisconsin in general. I would say take the RV, take the dogs, take some of our own food so we didn't we could fit in our pants when we came back.
SPEAKER_00:Which we did. Well, you did.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I did.
SPEAKER_00:Even after all the donuts. Okay. If you have questions on the Wisconsin Dells, please feel free to ask. You can do that through the comments if you're watching on YouTube or in the show notes. If you're listening to this on Apple, Spotify, any of the podcast platforms out there. Uh, there's a link to our website. There's all kinds of stuff there. You can find our social links, contact us for them, all of the things. Um, and you can also find our entire back catalog in one place of all these podcasts. So, how you doing over there?
SPEAKER_02:I'm not hungry after thinking about all that food. No.
SPEAKER_00:Let's have lunch. No, I'm just kidding. Perfect. Thank you so much for listening, and we can't wait to see you next week with another destination guide of somewhere else we've been.
SPEAKER_02:Dun dun dun.
SPEAKER_00:See you next week.
