Token Creek Eco-Inn near Madison

During my recent visit to Madison, Wisconsin, my friend Theresa and I stayed at this really neat eco-friendly Bed & Breakfast that someone recommended to me, the Token Creek Eco-Inn B&B. Being all ecofriendly and environmentally conscious myself, it appealed to my senses, naturally! We arrived in the evening after wandering around Madison and eating at Graze (see pics from Madison here) and proceeded to consume unnatural amounts of cheese with a little bit of crackers and let us not forget the wine!

We stayed in the largest room, the Capitol Room Suite. It has a king bed and a whirlpool tub! We were the only ones in the B&B that night.

Jean Schneider, the owner (along with her husband Jason, who we didn't meet), has been teaching workshops for a couple of years and finally opened the B&B part last year. In fact they are about to celebrate their one-year anniversary as a B&B! The workshops sound really interesting too - everything from cheese-making and soap making to gardening with dry stack stone beds. In the morning she made a delicious breakfast. She is a big foodie, like me!

Apparently a breakfast salad is a "thing" in Madison. It sounded kinda weird, but it was actually very refreshing and delicious!

And of course it went along with something sweet: Blueberry streusel french toast with warm maple rum sauce - yummmmm!!

After breakfast, and before Theresa took me to the airport Jean showed us around outside. This is a hoop house (like a greenhouse) outside.

Theresa and Jean walking around. It was drizzling and raining all morning so we put on some of Jean's boots to explore!

A shot showing the garden and a side of the house/B&B.

She raises chickens too and uses the eggs in the breakfast.

Me being silly and taking a self-portrait with Jean in the background! I look like a dork! :)

This is a fire pit she built as part of her workshop, I believe.

Never mind the white mushroom on my head! Ha ha! I swear that hat, the way it's situated on my head, looks like I am all Mario Bros or something... At any rate it was so great to reconnect with my friend Theresa - it amazes me how God puts people in our lives when we are children that we still are connected to on a deep level as adults. It's like even as young people we really do form deep and real connections with particular people, and it is not random. Is there someone from your childhood you want to reconnect with? Go for it!

Roaming around Madison, Wisconsin

 UW-Madison badgers! Copyright (c) 2012 Wendee Holtcamp

Just returned from a few days in Madison, Wisconsin. It was my first time in Madison, though not my first time in Wisconsin (I had previously tubed the Apple River when I was a teenager and living in Minneapolis). I was there for the Science Writing in an Age of Denial conference which was really cool.

A shot of the staircase inside the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, where the Monday sessions of the conference were held (not to be confused in any capacity for the Discovery Institute in Washington! A totally different animal - though the DI is a classic think tank for science denial...).

I'll post more about the conference, but for now I wanted to leave you with some photos out and about Mad-town and my adventures with my friend Theresa, one of my BFFs from 8th and 9th grade when I lived in Minneapolis.
  

(I should mention I have an adorable snoozing 6-week old kitten on my lap?! I just got home yesterday and a friend texted me a photo and was all, do you want a kute tinee kitteh? And I'm all, are you kidding me? Who can resist its charms? Yes! Even my 17-year daughter whose all emo and angsty lately couldn't resist the kitteh cuteness. But I digress. More on the kitteh of cuteness later.)  

Theresa and I hadn't seen each other in... we calculated it at 27 years... and we had so much fun! We'd kept in touch by email and Christmas letters, but my travels had not taken me to the northern states so this was the first pop to see her! This is a photo taken on my Android using the Vignette app, which I love. 

 

We did so much in a day and a half! She arrived as my conference was winding down, and we walked a mile or so from UW-Madison campus over to State Street where there are lots of shops and restaurants. This Rastafarian banana cracked me up! 

 The window of this one shop had all sorts of these and they were so funny! I particularly liked these two. 

And of course this one is particularly relevant right now! I shoulda bought it for myself for Mother's Day... 

  

We went into this one shop where I bought a "Jesus was a liberal" button. And took a photo of this bumper sticker. If you don't agree, don't shoot the messenger!  

We walked over to "the square" where the Wisconsin State Capitol building is (no more protesters, but I did hear one "RECALL WALKER" rant in the distance). There are several shops around and we explored and photographed the Capitol building the inside of which is incredible!  

This is another self-portrait of me and Theresa outside the Capitol.  

There are tons of tulips outside the Capitol building of different colors and I thought they were so pretty. Kind of a cool retro image.

   

This is a tree outside the capitol building. 

   

And a church across the street. 

   Inside the capitol dome area.    
A black and white image of the same view.  Inside the dome is amazing and photos just absolutely can't capture it!  Another self-portrait of me and T inside the capitol.  

The whole reason we walked to the Capitol in the first place was on a hunt for cheese. Someone had recommended the store Fromagination, and we walked there, and arrived right as a busload of tourists did - like 50 people! So we left and went to the Capitol and came back after they were gone. They had tons of samples and we walked around sampling cheese and crackers and spreads. Yum!  

Do you think I went a little overboard on the cheese purchase? We bought some and wine for later at the B&B we were staying at. 

   

The other reason we went to Capitol Square was because that's where the foodie restaurant I'd picked out was located. It's called Graze! It's in the building with all the windows, and these are the tulips from the Capitol lawn. Nice huh!

   Cool shot huh!  

We sat outside because the weather was drop-dead gorgeous - sunny and 60ish (see I didn't die of frostbite in the Himalayas of Wisconsin, y'all!). I had the Crispy Smoked Tofu served over toasted farro with smoked mozzarella, asparagus and other garnishes. It was delish and I wish I'd taken a photo! Theresa got the trout. After we ate, we walked back to the campus where Theresa parked, and drove 15 minutes or so out of town to the Token Creek Eco-Inn B&B.  

I will blog separately about the way cool B&B - it's so cool - but for now here's a pic of the door! We stayed up late drinking wine and eating cheese (after a big dinner!) and then went to our room, where we proceeded to laugh our fool heads off over the Bloggess's Giant metal Chicken named Beyonce blog post (I am reading her AWESOME book Let's Pretend This Never Happened, which I picked up in the bookstore at the airport, and I NEVER have time to read but I've read the whole thing except a few pages and I don't want it to end!) And then we went outside and looked at the stars, and then downloaded Skymap app so we could see the Southern Cross through the bottom of the Earth below us... and then I couldn't sleep! LOL. 

 

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention that when I flew to WI, I had a 3-hour layover in Minneapolis, so my other BFF Kris picked me up from the airport (I also hadn't seen her since high school) and we went by my old house... see below... 

 

I totally remembered the house style and the lawn, but I didn't remember the color. Maybe they painted it. This is where I ran away from home for exactly one night, and slept in the car garage and my parents never came looking for me. And where I punched my stepdad in the nose after he chased me out to the garage. As Kris said, I was a force to be reckoned with. Or something like that. :) Even in 8th grade - ha! And that was well before my wild child days really began!

Heading to Wisconsin. Cheese anyone?

 Mount Kanchenjunga in eastern Nepal, the world's third tallest peak (or, "how a Texas-sunshine-lover views the frigid far north of Wisconsin, where I am heading...").
Copyright (c) 2007 Wendee Holtcamp.

In a couple days I embark on my next adventure. This time it's to the far north! Well far enough that my memory of the place is that my boogers froze and my nose turned red and icy between my front door and the bus stop, which actually was directly outside of my house. Yep, I lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota for a couple of years of my life - 8th and 9th grade - and about the ONLY thing I remember from that time (besides my friends) was the cold-ass winters. Only I didn't call them that, then. I had moved there from Portland, Oregon, where I'd only spent a year, and from there I moved to Houston where I graduated from high school. I made some great friends there, and yet despite my connecting with friends from almost every other place in the US where I have lived, I have never seen any of my friends from Minneapolis since high school. That is about to change!

Technically, what brings me to the far north is a really cool conference: Science Writing in an Age of Denial, held at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I heard about it a few months back and just knew I had to be there. What a cool topic! As some of you know, the whole issue surrounding evolution and Christianity is a long-time passion of mine, and so this was something I really wanted to write about (and yes, I have an assignment!). It's a 2-day conference, and I'm really excited about it. I'll be staying at the Wisconsin Union hotel, which looks pretty nice and is adjacent to where the conference events are held.

But here's the even cooler part: I will be seeing two of my friends from Minneapolis while there! First, I have a three-hour layover in Minneapolis so my friend Kris is picking me up from the airport and taking me by my old house, and then out to eat yummy Thai food or something. We are both super excited.

And then, after the conference, I will be spending a day and a half with my other friend Theresa, who is driving to Madison from Minneapolis to visit me. We have found a super cool looking B&B that is ecofriendly. I got a recommendation from some other writers and local Madisonites, and this one was the coolest I could find. It's called Token Creek Eco-Inn and we are staying in the Capitol Room Suite! Other than that, Theresa and I have planned to go visit this cool thing about an hour outside Madison called House on the Rock. I don't know a whole lot about it but Theresa wanted to go and it looks way cool!

Oh - ha ha - I have to mention a funny conversation I had with Theresa about the weather there. I was like, what has the weather been? She was all, it's warm like 60 in the day and 40-50 at night. And I was all, in Texas, that is winter weather, and I would wear jeans and a hat and a sweater. She was like, ha ha everyone here is putting on summer shorts and t-shirts! Then she added, you will want to bring a light jacket or something for evening, and I'm all uh-huh right, I will pack my down North Face jacket! :)