Madison, Wisconsin - May 2012

I haven't had to travel in a while but when my next assignment came up and I found that it was in Madison, WI, I was excited.  I've been there a couple of times before but it was during the winter.  I like the town.  Madison is an isthmus with Lake Mendota on one side and Lake Monona on the other.  This trip I actually stayed in Capitol Square which is a square block that surrounds the capitol building.

This is a view of Lake Monona from my room at the Inn on the Park which is directly across from the Capitol.

When in Madison, I had to go back to my favorite Mexican restaurant, Casa Lara.  I had the chile verde - delicious!  Lucky for me my room had a fridge so I got to bring the leftovers home and have them for lunch the next day.

This is the Capitol.  If you've been watching the news, you may know that the citizens are trying to recall Governor Scott Walker.  I think it's still ongoing.

I just thought this was funny.  It's a window at a toy store in Capitol Square.

I spent 4 days in Madison, most of them in my room working.  On my last full day there, I quit working at 5 to take a walk around the city and get some fresh air.  This is a view of the Capitol from Monona Terrace.

Lake Monona.  The weather was amazing!  People were sailing and relaxing.

Self portrait at Lake Monona.  I know the hair is a bit wild but it was windy out there by the lake.  Monona Terrace is the top of the convention center that is like a cement park.  There are trees and flowers and most importantly, chairs next to the lake where people can sit and chill.  It's free to go up there.  The perfect addition to my visit to the lake would have been a lovely glass of wine and my fabulous spouse, not necessarily in that order.

Another view of the Capitol as the backdrop to the Monona Terrace fountain.

One of the things that was really cool is that all around the square were food trucks.  There was a guy selling Mexican food, one selling Cajun food and, my favorite, the hot dog guy.  On one of the days I took a quick lunch break and got a chili dog from the hot dog guy and sat out on this bench and ate.  It was a nice break to the day and the chili dog was good.  Also around the square were Pubs.  This being a college town (the University of Wisconsin is on the other side of town), the Pubs are plentiful and they are busy.  They all have outdoor seating and by 5 pm they are packed.

This is my hotel - Inn on the Park.  It's a Best Western.  It was nice.  It was a great location.  It had an indoor pool and a nicely equipped workout room (which I did NOT take advantage of!). 

This is a picture of the same hotel in 1875.  The hotel was opened in 1871 as the Park Hotel to serve the legislators.  The price was $3 per day for room and board.  It's a little more than that now for just 'room'.

Another photograph of the hotel in 1912.  There were historic photos all over the hotel. 

This was a nice trip.  As always, I wish I'd had more time to walk around.  This time I was particularly busy but I'm glad I got to go just the same. 

Oh! and the client meeting went really well.

Cemetery Tour

As many of you know, I love history.  When I travel around I like to find out about the places I'm visiting.  Every place has something interesting about it.  When we travel for pleasure, my first thought is to get the 'lay of the land' by taking a city tour - one the points out all the places of interest.  After our last vacation, I realized that I'd never taken a city tour of Dallas and I've been here since 1980!  I looked for a city tour on line and found that there weren't any.  Shame on you, Dallas!

What I did find, however, was the Dallas Historical Society.  They offer very interesting tours like the one I took a couple of weeks ago.  This particular tour is called the Cemetery Tour.  It's not what I expected - it was better.

Our tour started at Greenwood Cemetery located right in the heart of Dallas.  It's in Uptown on Oak Grove Road (right off of Central Expressway).  I never even knew it was there.  This is the oldest cemetery in Dallas.

This was a really neat headstone.  It looks like a tree trunk.  When you see this type of headstone, it means the the person buried is a member of a fraternal organization that began in 1883 called Woodman of the World.  Oddly, they are insurance salesman.

This is Francis.  She was our tour guide.  She's 90, which surprised me.  I would have guessed 60's.  She's been in Dallas since the 1920's and knows all kinds of stuff related to the cemeteries in Dallas.  This has earned her the nickname 'the Cemetery Lady'.  She was awesome!

There are lots of veterans of the Civil War buried here.  All of the Confederate soldiers' graves are marked by this little metal marker that designates the person as a Civil War veteran.

 We talked Mom & Dad into going with us. 

 This is the section of the cemetery where the Union soldiers are buried.

There's a huge vacant space in the cemetery that is covered with trees.  Some Dallas developers wanted to buy the land and build on it.  Francis fought the developers (of whom Roger Staubach was one) and told them they couldn't develop on the land because there were burials.  When the developers had an archaeological dig, they found 14 bodies buried there so they stopped.  The bodies (probably just skeletons at this point) were re-interred in this one spot.  The previous graves were unmarked so they don't know who is buried here.

Several of Dallas' original settlers are buried here.  This mausoleum is built for Christopher Columbus Slaughter.  Colonel Slaughter was a cattle rancher and a philanthropist.

Here, Francis was describing the dedication ceremony for the historical marker.  Note the Civil War marker next to the historical marker.

This section of the cemetery is for the Cockrell family.  Sarah Horton Cockrell was one a Dallas entrepreneur.  Her husband, Alexander Cockrell, had several businesses for which Sarah kept all the records.  When Alexander was killed, Sarah took over the businesses full time.  She commissioned the first bridge over the Trinity River.  By 1892, she owned about 1/4 of downtown Dallas and several thousand acres in Dallas County.  The tall obelisk monument is Sarah's grave. 

 This plot belongs to the Cabell family.  This would be the same Cabell family to which Earl Cabell (of the Earl Cabell Federal Building in downtown Dallas) belongs.  Earl Cabell was the mayor of Dallas during the time that JFK was here.

After the Greenwood Cemetery, we all drove around the corner to the Freedman's Cemetery.  I've driven by this place a million times and never knew it was a cemetery.  I always thought it was a park.

This cemetery was a burial ground for many of the freed slaves that had settled here after the Civil War.  When they began excavating in the preparation for the widening of Central Expressway, they found a skeleton every time they put the shovel in the ground.  There weren't many markers.  Francis, our tour guide, was part of the project and she said there was only one marker that they found.  The marker is embedded in the wall behind the statue.

This is a view of the whole cemetery.  It's really beautiful.  It's right off Central.

The cemetery tour was only about 2 hours long.  We only hit a few highlights of the cemetery.  I think Francis could probably have talked all day.  After the tour, we went to Gonzalez Restaurant on Jefferson for some outstanding Mexican food. 

The Dallas Historical Society has several other really cool tours.  If you're interested go to their website.  www.dallashistory.org then click on the Historic City Tours link.