Goshen, Indiana
Goshen is in Elkhart County, IN. This area makes 85% of recreational vehicles in the US. Dynamax, Janus Motorcycles, Goshen College and Radio Horizonte were surprising. Mexican food is a given here, but Neopolitan pizza at Venturi and Maple City Indian Restaurant? Yum! Add the Old Bag Factory and Quilt Gardens and what you get is joy.
Iowa City, Iowa
Iowa City is an everyone’s town!
Iowa City is a college town. #GoHawkeyes It’s also a literary town, home to Prairie Lights Books and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. It’s a farming town, growing well at Urban Greens and Wilson’s Orchard & Farm. And it’s an innovative town, with one-of-a-kinds like the National Advanced Driving Simulator, Unimpaired Dry Bar and Crepes De Luxe Café.
Menomonee Valley, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
The Menomonee Valley in Milwaukee Wisconsin is becoming a vital and
happening place.
In Milwaukee WI’s Menomonie Valley, the Harley Davidson Museum,
Palermo’s, Potowatomi Casino and BBC Lighting are well known and always fun. But there’s more happening here. Do you like pickled foods? Bay View Packing is for you. Art? Warehouse Art Museum is unreal. How about eating and drinking? Twisted Fisherman and Third Space Brewing got you!
Escanaba, Michigan
Escanaba, Michigan, has “Yooper” culture all their own.
You can taste it in the delicious pasties at Dobber’s and in the sweet wines at Leigh’s Winery. You can hear it in Ludington Park when the nearly 100- year-old City Band plays. You can feel it in the great outdoors while you fish with Beaver’s Lures or watch the sun rise at Terrace Bay Inn.
Winona, Minnesota
Winona, MN, is a city of 26,000 very lucky people, built on a Mississippi River sandbar.
At Willet Hauser, artists make stained glass. Watkins Co. employees make tons of vanilla, and the crew at Wenonah Canoe make – guess. Sugar Loaf Bluff is paradise for climbers, Yarnology is home for knitters and NOSH is heaven for John, because he’s an eater!
Fort Wayne, Indiana
John knew it‘s home to Vera Bradley and Sweetwater. But he didn’t expect a Diocesan Museum, a huge Public Library, the most perfect Children’s Zoo or Coney Island Hot Dogs. What a great city!
Woodstock, Illinois
Woodstock, Illinois, may have been put on the map by the movie Groundhog Day, but it’s what John McGivern finds in real life that deserves the spotlight.
Amana Colonies, Iowa
Amana Colonies, Iowa Iowa’s Amana Colonies are not Amish! Come meet the past while enjoying right now. Iowa’s Amana Colonies lived communally until 1932. Today their innovative past and welcoming hospitality draw visitors by the thousands. John McGivern is reminded of...
Holland, Michigan
Get ready for all things Dutch,and much more. John McGivern clomps around in wooden shoes at Windmill Gardens, satisfies his sweet tooth at Nelis’ Dutch Village and DeBoer Bakery, cherishes his wooden bowl from the Holland Bowl Mill, and is enthralled at the only Delft factory in North America.
Bloomington, Minnesota
Bloomington Minnesota is home to the Mall of America, and the behind-the-scenes tour was full of surprises for John McGivern.
The rest of the city was also full of surprises. He didn’t expect to find a ski-jump, the largest bicycle products distributor in America, the first tap room in Minnesota and a goat farm!
De Pere, Wisconsin
De Pere, WI is sometimes called a suburb of Green Bay, but don’t say that to anyone who lives there.
Lincoln Square, Chicago
Chicago’s Lincoln Square neighborhood boasts a main street straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. John McGivern enjoys the German roots still present, but also finds many ethnicities in this diverse neighborhood.
