Wisconsin With Kids Family Travel Guide

The Packers are publicly owned. The only fan owned team in major American sports, in a town of 100,000 with a waiting list for season tickets in the tens of thousands. The Lambeau tour on a non game day puts children in the players’ tunnel.

A quarter of the country’s cheese. Working dairy farms line every road and the small factories sell curds at the door. The squeaky kind, from an actual plant, is a stop children ask to repeat.

Milwaukee is a brewing city. Miller, Pabst and Schlitz built it, the Miller tour runs family slots in daylight, and the Harley-Davidson Museum is the museum a ten year old picks. The art museum’s wings open and close over the entrance like a bird.

Frank Lloyd Wright came from here. Taliesin near Spring Green was his home and studio, and the House on the Rock down the road is the fever dream built by a man who wanted to out do him. Children pick the second one.

The fish fry is Friday night. Catholic tradition met a lake full of perch and every supper club in the state does a Friday fish fry. A supper club, with a relish tray and an old fashioned for the adults, is the most Wisconsin dinner there is.

Cheese curds, squeaky. Fresh from a factory like Ellsworth, still squeaking against your teeth. The fried version at any bar is the second best thing on the menu.

A bratwurst at a Brewers game. Sheboygan style, on a hard roll with kraut and brown mustard. American Family Field has the sausage race between innings and children lose their minds over it.

A Friday fish fry. Beer battered perch or cod, coleslaw, rye bread and potato pancakes at a supper club or a church hall. Every Friday, everywhere.

A Door County fish boil. Whitefish, potatoes and onions boiled in a cauldron outdoors, and the boilmaster throws kerosene on the fire so it flares up before the fish comes out. Dinner as a show.

Frozen custard and a Door County cherry pie. Kopp’s or Leon’s in Milwaukee for the custard, and tart cherries from the peninsula orchards in July, in a pie or a bag for the car.

Milwaukee Mitchell International (MKE) is the airport to use. It sits closer to both Door County and the Dells than flying into Chicago and driving up, and it is usually cheaper than people expect.

Milwaukee and Madison are both under two hours from Chicago. I-94 gets you to Milwaukee in about ninety minutes, and I-90/94 gets you to Madison in about two and a half hours.

Door County is its own drive, about three hours north from Milwaukee up Highway 42 or 57. Once you are on the peninsula you need a car, the towns are strung out along the shoreline with real distance between them.

Wisconsin Dells sits almost exactly between Milwaukee, Madison and Minneapolis. That is part of why families from three states end up there instead of picking a side of the state.

The Apostle Islands need a boat, not a car. Sea cave kayak tours and cruises leave from Bayfield, all the way up on the Lake Superior side of the state, a trip of its own.

Two ferry routes reach Washington Island from Northport Pier, a thirty minute crossing that runs about 225,000 trips a year. Bring the car or leave it, bikes rent right off the dock on the island.

Al Johnson’s Swedish Restaurant in Sister Bay really does have goats grazing on its sod roof. It is not a gimmick built for photos, though everyone photographs it anyway, ours included.

A real fish boil is worth planning a dinner around. Whitefish and potatoes go into a kettle boiling outside until it is deliberately overflowed in a burst of flame. Several harbor town restaurants run them most summer nights.

Fifty lighthouses and lights sit along the shoreline, ten of them on the National Register of Historic Places. Cana Island and Eagle Bluff are the two worth the actual detour.

Six state parks fit on one peninsula. Peninsula State Park is the big one, with bike paths, a working lighthouse, and a bluff trail with a real view out over Green Bay.

More than 220 waterslides are spread across the resorts here, and the town’s own claim to be the Waterpark Capital of the World is not one anybody seriously argues with.

Most families book a resort with its own indoor waterpark included, so the real decision is which resort, not if you also need a separate day pass somewhere.

The actual dells are real, sandstone cliffs carved by the Wisconsin River, and the boat tours through them predate every waterpark in town by about a hundred years.

Noah’s Ark, the largest outdoor waterpark in the country, covers more than 70 acres with roughly three miles of slides and five million gallons of water in play.

Summer weekends book out resorts months ahead. If you want a specific waterpark and not just any room left in town, plan by early spring.

Milwaukee’s brewery tours are built for a family afternoon, not a bar crawl. Most, including the big Miller tour, run kid friendly daytime slots with a lot of the history saved for the adults.

Lambeau Field is two and a half hours north in Green Bay, but American Family Field and Fiserv Forum put Brewers baseball and Bucks basketball right in Milwaukee itself, no drive required.

Madison’s capitol dome was modeled on the one in Washington DC, and it is one of the only state capitols you can walk straight into and climb, free, any day it’s open.

The Milwaukee Art Museum’s wing shaped sunscreen actually opens and closes over the building twice a day. Worth timing a visit around, even for kids who will skip the galleries.

Bald eagles winter along the Mississippi on Wisconsin’s western edge in numbers big enough that towns like Prairie du Chien run whole eagle watching weekends around them.

The Dells resort is the budget. A family suite at a resort with its own indoor waterpark is the whole holiday and the whole cost. Book by spring for summer, and the waterpark passes are included in the room.

Door County is cottages and cheap days. Peninsula State Park is a few dollars a car, the lighthouses cost a small admission or nothing, and the fish boil is priced like a normal dinner. Book the cottage months out.

State parks need a vehicle sticker. Devil’s Lake and Peninsula charge a daily or annual sticker at the gate, more for out of state plates. The annual pays off on the third park.

No flights from the middle of the country. Kansas, Illinois and Iowa drive in. Milwaukee is the airport if you fly, and it is cheaper than people expect.

Sales tax is low. Five percent plus a little local, hotel taxes on top, and tipping at eighteen to twenty. Cheese curds are not taxed differently, sadly.

Families who want to drive there, not fly there. Wisconsin is a road trip state. If you are within a day’s drive of it, you can be on a beach or in a waterpark by dinner.

Kids who would rather be in the water than looking at it. Between the Dells waterparks and the lakes, this is a swim and slide trip more than a sightseeing one.

Families who want two different trips out of one state. Door County is quiet water and lighthouses. The Dells is waterslides and mini golf. Pick one, or do both a year apart.

Anyone who needs ocean scale water. Lake Michigan is big, but it is not the same trip as a beach vacation. Go to Florida or the Carolinas for that.

Families trying to do Door County and the Dells in the same three day weekend. They are almost four hours apart. Pick a side of the state and give it the time.

Door County, four nights or more. Highway 42 up the peninsula, a cottage in Fish Creek or Ephraim, lighthouses, orchards, the ferry to Washington Island and a fish boil. Closer in feeling to Maine than the Midwest.

The Dells, three or four nights. A resort with an indoor waterpark, a boat tour on the river, Devil’s Lake for a bluff walk, and the House on the Rock on the way home. Most Wisconsin visits are this one.

Milwaukee and Madison, two nights each. The Harley museum, a Brewers game, the art museum, then the capitol dome and the farmers market on the square in Madison. Cities you walk.

Green Bay as a day. Lambeau on a non game day from Door County, two hours south, or a game if you can get a ticket. Do not plan a whole week around it.

A Dells resort family suite. Great Wolf Lodge, Kalahari or the Wilderness, with the waterpark under the same roof. A ten year old down a slide fifteen times without leaving the building.

A Door County cottage on the water. Fish Creek, Ephraim or Sister Bay, a dock, a kayak and the sunset over Green Bay. Booked by February for July.

Packers tickets, if you can get them. The hardest ticket in football, from the resale market, at the frozen tundra. A Lambeau tour is the fallback and it is a good one.

A Washington Island day with bikes. The ferry from Northport, bikes off the dock, Schoolhouse Beach with its limestone pebbles, and the stavkirke in the woods. The quiet end of the peninsula.

The goats are real. Al Johnson’s in Sister Bay has a grass roof with goats on it eating all summer. Since the 1970s, and it never stops being funny.

The Dells run all winter. The waterparks are indoors and open year round. A January trip means empty highways and full slides.

Door County closes in winter. Most restaurants and shops shut from November until spring. September is the month for it.

The Infinity Room hangs over nothing. 218 feet out over the valley at the House on the Rock with no visible support at the far end. Children love it or refuse to walk to the window.

Lake Michigan is cold until July. Warm enough to swim from July into September on the Door County side. Lake Winnebago and the inland lakes warm up sooner.

Milwaukee for a night on the way. A Brewers game if the season is still on, custard at Kopp’s, and the Harley museum in the morning.

Four nights in Fish Creek. Peninsula State Park for the bluff and the tower, Cana Island lighthouse across the causeway, an orchard stand for the cherries, and Al Johnson’s goats in Sister Bay.

The ferry to Washington Island. Thirty minutes from Northport, bikes on the island, Schoolhouse Beach, and a fish boil booked for the evening back on the peninsula.

Lambeau on the way home. The stadium tour in Green Bay, two hours south, then the road. The Dells is the other trip and it runs all winter.