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Ah yes! This was the long travel blog you all were waiting for. As far as trips go, this one was fairly standard. But there was some drama and mystery, too! Poisonous air fit for a Mad Max film. A grungy bathroom bathed in red light and filled with KISS posters. Cool nerdy treasures. A horrible night where I suffered something of a mental breakdown. It might interest you! I swear!

On Wednesday, the 28th, I went on a trip with my family to Madison, WI. The original plan had been for us to do cool stuff in the city for the day, and in the evening I was going to see Garbage for the first time ever. I've shared their name a few times and was stunned to learn that there are people in my generation who still haven't heard of them. They're most known for three songs: Push It (featured in season 3 of Dawson's Creek), Stupid Girl (featured in the 90s original Sabrina the Teenage Witch sitcom, and also 2021's series premier of Cruel Summer), and Only Happy When It Rains (featured in Marvel's 2019 film, Captain Marvel, and Netflix's 2021 film, Fear Street Part One: 1994). Put another way--If you like rock and listened to anything from the 90s and early 00s, you've probably heard (and liked!) a Garbage song, but just didn't know who you were hearing. Anyway, I've been a big fan of theirs since I was in elementary school. I'm in my mid-30s now, and I was beyond happy for the chance to see them.

Sadly, the Canadian wildfires up north have been causing a lot of issues for us down in the US. The midwest was choked with smoke. Due to poor air quality conditions, the outdoor concert was canceled. My disappointment ran deep. I was openly weeping while we shopped for snacks and food for the road at a grocery store. I was so out of it, I didn't have the presence of mind to tell my husband he was buying waaaay too much food.

It took me a while to get over it. Getting a full refund (plus 20% on top from StubHub!) took some of the sting out of it. No longer with any sense of hurry, we checked in at the Marquette Hotel in Madison and did a little brainstorming for our next move. We decided to head to the Olbrich Botanical Gardens. My husband was pretty adamant to go there, having taken classes for horticulture. I was less interested, but I figured it would be a relaxing jaunt. We were all pretty surprised by how much fun we had! This isn't a nature blog, I swear... but there's gonna be quite a few flower pics, ngl. For the record, you can hover over the picture for more info if there isn't a caption under it. All images are hyperlinked to a gallery at imgbox where you can see it in higher resolution, along with more photos!

We got there 30 minutes before the conservatory was going to close. It was $15 bucks for me, my husband, and my two kids to get in. While it was tight, 30 minutes was just enough time for us to enjoy everything in the conservatory, though I would have loved to have more time there to just sit and meditate. It was gorgeous! So many exotic plants from around the world. A TON of colorful orchids, strange trees, vibrant ferns, and there were even some quail running around freely. The kids really liked it too. Man it was hot in there, though. It was a fairly warm day in Madison, but inside the conservatory it was even warmer and more humid due to the necessary conditions for the plants. It must have been around 80 degrees in there, with humidity above 60%.

We saw these awesome pitcher plants hanging overhead! I couldn't find a sign for the exact scientific name, but I know they are carnivrous and can eat tree frogs!

Anyway, we saw some really awesome plants. Like the corpse flower in the picture below. Amorphophallus titanum, the titan arum, is a flowering plant in the family Araceae. Did I copy and paste? Of course! But I don't need ctrl+v to explain how this plant is very rare thanks to its native habitats being ravaged by logging and plantation development. It doesn't bloom annually. It takes seven to nine years for that to happen, and when it does, it smells like a rotting corpse. Hence its name! The corpse flower had recently bloomed and had already wilted by the time we got there, so it didn't smell. There was a 2nd corpse flower in the conservatory, but it had also bloomed the week prior, and it was far more wilted.

If the corpse flower successfully pollinates, it can produce up to 400 fruit. We can't eat them, though! They're poisonous to us.

Surprisingly, some of my favorite plants turned out to be variations of coleus! We found a bunch of these in the outer gardens. These plants had such vibrant and interesting patterns. In warmer zones they are perennials (plant once, they keep coming back), but everywhere else they are grown as annuals (have to replant every year.) I'd like to get some of these for our garden next year. There are even some variations with electric blue colors!

This one made me chortle.

This handsome mallard duck was enjoying the gardens outside. He was quite at ease with all the people admiring him.

This lovely view through a stone doorway in the outdoor gardens had me feeling a certain way.

After the gardens we went to a tabletop gaming shop called Misty Mountain Games. It was a decent-sized store with a good selection of TTRPG books, gaming miniatures, and various board games. The back was filled with gaming tables, and the night we visited was Yu-Gi-Oh night. The kids had fun looking around at all the stuff. My nine-year-old son got his first set of dice, a small silicone dice tray, and a red felt dice bag to use in our family D&D game. I was eyeing the weird TTRPGs that I'll never find a game for. My husband was busy perusing the board games in the hopes of finding something new to play with our friends.

When I looked this one up, it had fairly good reviews, though some complained that important aspects lacked rules or explanations, like creating original monsters for the rangers to fight.

We spent a few hours at this store just hanging out. We did buy a few things, though we absolutely wanted more. We walked out with The One Ring 5e core book (an adaptation of the Lord of the Rings TTRPG to D&D's 5e rules), Edge of the Empire (a Star Wars TTRPG that focuses on the underworld of the galaxy--smugglers, bounty hunters, etc), and a really dope dice tower that we have yet to assemble.

After that we visited a thai restaurant called Sala Thai that served a really delicious Pananag Peek Gai (fried boneless stuff chicken wings, filled with a mixture of ground pork, glass noodles, and onions, and covered in a scrumptious peanut curry sauce). I didn't take a picture of it because I was so hungry, sorry. It was really good, though! We had to wait a bit, and the kids got kinda restless. My two-year-old daughter made a mess of her water, while my son drove my husband nuts by teasing him relentlessly. I tried to distract him by asking him to take pictures of all the art hanging around us. This place certainly had a good vibe to it!

A bunch of traditional thai artwork around. Maybe this may seem uninteresting, but I've never been to a thai restaurant with so much thai-related art.

I mean, check out these dolls! Most of the other thai places I go to just have non-descript corpo art up and maybe a thai statue or two. There were tons of these dolls!

And the dolls weren't crappy either. Look at the detail on this one!

A shot of the register counter. I have waay more pictures from this place, but I'm trying not to inundate you guys, lol.

After the thai place we went back to the hotel and rested. After my little girl went to sleep, the three of us played a quick game of D&D. I butt heads with my husband a little because he tried to give me a hint for a surprise Slaad encounter, and I felt insulted given my years of experience. When I rejected his offer and overcame the obstacle, I nettled him by pointing out how his help was unnecessary. He returned that I could have done better, which annoyed me further aaaand... Yeah, fun couple dynamics, amirite? We finished the session and apologized to each other later. Basically he acknowledged that he had teased me needlessly, and promised not to try and offer meta-help anymore. I apologized for getting so easily offended at his well-meaning gesture, and also for nettling him after the obstacle was done.

If only that was the end of the night's troubles! This all happened right before bedtime around 11:30pm, so I needed a little bit of time to wound down from that. I went and took a shower. Tried to relax, despite my son whining incessantly about the bathroom light being on. I finally go to bed and listen to my Hitler biography audiobook. When I think I'm close to sleep, I turn off my wireless headphones and set them aside. I roll over and try to go to sleep. SLAM! Someone just got back from one the nearby bars. SLAM! SLAM! More people return. They talk loudly in the hallways. I start to sweat. What if I can't sleep?

Here's a thing to know about me--I've been diagnosed with major depression and general anxiety disorder. I especially struggle with the latter. Who doesn't these days? But not everyone's anxiety manifests the same ways. As a friend once told me, "We all have different-shaped holes where the functioning parts were supposed to go." I have yet to meet a person who has anxiety like I do. I'm a "Oh god, there's a problem, FIX IT NOW!" kinda gal. A lovely dovetailing of my impatience. The problem is that insomnia as a problem cannot be fixed or resolved immediately. Usually. At least not without meds. And I didn't have any because I forgot to bring them.

The hours slipped by. The more time passed, the more upset and panicked I became. "I'm going to be tired! I won't be able to enjoy the rest of the trip! How can I keep my cool with the kids?!" I even got angry again about the small tiff my husband and I had before bed. It was like the apology never happened. You see, when you're tired and stressed like that, your brain stops making logical conclusions. I was really off my rocker, just pacing back and forth. It was horrible. I cried and cried.

At one point I went back to the car, parked half-a-block away to retrieve the leftover thai food we'd forgotten there. It was 1am. There was a white car parked in the street with two people talking loudly. It almost sounded like they were arguing. I hurried past them and tried not to look. I didn't want to draw their attention. When I made it back into the hotel, I was startled to see a tall white man standing outside of one of the rooms. He looked unsteady on his feet and stared at me without a word. I looked away quickly and hurried into my room. My husband sat up and asked what was wrong. I told him I couldn't sleep, and he said that sucked and laid back down. He was asleep again in seconds. I felt so lonely and resentful. Why couldn't I just sleep?

Around 3:30am I went back out to the car and just sat there for fifteen minutes, letting my phone charge. I did an audio recording where I ranted drunkenly because I was so tired. When I made it back to the room, my husband woke up again. This time I unleashed all of my frustration on him. He was bewildered, but weathered my tirade until I finally relented and tried to lay down again. I didn't fall asleep until around 4:30am. I woke up again around 7:15am when my phone alarm went off. I tried to see if I could go back to sleep, but it was a no-go. The kids were awake by that point.

I apologized to my husband for losing my cool. I felt really bad. I also felt physically horrible. My eyes were swollen from crying. My husband wasn't sure if we should resume the trip, but I insisted we do. I knew my son had been really looking forward to this, and I didn't want to ruin it for him.

After lazing around for a few hours and snacking on the food from the grocery store, we got ready and checked out of the hotel a little before 11am. From there, we went to a store we'd seen when driving around the city--The Video Game X-Change! This store was pretty fun with a diverse selection of media products. Yes, mostly retro video games, consoles, and accessories, but also VHS tapes, cassette tapes, vinyl records, and old magazines! We spent some time here, just looking at everything. Son picked out the Ghostbusters game for the PS4 to buy. Little girl got a red plant monster plushie to take home. My husband picked out Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance for the PS2, and I picked out Dead Island: Riptide Definitive Edition and Dragon's Dogma for the PS3. We also picked up a replacement battery for our Gameboy Advanced SP.

Lots of cool stuff to explore!

Now I've been to quite a few retro game stores, and they each had something impressive to show off. This place easily had the biggest collection of retro Nintendo stuff I'd ever seen!

Oddly, the most interesting thing about this place wasn't the stuff they were selling. I got hit with an intense need to relieve myself, and after confirming that the bathroom was open to the public, I rushed in there, turned on the light, and... stopped dead. The bathroom light was fixed with this intense red bulb that illuminated the tinfoil covered walls. Plastered everywhere were KISS posters and pictures. The bathroom mirror even had KISS lasered onto it! And not to disparage the store, because I DID see a lot of cleaning products, but this bathroom was kinda grody and dingy. In my haste to go to the bathroom, I sat full on the toilet seat. Luckily there were some Lysol wipes on the back of the toilet that I used to wipe my skin. Can't be too careful! XD

Right of the toilet (if you were sitting on it.) Next to the sink.

Oh look, it's me! This bathroom totally caught me off-guard.

Behind the toilet. Someone graffitied, "KISS sucks!" The gall!

Left of the toilet.

The view from the toilet seat.

The... uh... toilet. It looks like the owner keeps it clean where it counts, judging by the cleaning supplies. It didn't smell bad or anything, and the seat was clean!

But still, this bathroom didn't instill a lot of confidence. It feels like something you'd see in a gritty indie film or something.

After that fun little adventure, we took the kids to the Children's Museum. On our way there we got to see the Wisconsin State Capitol Building. We really were trying to be mindful of the poor air quality by doing as much as we could indoors. Not sharing pics of my kids, but the Children's Museum was a really cool spot! Sadly, we didn't get to enjoy the outdoor exhibits. But the kids had plenty of fun. They had a PONG game, a giant climbing tower, a giant hamster wheel, a shadow exhibit, and plenty more!

After visiting the retro game store, I was feeling better! Took a moment for a selfie in a phonebooth inside the museum.

I really wanted to see some dinosaur bones, so next we went to the University of Wisconsin Geology Museum. The kids LOVED seeing the geodes and dino bones! We also got to see a piece of iron meteorite from Arizona! I kinda wished we could have lingered more here, just like at the botanical gardens. The reason we tried to go through it at a quick pace was because I was worried my little girl would get cranky or even fall asleep and miss the coolest stuff. Plus it was getting late, and we had a long drive back home.

I think there were two switches to see how the geodes would react under UV and UA rays, or something. I don't remember which we had switched on here.

It's a replica tyrannosaurus skull, but it was still pretty neat! I think this skull was one of the largest found.

Me, posing in front of the skeleton of edmontosaurus annectens from the cretaceous period. The bones were found in South Dakota.

Of course I had to share the fossil poop. XD

I'm not sure why, but I was surprised to see an extinct squirrel skull.

This was really little for a dog!

Cute little thing.

This was a really neat display. This wasn't a sabretooth, but it's related to it. I like how they posed it!

After the geology museum, we went to have authentic japanese ramen noodles at Ramen Kid. I'd never been to a ramen bar before, so I was excited! I also was feeling daring, so I ordered a spicy garlic tonkotsu (noodles with pork, veggies, a marinated egg, in a thick pork broth) at level 2 spice (out of 4 levels). It was... oh man. If that was level 2, I don't wanna know what level 4 is like! I really had to fight through this one. I ate most of the noodles, all the pork, and the egg. I even managed to drink some of the broth, but I did eventually feel pretty satisfied, and that's when my adventurous spirit waned. I've really been trying to challenge myself bit by bit with spicy foods. I've found the more spicy foods I tend to eat, the better my mood is in the moment. I know my tolerance has gone up over the years, especially given my husband's tendency to cook with hot peppers, but I didn't really start trying to push my limits until this year. Anyway, the ramen was really good!

After we ate, we finally said goodbye to Madison. The drive home was very long. At least when you've got a car of young kids with you. It took us about 3 hours to get home. I think we left at just the right time. You know when you get that feeling that you need a vacation from your vacation...? We were definitely there. But I was glad the second day had gone well. I was really worried that my lack of sleep would ruin the rest of the trip for me and the family, but in the end it worked out. Despite the canceled concert and the bad night at the hotel, this trip ended up being really fun, and I'm glad we went.

Did you make it this far? Well, thank you if you did! And thanks, even if all you did was look at the photos, lol! I dunno if I'll do a long blog post like this again anytime soon. Zonelets is really old school blog in that you have to do all the HTML markup yourself. No quick highlighting and pushing a button on a panel to generate the code for you! No quick way of inserting images! No, no, no, your ass is doing it the OLD FASHIONED WAY. Which is, in a way, kind of satisfying, but it's hard doing this with kids, y'know? This took nearly half of my Saturday.

Anyway, I hope you come back soon. Thanks again for reading!