Manitowoc, WI
Manitowoc's first brewpub, across the street from the county courthouse that named it; beer brewed on site, a scratch kitchen, and a wine list Wine Spectator has recognized since 2002. The beer-battered Henning's cheese curds are the opener regulars order. Lunch and dinner Tuesday through Saturday; closed Sunday and Monday. The town's story is submarines: Manitowoc built 28 of them during WWII and floated them down the Illinois and Mississippi to the Gulf. USS Cobia, moored at the Wisconsin Maritime Museum a few blocks toward the river, wasn't one of the 28; she's the Navy boat local sub veterans brought home in 1970 as their memorial, and you can tour her.
Manitowoc was one of the most unlikely submarine-building sites in WWII. Being landlocked on Lake Michigan, the subs had to be towed via river and canal to the ocean. 28 submarines were built here.
Home of the Green Bay Packers since 1957, Lambeau Field is the oldest continually operating NFL stadium and one of the most storied venues in American sports. The Packers themselves are unique: the only community-owned, non-profit, publicly held team in major American pro sports — owned by some 540,000 shareholders who can never collect a dividend or sell at a profit, which is why a team from a city of 100,000 has never left for a bigger market. The frozen December games gave the place its nickname after the 1967 "Ice Bowl," played at minus-13 degrees. The bowl was rebuilt and expanded over the decades but never moved; the Packers still run out of the same tunnel onto the same hallowed ground.
Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Every late July, Wittman Regional becomes the busiest airport in the world. 10,000+ aircraft, 600,000+ visitors, and every type of aircraft from ultralights to B-29s. Even outside of AirVenture, the EAA Aviation Museum is world-class and the grounds retain a hallowed quality for anyone who loves airplanes. If you've never been during the show, put it on your life list. The NOTAM for AirVenture arrivals is legendary in its complexity.
The Door Peninsula juts 70 miles into Lake Michigan, separating the lake from Green Bay — a slim finger of limestone bluffs, orchards, fishing villages, and more lighthouses than any other county in the country. It's the Midwest's answer to Cape Cod: cherry orchards, white clapboard towns, art galleries, and the traditional Door County fish boil. The name is ominous — the strait at the tip, between the peninsula and Washington Island, is "Porte des Morts," Death's Door, named for the canoes and ships lost in its currents. At Cave Point, Lake Michigan has carved the dolomite shoreline into sea caves and ledges where the waves boom. The bluffs at Eagle Bluff and Peninsula State Park give the whole peninsula its spine.
The SS Badger is the last coal-fired passenger steamship in regular service in the United States. Launched 1952 by the Christy Corporation in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, she was built to haul railroad freight cars across Lake Michigan — the Pere Marquette Railway and successors operated her for that purpose until 1990. She was converted in 1991 to a passenger and auto ferry by the Lake Michigan Carferry Service, and has crossed daily May through October ever since, Ludington to Manitowoc, Wisconsin, on a 4-hour run. 410 feet long, 60 feet beam, displacement 4,244 tons. Crossing capacity 600 passengers, 180 vehicles. The Badger burns roughly 50 tons of coal per round trip in her four Skinner Unaflow steam engines, generating 7,000 horsepower. She was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2009 and designated a National Historic Landmark in 2016.