Adventures in Mid-Wisconsin

I had set today aside for questing. In talking to some of my buddies of late, I'd identified some items of interest that they had and decided to use some of my time to try finding them. I did some planning, located some stores to visit, located the cities to go to, and set my expectations realistically. The chances that I'd actually find one of my target items was small. I had to expect that possibility.

The trip started out a bit rough. I walked into a bug on my way to the car. I found out I had something on my car when it fell off. I meant to stop in West Bend but took the wrong direction at the fork in the freeway and kinda missed it. Minor detail. I'd planned to go onto Fond Du Lac after West Bend so I just went to Fondy instead.

When I got to Fondy, I exited the freeway an exit too soon and got lost. Not lost-lost, just 'huh, I don't recognize this part of town' lost. I don't go to Fondy much. I spent the next hour or so exploring. This was eating into my time. I had plans for the evening so I couldn't spend all day out and about. I was spending too much time exploring. I started working my way back to where I'd exited the freeway, considering getting back on the freeway and heading out of town.

There was a Thrift shop and I visited that. Found a few CDs from local bands for my collection and a Disney Parks tin. After all the exploring, actually doing some shopping made me feel better. I'd actually done something. Since this store was on the corner of Main Street, I followed that into 'downtown'.

Downtown Fond Du Lac looks like the downtown of most of the other smaller cities I've visited in the Midwest. It's not too big, it's attractive in a vaguely out-of-date sort of way, and there's construction going on. I drove through it, noted a couple of interesting looking stores, and continued looking for the mall and chain stores for which I was searching. After a bit more exploring, maybe fifteen or twenty minutes, I found everything and realized my earlier error.

I walked the mall. They have a Waldenbooks with a comic book spinner rack. It made my heart leap to see it. Many of my early comic purchases were made from something similar. The mall also had a toy store, sorry, a farm collectibles store. I didn't realize I was that deep into farm land. I moved on.

The regular chain stores held nothing. There's a department store chain that doesn't appear in the Milwaukee area that I visited. That paid off with a GI Joe vehicle that, upon checking, proved to be of interest. There was some clearance Indiana Jones figures that I picked up as well due to the price. I didn't want them but had a feeling I'd know someone that would.

At this point it was well into the afternoon and I should have eaten but I headed back to Main Street and the Downtown area. There were a couple antique stores and a bookstore all within a half-block of each other. I got a handful of books, one I believe is the source material for the movie 'Witchfinder General', from the first store at a very reasonable price and had a nice chit-chat with the lady that ran the place. The other antique store had some interesting things but nothing that clicked for the price they wanted. The bookstore wasn't a second-hand shop as I expected so I was a bit disappointed. Nice place, just not what I expected. They had comics too and that also pleased me.

I returned to the mall because they had a Hardees in the parking lot and it was near the freeway. I had a Frisco Burger for the first time in forever, love those!, and some Bacon Ranch fries. They're normal fries with ranch sauce and bacon bits on them. Good stuff.

Full, content, and feeling that it had been a good afternoon after all, I hopped on the freeway and headed home. Maybe West Bend tomorrow. It's not all that far.