Milwaukee

Hello there,
I am also from the Milwaukee area. I lived downtown for a couple years and recently moved out to the "burbs". My wife and I lived east of Water street near the MSOE campus (Milwaukee School of Engineering). We really loved the location. It was close to more restaurants than I could ever visit and there were plenty of events/festivals within walking distance. I can't speak of Bay View or North Point, but I think the Third Ward would be a great area as well if you are into the "cool, hip" areas. It's an up and coming area with many new condos and a bunch of restaurants/bars as well. Not to mention it's near the water (Lake Michigan and the MKE river).

Milwaukee has plenty to offer in the summer time. Bradford beach is a nice place to go (until it gets crowded). There's tons of volleyball nets if you're into that. There's a bike path along the lake and several throughout the city. There's a huge music festival downtown every summer called Summerfest as well as many other festivals every weekend. I hope you enjoy beer because there's a bunch of breweries that offer great tours.

When are you interviewing? I will admit Milwaukee in the winter is...well... ugly. Maybe wouldn't make for a great first impression, but I enjoyed it during the summer. Good luck to you.

Thanks for the reply!

I'm hoping to get there for a face to face by mid-March and I'm coming from Detroit where we were just named #1 on the Winter Misery Index.....so it can't get much worse, I think.

And yes, we LOVE beer! Detroit's been opening distilleries left and right too, so it's been fun testing all the different whiskeys, vodkas, gins, etc. Hopefully there is a bit of that in Milwaukee (If I want to take the job)

How far out of the city do you need to go to get in good hiking/biking/camping?

Well I now live in Muskego which is about 20-25minutes SW of Milwaukee and there are a bunch of biking trails around my house. Both paved and packed gravel. So you really don't have to venture very far to get to the "country". Traffic usually isnt too terrible either.

For short weekend camping trips, we usually head to the northern Kettle Moraine unit. It's about 1.5hr north of MKE and has some decent hiking/biking trails. We usually camp at Mauthe or Long lake. For longer trips we head to Door County (the peninsula of WI). There's tons to do up there. Wineries, apple orchards, swimming, kayaking....anything you want. I'd highly recommend that place. We usually camp in Fish Creek.