We had made arrangements to head back into Wisconsin today to visit Roth Kase cheese factory and store in Monroe. We left early since the best time to watch cheese being made is in the morning hours; Tal-y got to wait for us in the truck. It was pretty cool seeing the cheese making process, I never realized just how labour intensive it is, it takes some muscle to make cheese. Although some of the process is automated, a lot of the process is done entirely by hand and takes quite some time; they even package all the cheese they make there by hand one brick at a time. The guy that showed us around the factory was very informative although there were things that he couldn’t tell us since he didn’t know himself; apparently the master cheese makers are very secretive when it comes to certain aspects of their craft such as curing times and temperatures. That’s okay with me as long as they keep making good cheese.
The store had tons of different varieties of cheese and it was difficult to decide which ones to buy even after sampling half the store. We left with about 6 different varieties and are going to enjoy every single one of them.
After leaving the factory we drove through Monroe and to Mineral Point to Pendarvis, which is a Wisconsin historic, site that Cornish miners came to in the 1830’s to mine the lead that was found in the area. There are a bunch of original Cornish style cottages preserved in the town along Shake Rag street (couldn’t find any pasties though).
We headed back to Monroe and stopped at Baumgartner’s cheese store for lunch; this is the oldest cheese store in Wisconsin. It was a cool place with communal tables and a menu of cheese sandwiches, sausage sandwiches, or both. Mike had intended to get a Limburger, onion and mustard sandwich but he chickened out and got swiss instead. A guy we were sharing the table with got one and they gave him a mint to eat after it so that he could ride in the car with his companions.
We had a nice drive home through the countryside along county routes. I think Wisconsin must be one of the poorer states as they have the worst roads of anywhere we’ve been so far; it was easy to tell when we crossed into Illinois, my teeth stopped chattering.

Mike: I like cheeeeeze!