Hello Pen Pals!
Dec. 21, 2016
This letter is for your teacher to read to or share parts with you. It contains information about Eagle River, and was written by Ms. Fuller to explain or supplement what the students write about. We are so glad to be writing to you, and we are anxious to learn about your countries!
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Location
Our city, Eagle River, is in Vilas County at the northern border of the state. There are 72 counties in our state of Wisconsin, and Wisconsin is one of the 50 states that make up the United States of America. The red section (above left) is Wisconsin’s location in the U.S.A., and the red section (above right) is Vilas County’s location in Wisconsin. We are between America’s Great Lakes of Lake Superior and Lake Michigan. We have long, snowy, cold winters and glorious but short summers with lots of lake time. Our county has over 1,300 lakes and 73 rivers in its 1018 square miles. There are so many lakes here due to the melting of the glaciers during the last Ice Age. The population in Vilas County is about 21,000 people. There’s a lot of beautiful, wooded, uncrowded land here.
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We have 11 Native American tribes in our state. Most now have gambling casinos for revenue. Early settlers to our state were mainly from Germany and Scandinavia. We see the influences from the Native Americans and the European immigrants everywhere. Our state drew those immigrants because its climate, land, and resources were similar to their homelands. They brought over their culture, traditions, and skills such as dairy and crop farming, beer brewing, cheesemaking, lumberjacking and logging, and hunting. Wisconsin is known as America’s Dairyland. Our nickname is The Dairy State. Here’s one of our state’s license plates.
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School Our school is called Eagle River Elementary School in the city of Eagle River.
It is a public (free) school, and it has about 350 students. We only learn English until we get to 7th grade. From 7th - 12th grades, we have the option to take Spanish or German classes. Those are the languages for which the district has hired teachers. If other languages are requested, students can take online or ITV, interactive television, lessons. Almost all of the students ride the school bus to school, and the rest ride in their parents’ cars. High school students can drive to school themselves (if they have their driver’s license [age 16] and a car or truck.) Elementary (kindergarten through 5th grade) do not walk to/from school because we are a distance from the residential neighborhoods and also are on a busy road. Students do not wear uniforms, but there is a dress code for appropriate clothing. Around 88% of the students in our district are Caucasian, and the other 12% is comprised of Hispanic, Native American Indian, and African American. About ⅓ of the students bring a “bag lunch” or “cold lunch” to school, and the rest eat “hot lunch” prepared by the cafeteria. The school day starts at 8:15 and runs to 3:25 pm. We have Math, English/ Language Arts/Reading, and Social Studies or Science every day. During the week, we also have Physical Education, Music, and Art classes. We have a 30 minute recess right after lunch every day, and we all go outside unless the temperature is below 0 degrees or if it’s raining. If recess is indoors, we either go to the gym, the library, or the movie room. The school year runs from September 1st through June 8th. We have three weeklong breaks: one for Thanksgiving (Nov), one for Christmas (Dec), and one in March. Sometimes we have unscheduled snow or ice days. When school is cancelled due to lots of snow, many of us go snowmobiling. You have to be 12 years old and pass a safety class in order to ride on the trails by yourself, but many ride with parents or older siblings. Eagle River is called the snowmobile capital of the world. Our many miles of trails that travel through the woods and field and across frozen lakes are as wide as roads, and the world championship snowmobile derby (race) is held here. In fact, the race track is right across the road from our school.
Dairy Farming
Family farms like you see above are sadly being replaced by large corporate farms below that milk thousands of cows 3 times per day. Most of those cows never even get to go outside in the pasture. They eat, rest in a loafing barn, get milked, and repeat.
Our state is known for: growing cranberries (central and north), growing corn (south), making beer, cheese, and sausage - especially bratwurst {brats} (German immigrants), logging and wood products (many manufacturers of paper and paper products, wooden doors and windows, lumber‌), making Harley Davidson motorcycles, outdoor recreation, and more!
Cranberry Farming
Cranberries were named because the red part looks like the head of a sandhill crane.
Cranberry Harvesting
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Before flooding bog
after flooding and padding/ thrashing to get the berries off the vines and to float on the surface.
As you can see, some use more machinery than others, and the water is not deep in the beds or bogs. Our city has a Cranberry Fest every year in early October.
Nearly everyone likes the sweetened, dried cranberry snack called Craisins (like raisins, but made with cranberries). Other products made are cranberry juice, jellied cranberry sauce, wine, and more.
Recreation & Sports For recreation, we are known for snowmobiling, ice hockey, fishing (all year round), hunting, Green Bay Packers NFL football and any University of Wisconsin “Badger” sport - especially football and basketball, any lake sport: boating, pontooning, kayaking, fishing, swimming, waterskiing… Here are a few more pics that represent Wisconsin: Packer fans - wearing the “gren & gold” and some cheesehead hats
Packer Players Lambeau Leap After “home game” touchdowns at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, WI, the Packer players do the Lambeau Leap. They continue running through the end zone and LEAP up onto the wall and into the happy fans who all try to congratulate them. Here’s an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DwfnXZTc44
Bucky Badger Mascot Bucky Badger, loveable mascot for University of Wisconsin - Madison sports Here’s a link for a 1:44 video showing the “Jump Around” tradition at every Badger home game. It is SOOOO fun to do! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVtTMNK6xLo
The last picture with hands is called a “dub”, a hand signal shown by fans to represent a w (pronounced dub-l-yuu). Another version is done with one hand.
Hockey Eagle River is the hockey capital of Wisconsin. Lots of kids enjoy playing hockey. There are youth leagues up through old-timers leagues. The big ice rink here is called “The Dome� for its unique architecture and historical significance. The USA Pond Hockey championship is also held here on local frozen lakes.
Construction of The Dome in 1933 Pond hockey championship in Feb. - They plow snow off a frozen lake to make 24 or more ice rinks for the championship tournament. Everything pictured here, including the parking lot, is on a frozen lake in Eagle River.
The fire department also builds an ice castle downtown every year. At night, it is lit up.
Snowmobiling Here’s a 2:20 video taken by some tourists about snowmobiling in Eagle River. Most of the time, they were going too fast for the trail conditions (through the trees), but the scenery was accurate. When they were going really fast on the wide, flat, snowy areas, they were riding on frozen lakes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2IEYBIEjfg
Typical Wisconsin Foods Bratwurst (brats): Grilled outdoors year-round, served on a long bun, sometimes with sauerkraut, mustard, hot pepper mix, pickles, and/or ketchup plus baked beans and chips on the side
Pizza: Crust, tomato sauce, sausage, pepperoni, onions, black olives, and LOTS of mozzarella cheese. The best pizza is the kind you can’t even pick up. It has to be eaten from a plate with a fork.
Cheeseburgers:
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Friday Fish Fry (It’s really a Wisconsin thing.) Almost every restaurant in Wisconsin serves a fish fry on Fridays. No matter what type of food they normally serve: Italian, Mexican, Chinese…, they also offer fish fry on Fridays. Typical fish fries have beer-battered fish, usually haddock, cod, perch, or walleye, tartar sauce, lemon wedge, French fries, coleslaw, and slices of buttered rye or marble rye bread.
The fish fry on the right is made with baked fish, also called “Poor Man’s Lobster.” It’s baked in butter and also served with a cup of melted butter. (Just when you thought it might be healthy - haha). The famous Racing Sausages at Miller Park (major league baseball) at the Milwaukee Brewers’ stadium
From left to right: Brat, Italian Sausage, Polish Sausage, Hog Dog, and Chorizo
Beer Brewing Miller Brewery is the largest brewery left in Milwaukee, but there used to be more than you could count. In Wisconsin, you must be age 18 to legally drink alcoholic beverages.
Pabst Theater - restored and quite grand
The Brewers’ mascot is Bernie Brewer. He has a chalet built into Miller Park. When the Brewers score a run, he will slide down the big yellow slide. Before this new stadium was built with the retractable roof, Bernie used to have a German chalet and he would slide down into a giant mug of beer! We all liked that better.
Deer Hunting Kid sitting in regular tree stand
A trophy buck
Hunter dragging a deer back to camp
Another kid sitting in homemade stand
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Deer hunting stand - a little fancier
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Silly deer hunting stand
Every November, from the third Saturday plus 8 more days, Wisconsin has a coveted nine day white-tailed deer hunting season. You must wear “blaze orange” so you don’t get mistaken for a deer and get shot! Hunters as young as TEN years old may participate in the gun hunt as long as they’ve taken the hunter safety course and are within arm’s reach of an adult. Thinking of my ten year old students with guns is scary, but it’s a family tradition here for many. Hunters hunt from a walking position on the ground, in a tree stand, or in any other form of hunting stand. The pictures will show some normal ones and then ones people build to be unique and funny. It’s so important that most schools close that entire week. Our holiday of Thanksgiving also falls during that week, so there are two reasons for the vacation. The “prize” is to shoot the largest buck (male deer) with the largest rack of antlers possible. Large ones are often taxidermy-mounted to hang on the wall. Some people use or donate the skins/pelts for leather, and everyone uses the meat called venison. You can either butcher it at home or bring it to a butcher shop. The meat is cut into kitchen portions, wrapped, and given back to you. Many people have leftover meat made into “hot sticks” which is a type of sausage - many flavors available...and also jerky (dried and spiced). As I’m writing this, I am remembering again why the German immigrants, the first large group of immigrants to this area, were so important to our legacy of cheese, beer, and sausage making then and still now.
Fishing - all seasons - freshwater - lakes or rivers Our state fish is the muskellunge (we say musky). It is a sport-fishing “trophy” fish, meaning it’s hard to catch. Musky Fishing
Most people either catch-and-release them or catch and have them taxidermy mounted to display on their walls. Other popular catches are: walleye, trout, bass, panfish like bluegill and crappy (rhymes with poppy, not with happy) and in the Great Lakes...perch, salmon, and whitefish. Sport fishing, recreational fishing, and tournament fishing are very popular and bring a lot of tourists to the area.
Ice Shanties
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These are examples of ice shanties preferred by those who would like to stay out fishing for longer periods of time and stay out of the wind and cold to a certain extent - given they’re on a frozen lake in the middle of winter in Wisconsin! The whale is a popular one belonging to a man in a neighboring town. The Packers helmet hut is also a favorite. It’s kind of a competition to see who can build the coolest shanties (kind of like the deer hunting stand “competition”). Most either have the tent-styles, homemade sheds, or old, repurposed campers. Some people fish outside without a shanty (tent or enclosure). They bring an ice auger which is a large gas-powered motorized “screwdriver” that will dig a hole through the ice. Then they have to bring a perforated ladle with a long handle to keep scooping the forming ice out of the hole.
The pic with the black circles on the floor (ice hole covers) is of a fancy camper/ bunkhouse type rented out by a local resort. Some even have heaters and television!
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State law says that all shanties must be removed from the lakes by March 1st to avoid early ice-out and plunging into lakes. Speaking of falling in, every year, dozens of vehicles plunge in when they drive out onto the ice too early before it’s thick enough...or too late when it’s thinning quickly. Then they get a fine ($) for each day that it’s in the water, polluting and disrupting wildlife. (We all watch, laugh at them, and think they’re fools….while hoping it never happens to us!) More common is taking your snowmobile or four-wheeler - or just pulling a jon-boat (tray-like sled) out there with your gear.
Chain Skimmers Waterskiing Team - students from our school district.
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Summer fun - tubing (pulled by boat), kayaking or canoeing, taking a ride on the pirate ship, pontoon boating, or just sitting on the dock enjoying the scenery
Almost everyone has a backyard fire pit. Family campfires are a way to enjoy friends, and the smoke keeps the mosquitos away. Bicycling and running 5K races are popular here also.