A whole entry in Wikipedia is dedicated to Wisconsin city nicknames. Cambridge is “the umbrella city” (more appropriate for the original Cambridge, I suspect), Bear Creek is “Home of the World’s Largest Sauerkraut Plant” (!) and Eagle River is the “Snomobile Capital of the World” - which all makes you wonder a) who keeps track of these things? and b) is someone somewhere currently trying to build a larger sauerkraut plant?

Five cities have cheese in the title, which frankly is disappointing considering how big a part of Wisconsin life cheese is.

Wisconsinites are commonly called “cheeseheads” because of the amount of cheese produced in the state. If you go to a Green Bay Packers game you will likely see something like this:

Stevens Point (named after George Stevens, hence no apostrophe in case you were wondering) is nicknamed the “Gateway to the Pineries” reflecting the other major industry in the region: timber.

Paper mills still form a part of the present day economy here, but that is disappearing like so many other traditional industries.

The list of notable residents of Stevens Point is almost as sparse as that from Manvel, TX. Two people of interest that did stand out were Peter Weller (of Robocop fame) and Brandon Peterson, X-Men artist (called a cartoonist by Wikipedia!).

Fortunately for visitors Stevens Point (and Wisconsin in general) has a growth industry - breweries. In one bar in Plover (a suburb of Stevens Point) they had 40 different beers from Wisconsin! Of course this is not my first brush with Wisconsin’s craft beers, having first experienced the horny goat (!) on a previous trip to Milwaukee.

Anyway, the ideal accompaniment to your Wisconsin craft beer is deep fried cheese curds. These are unlikely to ever be classed as a health food but they do make you feel good. Or was that the beer?