- Hi, I'm Eric The Travel Guy.

You know, today we brought you to a place that some describe as Northern Wisconsin's finest.

Break out the cheese curds, Ashland, Wisconsin is next on Beyond Your Backyard.

- [Woman] Beyond Your backyard is being brought to you in part by the following.

(indistinct chatting) (jazz music) The Perillo Tours Foundation.

For 73 years, we've been bringing travelers to Italy.

It's where our heart is.

Escorted tours and custom vacations, Italy, the dream destination.

- My name is Erik Hastings.

Yeah, that's me and for as long as I can remember, I've always loved to travel and I still do today, but you know what I've learned?

There's so much more that brings us together than divides us, which is why I've made it my mission to do the very same things you can do, but to take you beyond the experiences, to uncover the soul of every place we visit.

Let me introduce you to the people, the places and the secrets that remind us how exciting it is to share with one another, to understand one another and to realize just how connected we really are.

I am Erik The Travel Guy, and this is Beyond Your Backyard.

(slow music) Thank you for joining us and welcome back.

As you know by now, here on Beyond Your Backyard, we are passionate about inspiring you to get out and explore the nooks and crannies of North America and beyond.

Yes, big cities, small towns and everywhere in between.

That's why we brought you here.

This is Ashland, Wisconsin.

You know, in our research, we were confident that this town had stories to tell.

We just had to learn where to look and boy did we find them.

That's why on today's episode, we're gonna learn more about the role this great lake has played in the story of Ashland.

We'll explore those historic and beautiful murals downtown.

We will eat our weight in cheese curds, but we're also to pull back the curtain and show you how the sausage gets made.

Literally, we're gonna get elbow deep in making delicious homemade, bratwurst.

Trust me, we're going to have a superior, of a good time together.

Let's get started.

Our spectacular digital map shows us where right here on the banks of Lake Superior, about a 90 minutes drive from Duluth, Minnesota, and three and a half hours drive from the Twin Cities of Minneapolis, St. Paul.

It's about four hours Northwest of Green Bay and five and a half hours Northwest of Milwaukee.

Renting a car is important so you can explore and I suggest arriving in the summer or early fall.

The population here has had its ups and downs throughout history but if you're wondering how and why Ashland came to be, well, we have an expert for that.

But this is a massively large downtown for such a small town.

- It was a commerce town and it is the town, I mean, it's the county seat.

It did a lot of the trade from hundreds of miles south to here.

I mean, your next biggest city going south was Wausau.

That's 180 miles from here.

And you had four ore docks and 14 sawmills on this bay.

You had the three major breweries.

Here, we are at the paths building - Wow.

- And over there was Miller.

- This was an old theater.

- Yes, it was one of five.

We had four, five opera houses in this town at one point.

- Oh my God.

- I mean, and major people came here and stuff.

They were all on the circuit.

And in the old days, the big breweries owned these big buildings and there were dance halls.

- What?

- And social hours and they had bars and they were owned by the breweries.

- That's the other thing.

What's with the cheese and the breweries, you know, beer specifically and the sausages?

I mean, what and why is that?

- Germans my dear - Yeah.

- Are the ancestry of Milwaukee.

Up here, we have a lot of the Norwegian and the Finlander - Yeah.

- And that kind of stuff.

And a fair amount of German immigrants came here too.

- I had (indistinct) for breakfast by the way.

- You did really?

- No.

- You did not.

- What year are we working with?

Is it 1854, 1850?

- We're starting with the early 1800s.

- Okay.

- It started with logging and then in 1887, the railroad came up here and that would be Wisconsin Central.

We also had the docks.

We were shipping starting in the early 1800s.

- Ore primarily?

- Ore and lumber.

We were to be the like many cities, the next Chicago.

- I'm always fascinated about why does the town look the way it does?

So why does Ashland look this way today?

- All downtown started like a boom town kind of thing.

and there were the typical architectural, the stick style buildings, which we called false front or the boom town to make them look bigger and more important than they were.

We had, as prosperity started to come, you wanted to show a sense of permanence so that you start getting more substantial buildings going up.

And especially banks were usually the leaders in that changing from wood to stone, right.

- To stone.

The sense of permanence, that's a really, to show permanence that this town basically, said no, we're going to stay here.

And in order to put down roots here, you had to use more than just wood but it's almost like somebody had to take a first step and it is a psychological thing.

- Totally a psychological thing.

One of the things that we look at around here is these bigger stone buildings face north.

It's like, okay mother nature we're gonna take you on - Right.

- Because it was brutal up here.

I mean, it's still sometimes pretty brutal up here.

- Yep.

- And so it was a defiance and a sense of permanence that we have stuck our feet in this ground and we are staying.

We are not going anywhere.

- And doesn't the temperature have something to do with all of this?

- The winters are challenging and the next time any provisions or mail or things like that was not until they ice went out on the bay.

So you had five, six months sometimes as an early settler here that you had to just like each other.

- Yeah.

- 'Cause there wasn't a whole lot else going on.

- Right.

- As you come north in Wisconsin, you'll notice that a lot of the towns are between nine and 15 miles apart and that was because they could only build the railroad that many miles each year.

So then where, - Oh come on.

- Wherever they got to, then that was kind of the booms, little boom town for a year until they went north again.

You didn't know that?

I had no idea.

- Yay I got you.

- That is outstanding.

- Yeah it's fun one.

- It makes a lot of sense too.

- Yeah, it wasn't just a one-time thing.

When lumber ran out, it still had the ore.

When the ore ran out, we had other things.

When brownstone ran out, different things took their place.

- When somebody is thinking about, you know what?

This is a town that we haven't explored yet.

What would you recommend that they see and do while they're here?

- Definitely the architecture is amazing, but also the environment.

Not just the lake, but the woods, the resources around here to enjoy all of that stuff that you've got the opportunity just by walking out your back door, to put on cross-country skis and go somewhere if that's what you wanna do.

The artists community up here, we have huge theaters.

We have the Big Top Chautauqua.

So that there's a great diversity in which you don't have to just be wanting to go hunting in November.

- Did I get this correct that most of these businesses, what 100% of these businesses downtown are locally-owned?

- 98% it's locally owned.

- You walk in the store, that's a locally owned store?

- Yes.

- You would have a unique perspective here.

How do you define Midwestern nice?

- Even for a large town, there is a great sense of neighborhood.

And there are neighborhoods within Ashland that are very tight to each other where a lot of people know each other.

- Would visitors feel that when they're here?

- I think they do because it comes across in the service of the people who work in the restaurants or the gas station.

Yeah, the public service people.

I mean all of that stuff.

I think that comes across.

- It's good to meet you.

- Good to meet you.

Thank you.

- Walking through downtown, it's impossible to not notice the murals.

They are absolutely amazing and worth taking a second look.

I like this one the best and I'm sure you can see why, but in all seriousness, these murals are breathtaking, which is why I wanted to meet one of the artists.

I look at something like this and I wonder, where does the artists get the inspiration and where does it come from?

I can't do that.

- All of our murals are historically accurate.

Every single aspect can be documented through historical photographs.

Because of that, we are the Historic Mural Capital of Wisconsin.

We're the only one that tells the history.

These we say are our outdoor museums.

- Yeah.

- And I like to think that these people step out of these murals and speak for Ashland - Absolutely.

- And tell its history.

- Something like this, how long would it take start to finish though?

- This particular mural we did outside and it was an extremely rare year.

We were able to start in the middle of April and we painted straight through to the middle of October.

- Wow.

- The mural that's across the street, that the same size because of the detail, it took us two summers.

- What's a little bit different here is the history that goes with it.

- These are all average people who get up in the morning, go to work, build a community.

You know, an industry dies, they find another way to make a living.

A family moves, there's a tragedy.

It's just the story of American life.

- How many murals are there?

There's like 20, right?

- There's 20 murals.

- How long will they last?

- The ones that are outside the paint, they say 20 years, but we have murals that are over 20 years old.

- But what's interesting to me is that it, it's supported by the community.

Did I get that right?

- Correct.

Groups of people would come together.

Families would come together $50 at a time, 100 at a time.

So the community funds these murals and I'm very proud to say for the community, - Yeah.

- We are 90% self-sufficient.

- That's amazing and almost unheard of.

- It is.

- And of course that begs the question, do you paint for you or you do you paint for us the viewer?

- Well, I do paint for the viewer because I want you to understand the story.

Everybody has their own technique - Right.

- And you just have to be true to that technique.

I can't paint like somebody else.

- Sue, thank you very much for this.

Good to meet you.

Wow, the passion, the energy.

I could have talked with her all afternoon, but I wanted to see those murals.

And one of the places to see one of them is here.

This is H. Pearson Park and right under that tunnel, another mural.

Just beyond it, the water.

On this side of the tunnel of course, the downtown.

The locals here take pride in their town including the downtown, which as you can see, I had a fun time exploring.

(bright music) Man, love those slides.

Okay, let's move on.

You know, folks here have that kind of Midwestern, nice vibe down path.

They're happy to discuss their swimming beaches, fishing piers, picnic areas, and playgrounds.

At Bayview Park, you can also catch the walking biking trail that circles Ashland on a 12 mile loop.

Lake towns like Ashland possess the ability to foster tight knit communities made up of both part-time and full-time residents.

They gather at festivals and concerts.

Just looking at the band shell.

I can imagine reciting a dramatic reading from history.

Of course the crowd loved it but I digress.

While you're here, you'll also notice the amazing amount of boathouses on Lake Superior.

And as they share the seasons and the lake, people also share their ideas of how to build their lifestyles into their boat houses, which you'll see along the waterfront and give Ashland so much character and charm.

Help me define what is Midwestern nice.

- Well, I think it means to be welcoming.

- Yeah.

- You know, I mean, I don't know you, - No.

- I don't know your crew - No.

- And yet, you're certainly welcome here.

And when you come down here, I think you'll feel welcomed as well.

I think it's just ingrained into the people that are born and raised and live and work here.

- Yeah.

- You know, it's a smaller community and I think there is a difference in a smaller community.

- Well, let's go take a look inside.

- Welcome.

- Thank you.

Wow this is luxurious.

- As you can tell from the wall hangings, were all about Wisconsin you know.

So this is our own little retreat here you know.

So if we wanna get away, we come down to our boathouse.

You know, obviously there's a TV in here and we'll watch a packer game or a Badger game.

- Have some beer, cheese soup - Yeah or just beer (laughs) - Or just (laughs) - But you know, I mean, this is pretty cozy too and it gives you a little bit different atmosphere, getting away from the house, getting away from the four walls, - Yeah.

- Going out the door, you know, back to nature.

It's pretty nice.

- How cold does it get?

- It gets pretty cold.

You know, we're talking, there are times 25, 30 below up here and that's not wind chill, that's legitimate temperature you know 25 - Do you get cabin fever?

Like he can be cold for quite some time.

You get like a, just get a little squirrely out there in March or so?

- There is no doubt.

You know, for us it's like when we do the ice fishing thing, we have teepees, right.

Little tents that you get inside and they're just, single-person teepees and you have a fishing partner that would be my brother and he'd have his teepee that'd be located about 10 feet over, you know.

So it's like, you're just kind of chatting, you know almost like across the fence to your neighbor and your, my brother's next door in his teepee and all and how are you getting any bites?

And when you work all week, I think you need a little bit of an escape and different people - Agreed.

- Have different types of escapes.

- Yeah.

- You know, grow up, you're raised or you live here and you can't help but wanting to be out in nature cross-country skiing, - Right.

- Running, mountain biking, et cetera.

But there's also a lot of four wheelers going on.

You know, there's boats.

I mean, all you need to do is look at the resident's backyards to figure out what their priorities are - What they're doing.

- Oh yeah.

- Yeah.

How do you keep it cool and warm?

I mean, are we talking about installation here?

Help me out there.

- Well, we had this one foam insulated and we put in a little propane fireplace.

It doesn't take much to heat this place up in the wintertime.

Now, you just sit out here and you have a little table here and you just - You play some cards.

- Oh yeah.

- Have a little wine.

- Exactly.

- So wait a minute.

So is this still part of Wisconsin?

Forgive my ignorance.

I don't have a map front of me.

- This is all Chequamegon Bay.

Out there is the outlet of Chequamegon Bay.

And that's where the 22 Apostle Islands sit.

Growing up here, I respect the bay.

I respect the water, I respect the land.

- Isn't it kind of part of your DNA and part of your fabric?

- I think it is and I think that Wisconsin, Midwest nice is also a respect for nature.

See, there's a bald Eagle right there.

- Oh, come on that's a bald Eagle?

- Oh yeah.

You can tell by the white tail.

- Oh my gosh.

- There you go.

- Just flying around, doing his thing today.

- Exactly, yeah.

You know, when you can sit out on our little deck there and you can see otters feeding and playing around right off of your deck.

I mean, that's pretty special I think, you know.

- Yeah.

There seems to be a calming effect of listening to that water just lap up against the shoreline.

- There is no doubt.

As we look out into the bay, we're looking kind of Northwest.

So the sunsets are just amazing as well.

- Jeff, thank you man.

Good to meet you.

- Thank you.

- Appreciate this.

- Yep, you bet.

- The theme here is the water and rightfully so.

After all, Lake Superior is one of the five great lakes and it is massive but did you know this area is home to three natural artesian wells where you can fill up to your heart's desire on good old H2O.

It's all true.

Que the silent movie.

(bright music) Oh, I do love a good reenactment.

The water and the food for that matter is very good here.

While I was in town, I dropped by the Deep Water Grille, hung out with some cool business owners and sampled the menu at Second Street Bistro.

The burgers were amazing at The Burger Barn and I even enjoyed mouthwatering fajitas.

I know you know how important cheese is to this state, but some would argue that sausages are equally vital to any lunch or dinner plate.

And one of my favorites is bratwurst.

- We're gonna make a batch of bratwurst from start to finish.

- All right very good.

Well, I'm ready.

Are you ready?

- Sounds good.

- All right what do we need?

- We need the hat and smock and we'll go get that and we'll just smack - I have my hat.

Hold on I got a hat.

I brought my own hat and you watch this.

- Uh-oh.

- Here we go.

Now I'm ready, yes?

- Now you're in Wisconsin.

- Now I'm in and this is it.

We've been waiting for months to put this thing on.

First of all, - Yup.

- What are we working with here?

- So right there, what he's doing right now is he's working on some pork limbs.

So he's gonna start cutting some boneless pork chops, - Oh, look at this.

- This started off as a pork shoulder, Coney trimmed 'em all and batched them up into a 50 pound log.

We'll dump this into the hopper, into the grinder here.

- All right.

- Everything's been cubed to a smaller portion.

- And there's no seasoning.

There's no nothing?

- No nothing in this right now Just straight meat.

I always start some in the trow and it'll start feeding it through and if we end up, yap I'll take that.

If we end up getting it backed up, we got (indistinct) here and you can kinda feed it through.

So all we're doing is feeding it in slow so the grinder does the work.

- Better to say, that's kinda gross.

- (laughs) It's all right, I don't mind it.

So from this point here, after it's ground, we'll go right over to the mixer.

Everything's on.

We're gonna take that lever and push it towards this pork.

- Forward?

- Yep, that way first and from that point, yep.

- So now let's mix 'em and you can go ahead and dump the beer in there.

- Beer?

- Next, flip it in there and those stick a lot.

This is (indistinct) So this is cubed high-temp cheddar cheese.

- And what does that mean, high-temp?

- And it doesn't melt away when you're grilling it.

- Got it.

- I'll work the pedals forward.

- Safety first everybody.

- Right.

I'll grab the ladder and we'll work our way over to the stuffer.

- Oh you magically got a little taller than me, but that's fine.

Still okay, I'm all right with it.

- Go gadget legs.

- Right, go gadget legs.

- So at this point here, we're just gonna dump it into the stuffer.

- Okay.

- So this has gotta slit all the way through the underside.

- Got it, okay.

- And all we have to do, it's all rinsed, it's soaked - Yeah.

- And what we'll do is we'll slide it the top of the horn, pull it all the way through, get rid of the tube and the casing is on and ready to go.

- Wow.

- So what we're gonna do is we're gonna just feed this through.

- Okay.

- And then this here, tightens and loosens.

Makes the case even tighter on the horn.

Pulls against the plates on the inside.

- Got it.

- So I find the correct tension and then we're gonna switch this back to spinning, - Back to spinning.

- And then we're gonna be ready to go.

So it's given this meat enough tension here, and all I'm doing is I'm kind of helping it.

Just kind of give - But I'm just kinda letting it flow.

- It away from the This is amazing.

- So what I can do is I can stop there if you wanna give it a whirl.

- All right I got.

- I'm gonna switch sides with ya.

- I'm on it.

All right so I press this thing now?

- Yeah you gotta push it.

All you gotta do is push it once and it's gonna turn on.

- Oh, got it okay.

- And then, yep go ahead and then just kind of grab 'em as they're coming out.

- Is there any down that?

See, I already screwed one up.

Why did they do that?

- Yep.

- Oh, see why?

You did like 400 of those.

I did like five.

It's ridiculous.

- So all that's happened is - We have a bratwurst worst emergency.

I don't want it.

We have like a (indistinct) - Explosion.

- It is a bratwurst explosion.

- So you can see where it started sticking?

And it gets shorter.

- Oh I see.

- You see?

- Right, there she was.

- Oh that one had a hole too.

- Well, you have to rub it in and come on now.

But that's it.

- So that's the bratwurst.

As far as next to what we do is we would snip, you know?

And at that point you're, we're snipping a, snipping the bratwurst apart.

We're taking the tails off.

So after the bratwurst are made back there, we display some in the case.

- They come out here, okay.

- Here's the ones we just made now, is the packer backers.

- Wow.

- Full summertime, there'll be 15 flavors, 10.

We package them up and we slip 'em into the freezer - In the freezer.

So if I can get these out of the freezer, - Yep.

- And I pull these two, can I put the bread on the grill?

- I will do a rub rod.

I'll put it on a grill and just go slow.

- Yeah.

- Just like you would a steak.

- Because if you drop it in that brine, what happens?

- You're heating inside up so fast.

You're actually gonna start boiling the bratwurst - Got it from the inside out.

- From the inside out.

So what it's gonna do is it's gonna force juices out.

- Out.

You could actually make your own bratwurst.

- And I cater to a lot of people that do.

Salt and pepper, - Yeah.

- A few different spices, but it's, I mean, there's nothing in there that you couldn't get at your grocery store.

- Well, I think we should go try them.

- All right I got some stuff out on the grill here.

- Please, you don't have to ask me twice.

- All right.

- I can tell you that.

It is gorgeous out here.

My gosh, it's an entire tray of sausages.

What are we looking at?

- So what we have here is this the packer backer that we just made him back.

- Got it.

- This one here is a cranberry wild rice bratwurst.

- Sure.

- Over here we got Megan's Mac and cheese.

Here's our ring blower.

I believe last year we won grand champion at State Fair.

This one here.

Now this is a collagen casing.

- Mac and cheese was natural.

- That is a natural.

- Yeah.

- This is a collagen.

You'll feel a little bit different bite.

So this is a coarse ground.

- Okay.

- It's all pork.

- Yeah.

- All pork Cajun seasonings So this is a jambalaya.

You wanna grab a plate and just grab one?

- Sure (indistinct) - Here you wanna grab a fork.

- Come on I'm, I've grabbed nothing yet.

I'll just grab one right here.

- I like these right on the grill right next to a steak.

- Yeah.

- Then you can brown these up really good.

- Yeah.

(bright music) Again, you gotta do the lean but you did it.

Inherently, you just lean forward, just enough.

- Yeah.

You gotta aim this.

- Some of us have to lean a little further than others.

Expect you know, we wanna miss.

- This past year we entered international competition in Frankfurt, Germany.

- Okay.

All right (indistinct) how many entries did you do?

- We entered 10 products.

- 10 products.

- Yup.

- Okay and what happened?

- And out of the 10 products, we ended up with nine goals.

- No way!

- Yeah, so here we maybe should have started with this one here.

- Yeah right we're getting - But here's (indistinct) - To grand finale.

I love it.

- Here's our package back here - This is what we made.

- This is the one we made today and see how the cheese is held up?

- Yeah it did.

You were right.

- That high temp cheese, you can grill it.

You don't lose that.

- You don't lose it.

Oh that's incredible.

- That beer flavor still there.

- Still there, didn't go away.

This is awesome.

- Yes, thank you.

- Thank you, my friend.

Good to meet you and thank you - Nice to meet you - For this (indistinct) - And thanks for stopping by and taking the time to walk through.

- Got to get the jalapeno peppers.

- The jalapenos.

- We gonna get though we have a lot to get to.

You know, now that we're a BFFs and all, may I make a suggestion?

Go ahead, take a chance, take the time and take the drive because you never know.

Ashland, Wisconsin may just deliver exactly what you're looking for.

I'm Erik The Travel Guy.

Thank you for exploring Beyond Your Backyard.

(upbeat music) Would you consider doing a mural of this interview?

'Cause I think this is pretty interesting.

- I would love to do a mural of this interview.

Let me tell you something Sue.

I could screw up sides to buildings all over town.

That will definitely be the wrong way to do it.

This is like a turpentine nightmare to me.

This is a meat professional at work here.

I'm just saying you can tear the grindings going on in his mind.

What do you need?

Half a pound of ton?

You got it, lady, no problem.

All the blood sausages rushing to my head just.

Oh, that's perfect.

- You gotta come to the best part.

- Yeah like the notion of other meat kings all over the world going, oh really?

- Oh really?

- And is that what you think?

Oh, well I got some news for you.

Who say baloney, but some people say baloney.

- Oh my daughter plays with me every day.

- This is all baloney as far as I'm concerned but all right.

That's your closest competitor right there trying to throw off the interview.

He's like I don't wanna hear about the rewards again.

- That's (indistinct) again.

That's my new mixer.

- (laughs) My new mixer.

(bright music) - [Man] For more information on this episode, visit erikthetravelguy.com and while you're there, you'll discover other fascinating destinations just Beyond Your Backyard and links to follow me on social media.

That's erikthetravelguy.com.

(indistinct chattering) (jazz music) - [Woman] The Perillo Tours Foundation.

For 73 years we've been bringing travelers to Italy.

It's where our heart is.

Escorted tours and custom vacations, Italy, the dream destination.

- Hi I'm Erik The Travel Guy.

You know, I've been exploring the world professionally for more than a decade and you know what I've learned?

Is that fantastic experiences await you in every corner of the globe, but you don't always have to travel that far to uncover them.

So join me each week as we go on and off the beaten path, learn something new and sample delicious culinary.

We're exploring Beyond Your Backyard.

(bright music)