Milwaukee to Madison

Driving from Milwaukee to Madison, WI | Visiting the Holy Hill Basilica | Wisconsin State Capitol | April 2026

We awoke this morning in Kettle Moraine State Forest to find that the clouds and rain from the day before had moved on, leaving us with sunny skies. We had breakfast, then packed up and got started on today’s adventures. Our first stop was at the Holy Hill Basilica just a little ways South from where we camped — in fact, we had seen a glimpse of its tall spires from the tower on yesterday’s hike.

We had seen pictures of it online and knew it was a large structure on the top of a hill, but it was even more impressive up close. However, it’s hard to get good pictures of it to show its size and position on the hill. I guess all the pictures we had seen online had been taken by drone. Oh well, we enjoyed the details and design up close, and peeked inside to get a quick look at the chapel.

After our visit to the church, we drove down the hill and to the East where we found a trailhead for the Ice Age trail, and went for a little walk in the woods. Curtis found a letterbox and we enjoyed seeing some wildflowers that were starting to bloom. We had been enjoying seeing spring arrive in Iowa and Illinois, and now that we were further North it was like we were going back and seeing the first signs of spring popping up all over again.

Back on the road, we made another detour to see a sculpture park, but it wasn’t the kind you can get out and walk around, so we did a quick drive through and continued on. It was time to head further West, get more counties, and check off some more items on our Southern Wisconsin bucket list.

We made our way to I-90, then drove West to Madison. On our way, we grabbed one more county that we needed in Southeast Wisconsin. When we arrived in Madison, we navigated to the center of the city near the state capitol, found a place to park, then got out and began our little walking tour.

We’ve heard before that the Wisconsin State Capitol building is one of the better ones, so we were very excited to get to tour the inside today. When we arrived, we made our way inside, and started our own little self-guided tour. The inside was indeed grand, with colorful walls and pillars, murals, and an interesting dome. We spent a long time wandering between the different levels, along with many others who were touring, including school groups. We were even able to get a capitol building stamp from a visitor desk — I don’t know if all capitol buildings have stamps, but I guess that’s something we’ll have to look out for now!

After we were done inside, we still had time on our parking meter, so we continued our little walk around downtown. We walked over to a park on the shore of Lake Mendota on the Northwest side of the downtown area, and admired the flowering trees and waves rolling in off the lake.

Next, we drove a little further West to the University of Wisconsin-Madison Lakeshore Nature Preserve to do some more walking and enjoying the nature within the city. We had to pay for parking, so we decided to take full advantage of this parking spot and hang out here until dark. We set out on a long walk out to the point, enjoying views of the downtown area and capitol building sitting high above the rest of the city. We saw turkeys and sand hill cranes, watched a rowing team practicing in the lake, and Curtis found a letterbox. We sat at the end of the point for a while before returning to the van.

Back at the van, we rested, worked, and I made dinner. A sandhill crane walked right between our van and the next car over. We didn’t feel too bad about loitering because there were so many others here hanging out, doing their own thing.

After considering all our (limited) camping options, we decided to try stealth camping this evening in the city. I researched all the spots where others had parked overnight before, and ultimately ended up deciding on a parking lot in the far West side that was adjacent to apartments and the only signs around it said “24 hour parking only.” No problem, we wouldn’t even be there for half that time. After the sun set, we drove over to the lot and found it to be mostly empty. We stayed quiet and kept our lights dim, and ended up getting a decent night’s rest right there. Not our favorite way to camp, but we knew we would be spending more on campsites in the next couple nights, so we appreciated the free spot to stay tonight.

Overall, we were pretty impressed with Madison, and wouldn’t mind passing through again someday.