70 square miles surrounded by reality

The kid's and I headed up to Madison, WI yesterday.

It's a great city. This is a list of why so many people love living in Madison.
It's January but you would have sworn it was July by the number of bikes on the roads. There is an extensive network of bike paths, routes, and lanes. People bike in the snow and ice here by adding chains to their bike tires. They even have a bicycle parking ordinance. When one wants to add a development they are required to add "X" number of bike parking spots according to this ordinance.
They have a city bike at work program that allows employees of the city to "check out" a bike as an alternative to using their automobiles.
It was hard to pick what we were going to do during the 12 hours that we had here. In downtown Madison they have what's called "the museum mile". There are 6 museums and galleries to pick from. Since I had 2 kid's in tow the logical choice was the Children's museum. It would have been fantastic a few years ago when the kids were younger but they still had a good time. We also checked out the Geological museum on campus. When I first heard of this I thought great a bunch of rocks to look at. This place was great. First off it's absolutely free. We picked up a self tour guide book at the beginning and worked our way around. They even had an entire section devoted to fossils where you could observe scientists uncovering dinosaur remains.
It was really hard to pick a restaurant for dinner as almost every restaurant is veggie friendly. We ended up at Monty's Blue Plate Diner. They had tons of vegan/vegetarian options. Check out the menu here. The meat eaters and the veg head were satisfied and full upon departure.
We arrived home well after midnight last night but I'm looking forward to heading back up to Madison in the summer and it's 70 square miles and escaping reality if only for another day trip.