After skedaddling out of the mall, the family and I finally did make it to the boat in Milwaukee for our tour of Lake Michigan. The captain was quite nice and was giving an excellent description of everything we were passing. After the first thirty minutes, though, we realized that, like the rest of Milwaukee so far, the man had his quirks.

He was obsessed with condo prices. "The cheapest you could get a place there would be one million dollars, folks. One million dollars." And he would go on to point out condo prices for four or five more buildings. NOBODY CARES, BUDDY. Okay, scratch that. My family certainly didn't care. We're not from the area, and we don't want to invest in any real estate along a really gross river. I'm guessing none of the children on board were too interested, either.

Then, we got to this bridge. It's still in working condition, and our captain was really in love with it. His favorite things to talk about—both on the way out to the lake and on the way back—were the little building up top and the ducks below. Apparently, when this bridge was in regular use, a man would live up there and control its direction. Granted, it was fun to think about someone with a little tiny bedroom and a little tiny kitchen living on top of a bridge, but it was not information that needed to be repeated once. Or twice. Or three times. We certainly did need to hear five times about the family of ducks who lived under the bridge, though, especially since we couldn't even see them.

Fortunately for us, this tour continued on for another two and a half hours, so we got to discover at least five more of our captain's obsessions. Stay tuned.