Things to Do in Oshkosh

The laughter of children echoes through the dense pine forest and across the sandy beach before breaking on the lake's water like a crystal vase smashed with an inflatable hammer. Each week, new groups of kids explore Camp Lakotah's 126 acres alongside Little Hills Lake, engaging in more than 30 activities within its state-licensed and American Camp Association–accredited facilities. Campers engage in aquatic play, land-based sports, and arts-and-crafts sessions, honing both their physical fitness and creative sensibilities.

Staffers cater to each camper's needs throughout the week, guiding each individual toward activities focused on his or her personal goals and interests. The camp can serve vegetarian and diet-restriction-conscious food, and counselors can sing all campfire songs in the styles of both Bruce Springsteen and Andrea Bocelli.

Communities tend to like places that have good roots. That's one reason why Green Bay Press-Gazette readers voted the locally owned and operated Ashwaubenon Bowling Alley the 2012 Best of the Bay's Best Bowling Alley. For more than three decades, guests have flocked to the facility's 60 lanes to test their ball-rolling and pin-eating skills alongside friends and family. Each Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night, DJ Rusty Lee's tracks work with black lights and fog machines to create a nightclub-like cosmic bowling experience.

The instructors at Bricks 4 Kidz translate a curriculum molded around science, technology, engineering, and math into kid-friendly language using Legos. They encourage creativity at hands-on classes and parties, where they oversee youngsters in designing and erecting machines, catapults, buildings, and other colorful formations with architecture and physics in mind. By giving their labs whimsical themes, including outer space and roller coasters, they put the kids in an environment where they can work together to master tricky concepts such as friction and scale. Central theories and activities are tailored to groups based on age, ability, and which side of the “Does gravity exist?” debate they support.

While the S.S. Badger has been honored with a placement on the National Register of Historic Places, its beginnings were humble. First setting sail in 1953, the Badger originally carried railcars, along with a few select passengers, across scenic Lake Michigan year round. Now the last of the United States’s coal-fired steamships, the 410-foot vessel ships cargo of a different kind, transporting guests and their vehicles across Lake Michigan with the comforts and amenities of a modern cruise ship, with efforts to improve their ship environmentally in the near future.

While the boat embarks along between Ludington, Michigan and Manitowoc, Wisconsin, guests amble through the open deck for views of the scenic shorelines or set up shop on deck chairs, armed with a cool drink and a Mermaid-to-English dictionary. The ship’s shaded interior entertains with movies, guests shouting at celebratory bingo, and arcade games giving off musical tones as kids set new high scores. For a more muted ride, private staterooms let guests snooze away the hours, and a quiet room elucidates the ship’s history in hushed solitude. An in-house bar blends, shakes, and stirs ingredients into a range of refreshing cocktails, while the café showcases artfully crafted sandwiches like a deli hall of fame.