While on Skype with a friend who lives in Berlin, I turned my computer around to show my view.

“Are you in Iowa?” she asked.

Close. What looked like a cornfield was really land cleared to make room for future car dealerships and fast-food restaurants.

I was in Wisconsin, where American Family Insurance uses recent police shootings for marketing. On the cover of a mailed pamphlet titled, “Legal Tips: Tools for Interacting with Police Safely,” three men—Black, Asian and Latino—stand smiling with a white female police officer.

The takeaway: If you’re not white when you interact with cops in Wisconsin, you better have insurance—auto, health and, of course, life.

I was visiting my brother, who is a morning anchor for the ABC affiliate in Madison, the state’s capital. He’s the only Black anchor in the state. That isn’t surprising because, according to the Wisconsin Department of Public Health, there were fewer than 3,000 Black people in the state 100 years ago. In Milwaukee, the state’s largest city, segregation was still rampant in 1979, 25 years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision.

Still, Madison is a Top 100 TV market.

I took a Megabus from the bustling Amtrak terminal at Union Station in Chicago to a bus stop in front of an Arby’s in Middleton, Wis. Brandon, who was late picking me up, lives in Middleton, a short drive away from Madison on the West Beltline Highway.

This part of the midwestern United States reminded me of the South, just with a lot fewer Blacks, Latinos and Asians. I didn’t have a car, so I didn’t have much to do besides write and watch cars drive past. It was my least stressful week in months.

Other than working in media, I have little in common with Brandon, who is seven years younger. He’s a dog person, whereas I’m not because I had to take care of the dog he begged for when he was a kid. He likes Top 40 music, whereas my music tastes are peculiar to Top 40 listeners. When he took me thrift shopping, he stayed in the car.

There is something we have in common: We like to eat.

After he picked me up—Did I mention he was late?—we decided to get lunch. There were two options, including a local establishment that only took cash. Brandon asked me if I had some on me. “Yes, let’s go there,” I said.

Apparently, that didn’t register, because we stopped at Perkins Restaurant & Bakery, which offers free pie on Mondays. That means a dining room packed with seniors and a stressed staff. The manager, who was also the cashier, host and busboy, wiped crumbs off the table and into the seats. Neither of us play with dirty restaurants.

By mid-afternoon, Brandon, who starts work at 3 a.m., is ready for a nap. Although I have a more flexible schedule, I always take a post-lunch nap. (OK, so we have more than one thing in common.)

Besides catching up on sleep in the sleepy Midwest and watching the Republican National Convention, here are the highlights of my four days in Wisconsin.

LAKE MENDOTA

It’s the largest of the four lakes in Madison, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison runs along the southern shore. We drove through campus on the way to meet my brother’s colleagues, who drank beer as they dipped their toes into Mendota. There are no beaches in Madison, so during the summer, the lake’s metal docks are where people tan. They drive cars over the lake in the winter when it’s frozen solid. Of course they do.

LAKE MONONA

An isthmus separates Monona from Mendota. On Dec. 10, 1967, Otis Redding’s Beechcraft H18, bound for Truax Field in Madison, crashed into Monona. Ben Cauley, a member of the Bar-Kays, Redding’s backing band, was the only survivor. “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay,” recorded a second time just days before the crash, reached No. 1 in 1968, becoming the first posthumous release to do so.

WISCONSIN STATE CAPITOL

Built in 1917, the tallest building in Madison offers sweeping views of the city from the observation deck level, which you can walk around. The dome’s statue headdress is 284 feet off the ground. There’s a platform for indoor viewing of the rotunda, which must’ve provided a choice view in 2011 when public workers clogged the capitol in protest of Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to cut take-home pay.

GROCERY STORES

I dragged my brother to his first Whole Foods visit. He wasn’t impressed. I was with Hy-Vee, the employee-owned midwestern chain that stocked an impressive variety of KIND bars. We didn’t make it to Copps, but the “Cops” TV show theme song got stuck in my head each time we passed it. Whatcha gonna do?

BASSETT STREET BRUNCH CLUB

The best meal I had in Wisconsin—ciabatta French toast with rum sauce and fruit—was at this downtown Madison spot. You can’t go wrong with a brunch anytime restaurant that also sells donuts.

FREE SNOW CONES

I stayed inside for much of the trip because the region was under its first heat advisory in four years. In the Bay Area, you always have to carry a sweater or jacket, so I have an aversion to high temperatures. Because of the heat, Brandon’s station offered free treats of flavored shaved ice. I had a root beer snow cone while touring the station.

CHICK-FIL-A

I ate there twice—a chicken sandwich for dinner one night and chicken biscuit one morning. Because it’s not where I live, I can’t get enough of it when I see one. Brandon says he’s in the drive-through several times a week.

A love of Chick-fil-A, that’s something else we have in common.

Otis R. Taylor Jr. is a culture writer with a battle rap obsession. He is based in Oakland, Calif., and is the managing editor of ripple.co.