When used in Milwaukee, Madison, or Chicago, Up North refers to the rural areas of northern Wisconsin. This is in contrast to folks from Southern Illinois, who simply mean "chicago" when they say "up north". Up North, Outdoors activities are popular and devotion the the Green Bay Packers is religious, as is a hatred of the Minnesota Vikings. Beer (and usually awful beer such as Milwaukee's Best) is consumed like a daily medication. its incredibly easy for a standard middle class family in Chicago or Milwaukee to own a cottage Up North and have vacations there -- Land is cheap and the winters are brutal. Wisconsinites and Chicagoans simply refer to Michigan's upper Peninsula as "the U.P." and not as Up North. In this author's opinion, Up North is a neat place to visit and chill out and have fun basically doing nothing. Its weridly awesome shooting bottles with rifles, having huge bonfires, and you can by half-sticks of dynamite from "the indians" for a few bucks. there's one sherrif for an entire county so all sorts of debauchery happens up north.

The culture up north is north woods culture or up north culture, or at least thats what its called. Basically, its hicks. Up North is, all things considered, a complete cultural backwater. Door County is different, sitting on Wisconsin's Door Peninsula the place is super touristy and crammed with yuppies who think they're roughing it because they have a rustic cottage.

Wisconsin Dell's is a little town thats basically a series of waterparks, along with hotels that also have lots of waterpark type ammenities and tons of tourist trap type spots. the Dells is never really referred to as Up North, but simply The Dells. Mostly nauseating, trips to the dells are usually only worth it if its a day trip to Noah's Ark, which is a pretty decent waterpark. Suburban Yuppies and rural hicks are convinced that the dells are the shit.