Crossing the Prairie

August 21, 2010

After obsessing for way too long about where to go from Wisconsin Dells, Joe told me we should just go with our original plan and “go west”. So despite online weather projections of 100 degree heat in North Dakota, we decided to head in that direction anyway. As Joe said, “we’ve been hot before”, and our other options seemed either unexciting or too mosquito-y.

We got our usual fairly late start from the Dells, jumping right onto I-94, which was pretty much our route for two days. We did stop after a few hours at a Walmart to refill our cupboards and find a few other odds and ends. We are happily surprised that we managed to go for 6 days without a stop at a Walmart or a similar place for a long list of forgotten, overlooked, or emergency items. Maybe our packing is improving. In any case, we found everything we needed, including a mailbox with daily pickup, so I mailed some postcards while I was at it.

(Above: These Amish farmers were selling baked goods and rugs. Their carriages were right under the Pilot sign; their harnessed horses were tied in the shrubbery across the street.)

Otherwise, it was a very long day of driving. We crossed the St. Croix River into Minnesota (beep beep—another new state sticker!) at about 3:30 pm and stopped at the first rest stop so I could pick up maps and other tourist info, in case we wanted to change our direction at that point (still possible). When I came out of the building, I found Joe lying in a shady spot in the grass with Roxy. From there we made our way through construction and Friday afternoon traffic around Minneapolis-St. Paul. Then we went over the Mississippi (it’s much narrower up here than it is further south! And it goes right through Mpls-SP—am I the only one who didn’t realize this before?) and headed northwest. We stopped sometime around dusk for dinner, and then continued on our way.

At about this point, Joe made a discovery—he could not find his cell phone. After much searching and thought, he realized that it must have fallen out of his pocket when he was lying in the grass earlier in the day. So we added to our agenda for the next day to find an AT&T store in Bismarck, and try to replace it. Meanwhile he turned off the service by using my phone.

At about 10pm we crossed the Red River into Fargo, North Dakota (beep beep!) So this is the truth: it is VERY VERY DARK at night in North Dakota, even on an interstate highway (with a speed limit of 75, btw). There were almost NO cars. There wasn’t even the almost obligatory rest area/tourist info stop within a mile or two of the state line. Two out of three exits say “no services”, and it was extremely eerie in the nighttime. By the light of the moon we could see fog rising in the fields next to us, and from time to time we drove through bands of fog over the highway. I started to freak out a little bit (without the tourist rest stop I didn’t even have a good map) but we had our trusty Next Exit book which told us that in about 50 miles there was a highway rest area. We got there at about 11 pm and that was enough driving, we were both quite tired—we’d travelled 510 miles since morning. And luckily,this rest area also had enough tourist info (and maps) to make me happy.
We hit the road again in the morning and stopped an hour later in Jamestown, the first place of any size we came to. We wanted to find some wifi so we could possibly check online on where we might find an AT&T store. We also figured it was a great opportunity to see the World’s Largest Buffalo. So we went to Frontier Village. While there I asked someone if she had any idea where we might find an AT&T store, and she told me that “probably the nearest one is in Minnesota”, LOL! It seems AT&T doesn’t operate in ND. She was, however, able to point us in the direction of someplace with wifi. Unfortunately that didn’t help, because the AT&T store locator page was completely worthless. So it seems Joe won’t have a replacement phone any time before Nebraska, since I’m guessing SD doesn’t have AT&T either. Meanwhile I updated my Facebook status from Jamestown.
From Jamestown we drove another 100 miles to Bismarck, the capital of ND. The guide book mentioned something about the state capitol being unusual, so we decided we’d get off the highway to see it, and to have some lunch. We didn’t go inside (we were there during the time it was closed, but I doubt we’d have gone in anyway. I think the fact that it is 19 stories, the only such “tower” we’ve seen in the whole state, is what makes it unique around here, although it’s supposed to be beautiful inside. Our visit did coincide with the “Pink Heals Tour” event on the grounds of the Capitol. Their pink fire trucks were so cool and their mission even cooler--check it out! So I took some photos and we had some lunch, and left—crossing the Missouri River before I realized it! So no photo (I’ll try to get it on our way back east.)

Right past Bismarck, we finally got ourselves off the “superslab” by picking up a “scenic byway” which basically paralleled I-94. This was nicer scenery (although actually the views from I-94 are quite lovely), and we really enjoyed the next 100 miles. We passed thousands of acres of sunflowers and “amber waves of grain.” Toward the end of the route, we stopped at the “Flying Geese” sculpture, the largest scrap metal sculpture in the world. It is situated on a hill overlooking the highway and the countryside, and the view was simply gorgeous. As we looked down on the fields, we could see the grasses blowing in the wind, looking absolutely like flowing water (the illusion was increased by the most “flowy” field being the color of spring green). Plus the varying shades of greens, and golds, and the shadows in the distance, and the hills, were simply fabulous. Such a beautiful state with such broad vistas and wide horizons…. We just love it. And then we jumped back on “the slab” for the last 30 or so miles to Medora, ND, the entryway to Theodore Roosevelt National Park.
So we are now nestled in a campsite in Medora at the foot of the Badlands-we are right by the river under the cottonwood trees, looking at striated rock perhaps 100 yards away from us. It is hot, as advertised, but it seems that North Dakota has a VERY strong “breeze” blowing today, and it has helped hugely. We seem also to have entered Mountain Time, which means we gained an hour to relax this evening. In fact, Joe and I are sitting outside in our lounge chairs with the breeze blowing. He’s reading, and I of course am typing. Roxy is lying nearby, and not embarrassing us too much by barking at the very-close neighbors and their little white dog. Tomorrow, we explore the Badlands!

Photos from Yesterday

I must be losing my mind, or else was just too tired last night to know which end was up. Tonight I discovered that once again I seem to be missing a whole group of photos from today. BUT, I found the missing photos from *yesterday's* blog. So for those of you who like pictures, here are some lovely shots, first of the greenhouse at the cheese factor which I wrote about, and then of the Wisconsin countryside.

A Dell-lightful Day

Aug. 19, 2010

Well, we finally REALLY filled up a day with great activities, despite not getting quite as early a start as I'd hoped. But nothing was too far away, so that helped. The first thing I did, though, was book another night here at Fox Hill RV Park. It was nice to know where we'd be tonight, and made it easier to plan.

Our first stop was to track down a place where I wanted to pick up "The Original Wisconsin Dells Coupon Book." I'd seen something about it before we left home, but I had no time to do much planning for this trip and never thought twice about it. Too bad, because I would have had a Buy One, Get One Free (BOGO) offer on our Circus World tickets, and half off the 2nd night here at Fox Run. However, I spent a lot of time last night researching activities and discounts in the Dells. It seems you DO need an MA to actually make sense of all the various discounts, combinations, books, discount cards, etc. which they put out around here. EVERYTHING costs a LOT of money and the discounts really help a lot.

So I hadn't gotten this book in advance, but last night I found out that 1) if we wanted to go on a zipline attraction, i could get a BOGO coupon from the book (thank you, Trip Advisor.com!) Since the zipline was quite pricey, saving one entire entrance fee was worth $80. The coupon book costs $19.95, but then I found a coupon in a magazine which gave me $3 off if I picked it up at their office, so that was what we did first thing. So the book cost $16.95.

We then drove another mile or so into the downtown area of the Dells, and parked Mo for free (no coupon needed for that, and that's the ONLY thing that didn't cost money!) It was the absolutely perfect place to park, because we were right around the corner from the H.H.Bennett Studio (BOGO in the coupon book). H.H.Bennett is the Ansel Adams of the Wisconsin Dells. He was a pioneer in the art of photography, taking gorgeous photos of the Dells at the end of the 19th and early 20th Centuries, and inventing new photographic techniques for both taking and developing photos. One difference between him and Adams, however, was that he took photos in order to market the Dells and attract people to come visit (and buy his photos!)

His studio was preserved by his family for decades, and recently became a Wisconsin Historical Site. The store includes a small museum which tells about Bennett, the Dells history, and has a wonderful overview of some of Bennett's photographic techniques, including that of making stereoscopic photographs, which was one of his specialties. The museum was really well done and we enjoyed it a lot.

After learning about the early history of the Dells, we stopped back at the RV and had a quick lunch, and then took the Dells Boat Tour of the Upper Dells (the coupon book deal was good for a free kid, which didn't help us--so I used a different flyer offering 20% off. This is what I mean about needing a degree to get through the coupon offers!) This was about a 2.5 hour trip up the river, where we saw the beautiful sandstone cliffs of the Dells. Twice the boat stopped so we could walk through particularly unusual and pretty areas. The first stop was the Witches Gulch, a place where the path between the two cliff walls was only a few feet wide. A stream cut through beneath the wooden walkway. It was very cool, although somewhat spoiled by the large concession stand at the end of the winding path.

The second stop was a place called Stand Rock. This is a large outcropping of rock about 5.5 feet away from the main cliff. Bennett made this site famous. He had wanted to demonstrate his new invention, a camera which allowed him to take stop-action shots. He had his teenage son repeatedly leap from the cliff to the outcrop of rock until he caught the jump in mid-air. This made both Bennett and the Dells famous, and is a very well-known image. These days, the tour company has replicated this feet with leaping German Shepherd dogs, who showed us just how it was done. (We'd had our own chance to try the leap at Bennett's studio in the morning, with the image of the rocks drawn on the floor.)

The tour was lovely, albeit a little bit low-key. So we ended our day with the distinct opposite--two hours at the Bigfoot Zipline Tours. Joe and I were suited up into our harnesses with 6 other people, then drove a short way to our first jump. There were 6 jumps altogether, adding up to 5,000 feet of zipline, four of the jumps being over water. The hard parts were: 1) walking up a total of almost 500 steps to get to the top of these towers, and 2) learning how to STOP at the bottom! The latter was hard for me, because my arms are too short, and i kept losing my grip and hence any control. Joey, on the other hand, was too good at it, and kept slowing down his speed in the middle of the "zip". It was TOTALLY fun, and we were totally hot and sweaty and tired, but exhilarated, at the end. I hadn't felt comfortable bringing a camera with me (no-duh!) but they took photos of us on the third line, and mine came out great (although it makes me look like a small elephant, due to being trussed up in the harness and sitting up all in a ball.) Joe's was good but he was using proper form, which meant that unfortunately his arm blocked his face (i'd once again had trouble reaching the line and had lost my grip for the 3rd time--but by the last two jumps I had gotten it right!) The final jump was from a really high tower which gave us a fantastic view of the Dells area, and which carried us almost 1400 feet from top to the landing point.

Since we'd taken the 5pm "tour", it was 7pm before we got finished, and like i said we were DONE for the day. So we stopped for a quick burger at Culver's (another coupon in the book ) and came back to our RV park.

As a result of such a full day, however, we've decided to move on tomorrow. We may stop at the International Crane Sanctuary before we leave (another BOGO coupon in my book, LOL!) but we will skip the Duck Boat tour--we don't have a burning need to see the Lower Dells and we've ridden Ducks before. And for the most part, the rest of the attractions are expensive and unappealing to grownups without children. So, we shall see where we end up tomorrow! Joey thinks we should head for ND and see how far we can get before we have to turn around .

Life is a Circus

August 18, 2010

Well, I continue to be plagued with photographic problems. Twice I have lost data from my sim cards in my Olympus, and this morning, it refused to even turn on! Luckily I had my small Casio with me, and I used that for today's photos. But tonight when I looked, the photos I took first thing today weren't there! Neither Joe nor I can figure out what possibly could have happened, unless I simply never pressed the shutter hard enough for a single shot! That seems totally unlikely but it's the only explanation for missing my photos of the cheese factory. I am also missing photos which I took of the scenery on the road, and I *know* I had those, because I looked at some of them as I went along. So I can't imagine why my photos are jinxed, and if anyone has any ideas, please let me know.

Said Cheese Factory was located in Plain, Wisconsin (again a population under 1,000), which was right on our way to Baraboo. When we woke up, I had decided to skip Frank Lloyd Wright this time around and hit the road again--I had a case of "hitch itch", as we call it when we want to hit the road. We had picked up a brochure about the Cedar Grove Cheese Factory and Living Machine, and wanted to see it. The latter is a working ecosystem which takes the water byproduct of the cheese production and "mimics the water cleaning power of wetlands, only faster, using natural microbes and hydrophilic plants. Clean water is then returned to Honey Creek."

After buying some of their cheese in their retail store, we walked through the greenhouse. The vats are all labelled with explanations of how the system works. It was very interesting.

From there we headed to Baraboo, being routed by our GPS through beautiful country roads. At one point we were slowed down by a threshing machine driving at 5mph ahead of us, and I took photos of that, and of the countryside, and I have NO IDEA what happened to those photos either. In thinking back of how I'd wanted to upload those to illustrate how lovely it is here, I am really upset about it.
So anyway (sigh!) we came to Circus World in Baraboo. This institution has several facets. On one level it's a small circus--there are shows all day in the summer, including a "Big Top" show of animal acts, jugglers, aerial artists, clowns, etc. as well as a tiger show, a magic/illusionist show, and several special things for kids. These things were of the least interest to me, although we went to all of them (except the kid things). And tigers are NEVER uninteresting. I don't know how anyone trains them, it is simply amazing to me. The circus also has a carousel, a sideshow tent with sculptures of all the "human oddities", and a few other small things, including pony and elephant rides.

The place is also a museum, and it is built on the grounds of the original winter headquarters for the Ringling Brothers Circus. The Ringling Family came from Wisconsin and started the circus with the help of the Baraboo National Bank. Seven of the original buildings on the banks of the Baraboo River, which were used by the circus, are still standing and are part of the Circus World complex. These house displays on topics like the art of clowning, specific circus personalities such as Gunther Gebel-Williams, a wooden carved miniature circus with thousands of pieces, info on circus musicians, etc. It is a complete education on the world of the circus.
The visitor center is a history of the Ringling Brothers Circus, with displays on all the brothers there were originally five, then the youngest one joined them. As the business grew larger, they divided their talents and each one had one area of expertise: one managed the day to day set-up and take-down of the travelling show; one planned out all the routes and stops; one managed the money; one searched out the talent and the acts; and one handled all the advertising. It is a real testament to a family working together! The visitor center also has a large collection of circus posters and artifacts from the "spectaculars" which became centerpieces of theRingling Shows for many years.

Finally there is a huge building which houses the museum's collection of circus wagons, as well as the restoration workshop for them. The wagons are masterpieces of folk art, being hand carved and painted, and ENORMOUS--the average height was between 11 and 12 feet. They were built to transport animals, performers, and all the other circus workers, as well as to be advertisingfor the circus when they paraded down the main street of small cities when the circus came to town. They were just wonderful.
I really loved the collection of wagons, and found the information in the visitor's center fascinating. There was also a movie on the idea of circuses in general, which we saw just before leaving. I first learned about Circus World when I read "Water for Elephants", a truly wonderful book, and I am envious of the author, who spent hours doing research at the archives and research facility which is the final piece of this complex. Although the flyers we've seen try to market this as a wonderful circus experience for kids, from my pov I felt that the youngest kids would get tired of it fairly quickly. But for big kids like us, who like learning about the background and history of things, it was a fantastic stop.

We left Circus World at about 5 pm, and quickly came to tonight's campground about 8 miles away. We still haven't actually gotten as far as Wisconsin Dells, which is a couple of miles north of us, and there is so much to do here, it would be easy to spend a week (assuming one could afford it--a lot of these attractions are QUITE pricey!) Having said that however, I think we'll be splurging on several of them. I'm just not 100% sure which ones, yet!

Day 4: House on the Rock continued

Tuesday, Aug 17, 2010

By Tuesday evening I was getting pretty frustrated with the Blog/wifi situation--I didn't even write about the day. But I did manage to write a very fast synopsis, which is the 2nd (I think) entry for this trip. But we had another good day in Spring Green. We spent a quiet night at Governor Dodge State Park in a very beautiful woodsy campsite, and started our morning with a walk to the park's waterfall. All three of us enjoyed the walk, and Roxy also enjoyed getting her feet wet and tasting the stream at the base of the falls. If we'd had more time and inclination, this park actually boasts a "dog beach", where we could have taken her swimming in the lake! But we had other things on our agenda rather than living with a wet dog for the day.

We also used the park dumpsite, which gave us the chance to wash off the remnants of the liquid manure we'd driven through the day before. The stuff had dried but the smell lingered, and we were glad to wash it off our mudflaps and be rid it!

We drove from the park to Dodgeville and spent an hour at the Culver's, trying to make use of their wifi. But I was still unable to transfer my written blogs into Blogger. BTW, isn't my husband da bomb??? Not only did he come up with a solution to that problem today, but I forgot to mention, he did fix our fussy refrigerator too. Once again, I have to say that I'd be afraid to take a trip like this without him along :)

We left Culver's in frustration, and drove back to the House on the Rock. The day before we'd bought a book which told about Alex Jordan and how he built the house, and it had given us the background info we'd wanted. So we had a little more insight into some of the things we were seeing that second day. Tour 2 was the longest tour, and it took us about 4 hours from beginning to end. By far our favorite part was the "music room", which contained all kinds of calliopes, music boxes, and automated instruments (like player pianos) and more elaborate orchestras. When you pay for these tours, they give you 4 tokens, and all along the way there are places where you can put your tokens in and the musical displays will play. They are so delightful, we bought extra tokens and listened to most of them.

When I say "music box", btw, it is not what most people would picture. A great example is a full size old-fashioned horse-drawn hearse, with a huge (several feet long) music-box cylinder built into it. We listened to it play some slow funereal introduction, followed by "When the Saints Go Marching In". It was a self-contained New Orleans jazz funeral! Here is a photo:

There were other kinds of music machines. The most fabulous is called The Mikado. It is installed in a room which is completely done in red and gold, as is the machine itself, which takes up the entire wall of the room. We listened to it play 4 times (almost everyone who comes in puts their tokens in) and it was amazing. The drummer in the center plays several percussion instruments, but he is surrounded by other "attendants" playing triangles, other drums, etc. as well as ladies fluttering their fans as the music plays. It is an incredible room, one of Alex Jordan's most elaborate creations.

As I try to remember what else we saw, I would not be able to recall everything without the help of my photos. We saw collections of everything from carved ivory to masks to butterflies to miniature toy cars to old fashioned brass cash registers to teddy bears to Burma Shave signs! Most of it was delightful. Our least favorite thing was the "Wonders of the Sea" room; it contained display cases of all kinds of ship models and memorabilia, but was dominated by an absolutely immense sculpture (3 stories tall) of a whale battling with a giant squid. Below are a couple of more photos:

We finally left the House on the Rock in the late afternoon, and drove a few miles up the road to a scenic overlook. This gave us an opportunity to see the Infinity Room from the outside:

We went from there to the Visitor Center of the Frank Lloyd Wright Taliesin tours to see about those for the next day. However we walked in at 5:28, and they closed at 5:30. I was getting very cranky by that time, and we took a brochure and decided to think about what to do next. Then we looked for a campground nearby which would have wifi, and we found one right in Spring Green. So back we went into the center of town, and then down to the river. And as my earlier post makes clear, I was able to do some quick blogging and even upload photos from the previous couple of days. And then I went to bed, to "sleep on" the decision of where to go next.

Day Three: House on the Rock

Aug. 16, 2010 We have had a wonderful day, full but not rushed, and it seems to me that we could spend an entire week in this little corner of southwestern Wisconsin. It is an absolutely lovely area, full of rolling green hills and valleys, many farms, and not many people. In fact, everywhere we go we are struck with how uncrowded it seems, beginning with our first “adventure” this morning. We started the day slowly, taking care of some housekeeping chores, and taking advantage of the nice showers in the campground. We were feeling remarkably well rested, which at first I attributed to the fact that when the alarm went off at 7 a.m., we slept until 8. But a little while after we woke up, we realized that somewhere along the way, we’d entered the Central Time zone, and although it was only 8am by our cell phones, it was 9 a.m. by our wrist watches, indicating that we’d actually had 9 hours of sleep! No wonder we were so perky!! We left our campsite in the woods and before leaving Blue Mounds State Park entirely, we drove up on top of the “mountain” (this is the highest point in southern Wisconsin.) There was absolutely no one up there when we got to the parking lot for the scenic overlook. We climbed up the wooden observation tower—even Roxy made it up despite her reluctance to go up open staircases—to find a stunning view of the surrounding valleys. Green everywhere—it was a great vista. We were up there for 10 minutes or so when a family of 4 came up the 8 flights of stairs and joined us. We decided not to stress Roxy any further and decided to climb down. We left the park heading for the Welcome Center in the town of Spring Green, figuring we could pick up more brochures and maybe even coupons before going to either Taliesin or the House on the Rock. The GPS routed us via county roads, which here are all labeled not with numbers but with letters. We took Road F to Road ID to Road Y, and followed Y for quite a long while, much to Joey’s delight. It was narrow and twisty and went through the countryside and there were NO other vehicles to be seen. That is, until a tractorish truck pulling an oddly-shaped tank trailer pulled out of a side road and passed us going the other way. We suddenly realized what was in his tank—a wide trail pungent brown liquidy stuff was laid on the road, and there was no doubt it was liquid manure. Moments after realizing that “Oy, his truck has a leak!”, we realized that WE had no choice but to cross his path—and at that point, it was Mo with the pungent smell of horse manure clinging to the wheels. The smell stayed with us for a while before fading, but late in the afternoon when we left the RV, I could smell it again. Next time we are anywhere near water, we need to spray our mud flaps! Phew! Lucky for us, we have a good sense of humor about this kind of thing. We arrived at the Visitor Center in Spring Green and discovered a totally delightful small town (population 1444, twice the size of the village of Blue Mounds.) The architecture of the town is very influenced by the proximity of Taliesin, with many buildings designed by students of Frank Lloyd Wright. The Visitor Center itself, and the bank next door, both show a lot of prairie style influence, and the town’s medical building is modeled after Taliesin. The town itself seemed so utterly quiet—there was little traffic or noise or people—but we could tell it was a thriving place. We parked Mo next to the library, which had beautiful specimen gardens planted around it; the bank, as I said, was a fascinating building, there were parks and little shops everywhere. We walked into some of them, picked up some batteries for my camera and a few small fun items, chatted with shop owners, and generally felt that the town was totally adorable. I don’t think it has a single traffic light. An utterly livable place. Below is a photo of the center of Spring Green at noon! We had some lunch in Mo, and then headed south again to visit the House on the Rock. This is a major attraction in the area, and we decided it was really a cross between the Winchester Mystery House in (I think) San Jose, and the Shelburne (VT) Museum which we fell in love with last summer. This house was the lifetime project of one Alex Jordan, who was born and grew up in this area. Like the Winchester House, the house has room after room, and like the Shelburne Museum, it houses huge collections of everything from dollhouses (over 200) to circus memorabilia (miniature model circuses, posters, painted circus wagon wheels), pipe organs, weapons, carved ivory, pipe organs, dolls, automatons, Asian artifacts, carousel horses, stained glass, and “stuff” of every conceivable description. The most stunning item of all is the carousel—it has 276 handcrafted animals (not a single horse, but everything else you can imagine!), 20,000 lights, and is 80 feet in diameter. Our jaws literally dropped when we walked in and saw it! It was simply stunning. It is housed in a room with more carved wooden horses stacked up on the walls and the ceiling was covered with angel carvings—or so I thought (more about that later.) The house itself is original attraction—it is built right into the side of the mountain, and the walls of many of the rooms are the natural stone. One room has a waterfall of natural runoff trickling through it, and many of the rooms have windows which bank out over the edge of the cliff. The ceilings are quite low and some of the passageways are narrowly cut through the stone. The high point of this section is the “Infinity Room”. Opened in 1985, it is a 218-foot room which is cantilevered out over the valley below, suspended in space. As you walk toward the end it physically narrows to a point, making it seem as if it goes on forever. At the end of the room, there is a glass floor with a view straight down into the trees below.

Above: A room with natural rock walls, a waterfall, and trees inside.

The place is so large and houses so many things that it is divided into 3 self-guiding tours with 3 separate tickets. We of course bought the entire package, but because we didn’t get there until 3 pm, we decided we’d never be able to see the entire place. So we went into Tour 1 (the house itself) and Tour 3 (including the Carousel Room, the dolls, the circus collection and all the other things I listed above. We are planning to go back tomorrow for Tour 2 (they let you use any unpunched tour tickets within a year of purchase.) We had mixed feelings about the entire place—on one hand, we loved many of the items we saw, including the carousel, a fabulous calliope playing songs from the Mikado, the automatons, which played along with the music everywhere, the pipe organ room (which was like some kind of science fiction dream), and the collection of Barranger Motion Machines. These were produced during the 1920s-1950s to display diamonds and jewelry in store windows, and are very charming.

Right: Drum Tree in the Organ Room What we didn’t like so much was that there was literally NO explanation of anything in the place. [Subsequent comment: we read in the book we bought that Alex said, "Don't education them, entertain them"-- but we WANTED to be educated!] They don’t even give you a basic map which shows where the rest rooms are, or what is in the next room. (Speaking of rest rooms, I had a “first” today—I took photos inside the Ladies Room, and even inside the stall!) But anyway, we felt that maybe Alex Jordan actually didn’t WANT people to know too much about it, in order to preserve the sense of overwhelming amazement. FX there is a room full of armor, displayed in dioramas. I didn’t find out until tonight when I was reading a tour guide that it was all made specifically for his museum. There was a HUMUNGOUS cannon, which we wondered about, and turns out he had it made right there on the premises. The most bizarre thing we saw was as we left at the very end. The tour pathway (which was circuitous and went up and down all the time) ended RIGHT up under the ceiling in the room with the carousel. That was when we could see that many of the angels suspended from the ceiling were not carved, as we’d thought, but they were store-type mannequins with wings attached! They were extremely bizarre and somewhat creepy . Joey felt that the end result was a feeling that Alex Jordan was not quite sane [g],and that for him, enough was never enough. For instance, there was NO need of the room filled with somewhat tacky-looking replicas of all the British Crown Jewels… there was plenty to see without that! Tomorrow when we go back, we will spend time in the Alex Jordan room, which is an introduction to the museum, and see what we can learn about him.

(Above: "Angels" on the ceiling and dozens of carousel horses on the walls)

We finished our tour just at 6 pm, at which point we had a snack in the RV and then, after searching for a gas station, decided to spend another night in a Wisconsin state park, this time the Governor Dodge State Park. This place is much larger than last night’s park, with a very large campground, 2 lakes, beaches, etc. Tomorrow we will go see the waterfall before we leave, and then go south just a little further to find wifi. The park ranger told me where the only place is “around here” with wifi, and we have been out of luck on that subject since we left home. I am not at all sure where we will end up by the end of the day tomorrow…. I am beginning to think that we’d better start planning to spend our entire vacation just in Wisconsin and Minnesota. There is so much to see here, and I am already one day “behind” on my schedule. But it doesn’t really matter…. It is so pleasant here, and relaxing, and we are thoroughly enjoying discovering places which we didn’t plan on but which turn out to be lovely. It was a wonderful day.

[Postscript: Camera malfunctioned--I took more photos, but when I tried to transfer them from my 3rd disk of photos, there were absolutely none. So I have no photos of the circus collections, or anything else from that part of the tour. Too bad, the circus wagon wheels were so beautiful!]

Day Two: We Arrive in Wisconsin

Aug 15, 2010
Well, my plan to upload at the next Ohio rest stop didn’t come to fruition—turns out that only the RV-slot travel plazas have Wifi. Oh well, now I’ll have two to upload when I get a chance!

Our day was lovely, and not quite as long and grueling as yesterday. We drove through western Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois turning right at Chicago and safely avoiding the worst of the Chicago-area traffic. But it all DID take a while; for some reason we seemed to stop at way more travel plazas than usual! We didn’t cross the Wisconsin state line until about 6 pm. However, we got here safely. The landscape has been beautiful—lots of green, and some very wide, empty Midwestern horizons. This is SO restful to the eye and to the soul. We both love driving through this kind of area.

We are camping tonight in Blue Mounds State Park, a lovely place just a bit south-west of Madison. We made it just at dusk, which meant we were able to find a nice fairly level spot before it became completely dark (being at the most western end of the Eastern Time Zone helped a lot! At least, that's where I *think* we are!) We parked, leveled the RV, hooked up the electricity, and we were settled for the night. Joe made a fabulous curried chicken for dinner.

Our plan for tomorrow is, I think, to head first for the House on the Rock. This sounds like a very eclectic place and is a AAA “Gem” attraction. It is about 30 minutes away from this park. And after that, we are not sure. We are now thinking of going to a waterpark after all…. The parks here sound fabulous, with waterrides which reach up to 40 mph! I’m thinking that could give you the worst wedgie ever; but there are other rides which look really fun and a bit tamer. We are also considering a zip-line attraction (there are TWO here), which was not on my original itinerary. Can you say “change of plans”? So as they say, our plans are set in jello. Which, in this kind of situation, is NOT a problem!