Northern Exposure--Day 22

We have moved on in our latest adventure. We are now in Baraboo, Wisconsin. Today we took a walking tour of the downtown area. I always enjoy to visit these old towns that have maintained and celebrated there downtown areas. So may places have seen their downtown abandoned with buildings empty or completely torn down, like my home town of Oklahoma City did during the 1970's. Here is a picture of the Al Ringling Theater. This is truly one of the old theater palaces. Old Al had the vision to realize that movies were going to catch on when he built this place. He even built a fire-proof projection booth. This was 20 years before "talkies" were even invented.

Baraboo is just south of the Wisconsin Dells. We had been to the Dells some years ago but had never been to Baraboo so we knew nothing about this area. Turns out Baraboo was the original home to the Ringling Brothers Circus and several lesser known circuses. The five Ringling brothers started out fairly small but built their circus to be one of the largest in the world. Later they merged their show with the Barnum & Bailey Circus to become "The Greatest Show on Earth". Well, if you find yourself in Baraboo what do you do? You go to the circus. Well, since there is no real circus still in town you go to Circus World Museum. This place is a wonderful tribute to everything circus.

At Circus World we saw an unbelievable amount of old circus wagons. These have been painstakingly refurbished and are nicely displayed. They not only have wagons from Ringling Brothers but from many other circuses and shows. They even had one from the old Buffalo Bill Wild West Show. Another one, that was in the refurbishing shop, was from the original Pawnee Bill Wild West Show. Most of the wagons were very ornate and must have cost a lot to have built back when the traveling circus was a major form of entertainment. In addition to their display of wagons they had a big tent displaying P.T. Barnum's Side Shows. The outside had the large banners we used to see on the midway when we went to a circus or fair. In the tent were statues of some of Barnum's greatest characters, including Col. Tom Thumb. They also had an area set up for kids to ride some of the animals. These included ponies, burros, an elephant and a camel.

Some of the venues have interactive displays to give people a chance to get actually involved in the show. Joanne tried out her ability to ride a unicycle. In some of the venues they had live acts going on. We took in a variety show that had several acts, including an aerialist, a dog act, an acrobatic couple and others. The acts were introduced by a Ringmaster and the acts were interspersed by a clown. In all we had a good day at the Circus, or at least as close as we could get today. The days of the traveling circus appear to have been a fun time in our history.

On our way back to the coach we passed the local airport. They are setting up for an air show this coming weekend. As we drove by we noticed a blimp flying over. It appeared that they were doing touch and go landings so we stopped and watched. This was the MetLife blimp with the big picture of Snoopy on it. In all, we had a good day.