Northern Exposure--Day 26

We've been out of pocket the last few days so we have not had a chance to update our travels. This past Tuesday we took a short drive north to the Wisconsin Dells. We had seen reports that the area had received extensive damage during the heavy rains and flooding last month. As a matter of fact, we had thought about cancelling the Wisconsin part of our trip due to the reports of roads out and flood problems. We are glad that we decided to come on to Wisconsin because we've had a great time and the reports were pretty much off base. There was some damage in the area but not nearly as bad as the news people had reported. They did lose a lake in the Wisconsin Dells but the Dells themselves were not hurt. Okay, for those of you who are wondering, what is a Dell? There are two areas on the Wisconsin that have these high cliff like sides to them that have beautiful rock formations due to erosion over many years. These are called the Upper Dell and the Lower Dell. You really cannot experience the Dells properly unless you take a boat ride through them. Since we were here a few years ago and did the whole boat thing we decided not to do that this time around. The first picture, to the left, is one I took of the Upper Dell from a walking path. Now, how do you lose a lake? A few years back a man-made, fairly shallow lake was built in the middle of the Wisconsin Dells area. This was used mainly for a commercial water ski show. There has also been a lot of residential construction around the lake and it was open to the public for boating. During the flooding in May the water in the lake breached the dam and all ran out into the Wisconsin River. This did cause some flooding downstream but nothing within the Dells themselves. Here is a picture of Lake Delton after the water left.

Wednesday we decided to check out a "minor" tourist attraction south of Baraboo. My good friend Rod recently sent me a linc to a webstie called RoadsideAmerica.com. This is a site dedicated to the odd and unusual tourist attractions around the country. From the site you can enter the state or province you are interested in and it will bring up a list of odd and unusual attractions in that state. From this list we found Dr. Evermor's Art Collection and Studio. Dr. Evermor is a pseudonym for a gentleman who operated a salvage yard/surplus business. After he retired and his son took over the business he started building "art" out of the many pieces of scrap that has been collected over the years. Several of his pieces are displayed out by the highway in front of his "studio". Unfortunately, those were the only ones we were able to see. It seems that the place is closed on Tuesday and Wednesday and we were leaving Baraboo on Thursday. Not to miss out we delayed our departure for a couple of hours and drove back down to the place. The sign said they were due to open at 10:00am. When no one showed up at the scheduled opening time we checked with the salvage business next door. Apparently Dr. Evermor has now passed on and his wife runs the place. We were referred to a phone number, which we tried, but were unable to get hold of the good doctor's wife. Oh well, we still got to take some pictures of what is displayed outside of the high fences. Here are two of the several works of art displayed along the roadway.

As mentioned, we left Baraboo yesterday and headed north. We are now at the Briarwood Campground in Fairchild, Wisconsin. If you were going to put a name for "the middle of nowhere" on a map you would put it in Fairchild. This is a very small town and the campground is right on the edge of town. The really good thing about being here though is we do have cell phone service. Since we have been in Wisconsin we have had to drive into town to have cell phone service. We had nothing out in the campgrounds. This was going to basically be a rest stop for a few days before moving on to Minnesota, meeting up with friends, visiting family and attending another rally. Joanne is planning to do laundry while we are here but we found today the nearest laundromat is 13 miles away in another town. Anyway, today we did do a little exploring. We drove back down to Black River Falls to check out the town. A nice town but not much to see, except for the orange moose. On the RoadsideAmerica.com website I learned they had a large, orange moose. This moose is made of plaster and has been standing in town for many years. No one really knows why or where it came from. A second, smaller orange moose has been put in town and someone has now opened the Orange Moose Bar & Grill. Anyway, we did get to see Black River Falls orange moose. As you can see this thing is huge and towers over Joanne. We've had a good start on our "rest" time here in western Wisconsin. We'll do a little more exploring, get some laundry done and rest up for Minnesota.