Northern Exposure--Day 39

Just a quick post to bring folks up to date on our travels. We are at the Monaco International Rally in Willmar, Minnesota. We arrived here this past Sunday and have been enjoying the rally. The only WiFi connection is in the main building and we are limited in the amount of time we can spend at a time to make room for everyone. There are just over three hundred coaches here at the rally. In addition, they have all the normal vendors here to sell us all the little "extras" that RVer's buy to make their coach unique. We have been able to see many old friends from previous rallies and our travels.

Although we have been to many rallies we have never attended a Monaco International rally. This is another of the clubs sponsored by Monaco Coach Corporation. This club is much larger than our Monaco America club. Since this is our first MI rally we are considered First Timers and are expected to wear this little red ribbon on our name tags so everyone can welcome us here. On the lanyard that I have my name tag attached to I have all the "rally pins" that we collect as we attend this affairs. I get strange looks with a First Timer ribbon and all these rally pins. One thing I like that they do at the MI rallies is assign a Mentor to each First Timer. The Mentor couple meet with their assigned First Timer on the first morning of the rally and then sit with them at dinner that night. They are there to answer any questions the new folks may have about rallies, who are the officers, how to contact the vendors and suppliers, etc. We were assigned to a great couple but they learned real quick that the First Timer label for us was no totally correct. Anyway, for the true First Timer this Mentor program is a great idea and I plan to suggest that our Monaco America club incorporate it into our rallies. Here is Joanne with our Mentor's, Connie and Joe Monk.

Northern Exposure--Day 34

Another beautiful in Minnesota. Some of our group pulled out this morning and headed for the rally in Wilmer. They are volunteers and need to be in a day early to get things ready for the rest of us. The rest will move over to Wilmer tomorrow. To fill in our day today we checked our list of unusual and odd tourist attractions that were in the area. We found that in Belle Plaine there was a two story outhouse. So, we loaded up in the car and headed west. In a city park in Belle Plaine was an old house that is now maintained by the City Historical Society. It is a two story house and has a two story outside behind it. The second floor of the outhouse can be accessed from the second floor of the house. Just another example of American ingenuity.

This evening we went to visit with Joanne's nephew and his family at their house for dinner. I have been having a problem with the WiFi connection at the RV Park in that it would no allow me to upload photos to the blog. That is one reason that no new post were entered until today. Jo's nephew, Mark, has a WiFi network at his house so I logged on and got the pictures added to the blog entries. We had a great dinner with Mark and Wendy and their kids, Zack and Lexie. We took Buddy with us since he probably gets tired of staying in the coach while we are out. He had a big time playing with their dog, Dash, who was several times bigger than Buddy.

Northern Exposure--Day 33

Happy Birthday America.

Today started off with our usual morning coffee and snacks out in the picnic pavilion here at the Dakotah Meadows Campground. Most of the day was spent relaxing and visiting with the other Monaco coach owners here with us. In the evening most of us went into Minneapolis to a restaurant called Dangerfield's for a really great dinner. We had a good time visiting and enjoying the good food. Around 10:00 PM the tribe that owns the campground and casino put on a very large fireworks display out over their golf course. Since our coach was parked the wrong direction to see the display from inside we stood outside and watched the show while swatting off the Minnesota mosquito's.

Northern Exposure--Day 32

Today we made plans to go visit with one of Joanne's best friends from her high school days. Marcia had traveled to Oklahoma City in August of 1988 to serve as Joanne's Matron of Honor when Jo and I got married. We drove over to her house around noon to visit and have a late lunch. Also there were Marcia's sister, Susan, and another high school friend, Julie. When Marcia had gotten married in 1967 Susan hat been her Maid of Honor and Joanne and Julie had served as Bridesmaids. Julie still lives up in Duluth and Susan now lives n Reno, Nevada. We had a really good visit and these four old friends got to do a lot of catching up.

Norhtern Exposure--Day 31

We finally made it to Minnesota. We are at the Dakotah Meadows Campground, adjacent to the Mystic Lake Casino, in Prior Lake. This is just on the southwest edge of Minneapolis. We have visited this campground in years past and enjoy it here. We have met up with 10 other Monaco coaches and are having a little mini-rally prior to moving on to the Monaco International Rally about 100 miles west of here. This campground, the casino and a beautiful golf course are owned by the local indian tribe and they do a fabulous job of running the place. After getting settled in on Tuesday we met up with the rest of the group for a "Welcome Party" put on by the couple who organized this happening. We had snacks and a happy hour.


Today Joanne called an old friend from when she was growing up in Duluth. Sharon lived just down the street from them and they attended the same highschool. We met Sharon this evening in the parking lot of a nearby Target store and then went with her to her sisters house for dinner. We had a good visit with Sharon and Linnie and got to see Linnie's new home and her art studio and workshop. She does beautiful artwork with glass. Unfortunately, I had left my camera in my car, which was still back at the Target store so we did not get any pictures at Linnie's house.

Northern Exposure--Day 29

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY BEAUTIFUL BRIDE. Today was Joanne's birthday and also our last day in Wisconsin. We have had a great time in the land of milk and cheese but it is time to move on. We have been camped at the Briarwood Campground in Fairchild, Wisconsin. If you were going to mark on a map where "the middle of nowhere" was you would put the pin in Fairchild, Wisconsin. This is a really small town and the campground is right on the edge of it. They main thing to do around here is to ride the trails on a big four wheel ATV. The area is crawling with ATV trails. A major part of the park is full of trailers that are here for the whole season. During the week, like today, there are three couples at their trailers. Everyone else packed up and went back to their real lives until next weekend. Also, over the weekend we had several RV's show up pulling trailers loaded down with ATV's. Since we don't own an ATV, and have no intention of ever owning one, we enjoyed watching these folks go out all excited and then come back in dragging their tails all covered in mud.

We are actually located about 30 miles southeast of Eau Clair, Wisconsin. (I would have pronounced it Ew Clair but have been informed it is a French word and is to be pronounced Oh Clair.) Just north of Eau Clair is the town of Chippewa Falls. On Sunday we drove over to check these towns out. As it turned out they are just another couple of towns. Nothing really special about them. I did have to admit that Chippewa Falls had a neat little park in the middle of it's downtown. It is a vacant lot between two buildings and they have painted murals of historic highlights of the town. They also had a big outlet shoe store that we had been seeing advertised on local TV. We checked out the shoe store but didn't see any bargains.

Today, as I mentioned, was Joanne's birthday. To celebrate I drove her over to Osseo, at about 15 miles away this is the closet town with any business district. This gave her a chance to go to the laundromat to take care of all the cloths that have piled up over the past three weeks. On our way back we stopped at McDonald's for lunch. Unfortunately, I did not have enough cash on me so she got to buy her own birthday lunch. After returning to the coach for a little rest time, and to replenish my cash supply, I did take her back into Osseo for dinner. We went to Moe's Diner, which is almost world famous, according to their sign. This is a nice 1950's style diner and we had a good meal, served by a young lady wearing a poodle skirt while 1950's music played in the background.

Tomorrow morning we will leave Wisconsin thus ending this portion of our current adventure. We will move on to Minnesota, the land of my dear brides birth. Looking forward to meeting up with RV friends, attending another rally and then moving up to Duluth to visit with some of Joanne's relatives. Again, I want to wish my beautiful bride of almost 20 years a Happy Birthday. It's been a great ride so far and looking for a bunch more to follow. (Here she is at Moe's Diner waiting for our food to be served.)

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.

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.

Northern Exposure--Day 20

The sun is about to set on our time here on the banks of the Mississippi River. We have enjoyed this week in Southwest Wisconsin. We have explored much of the area and seen many of the sights. But, like all good things, this part of our journey must come to an end. Tomorrow we will hook up and head Northeast to others areas we have never explored.

But before we left the area we decided to take in a festival. A Midsummer Festival to be exact, although officially today was the first day of summer. Up north, toward LaCrosse, is the small town of Coon Valley. At Coon Valley is something called Norskedalen Nature and Heritage Center. This is a place dedicated to all things Norwegian. Norskedalen is open from May to October and in addition to the Visitor's Center they have an old homestead working farm. Each June they have their Midsummer Festival where many of the local people demonstrate the crafts of years gone by. They also had many animals including Fjord Horses which are stout built horses bred for pulling the plows. To transport people around the grounds they had horse drawn wagons. The wagon in the picture to the left has a two horse team pulling the wagon. One of the mares had a colt with her. They had the colt tethered to his momma and he followed along while the wagon made it's rounds. The trip to Norskedalen was a good way to end our time in this part of Wisconsin.

Northern Exposure--Day 19

The last two days have been a mixed bag. Yesterday we took it kind of slow. A trip to Wal-Mart, some time to relax and some time to do a little coach maintenance. Had to go around tightening screws that had worked loose while we drive this thing around exploring this great country. This is a pretty serene place to be right on the banks of the Mississippi River, except of course for the trains that go by, blaring their horns about every 30 minutes to an hour. The first couple of days we saw some barge traffic on the river but that has all but stopped due to the high water and flooding they are experiencing down stream in Iowa and Missouri.

Today we took a drive south about 40 miles to the town of Cassville. They have a river ferry there that usually runs between Cassville and some place in Iowa. The ferry can haul up to nine cars at a time. Unfortunately the ferry was closed due to the river being so high. We did have a good brunch at a place called the River Cafe. Just a little mom and pop place with good home cooking. After we ate we drove around the town to check it out. A nice little town that takes pride in it's parks and public areas.

We later drove out to the main attraction in Cassville, the Stonefield Museum and 1900 Heritage Town. This is a great museum of Wisconsin agriculture. They have many displays of farm life and farm equipment dating back to the 1800's. They also have constructed one of the most authentic looking replica towns as it probably would have looked in 1900. The buildings are all complete inside and out. They have all been furnished with stuff from that era. You enter the town through a covered bridge and immediately come upon the depot with a train sitting on the tracks next to it. The town is arranged around a town square with wooden plank sidewalks in front of the buildings. The buildings down "Main Street" has a soda fountain on one end and a saloon on the other. On the other end of town they have a carpenter's shop, blacksmith shop and a livery stable. Within the town are also a school, church building with cemetery, creamery, fire house, and the usual stores that a person would find in a small town in 1900. Although we had a good time wandering around the "old" town we found the agriculture museum just as fascinating.

We were really amazed at the old farm implements and machinery. They had everything from horse drawn plows and other equipment, including huge thrashing machines to more modern things as gas and steam powered tractors. If you ever find yourself in the far Southwest corner of Wisconsin then a trip to Cassville and the Stonefield Museum and Heritage Town is well worth the trip.