We stayed in the Wisconsin Dells area which is known for their great water parks. Each hotel there is like a water wonderland. What an amazing place to take kids! We took our night’s rest at the Ho-Chunk casino parking lot. Free camping! From there I drove the car to Spring Green which was the family farm area of Frank Lloyd Wright and the setting for one of the recent bestselling novels Loving Frank. I took an architectural tour of the home which followed the descriptions in the book. It was a neat concept for a tour, but in retrospect I should have simply taken the house tour that would have gone into more detail about the home and FLLW’s thought process rather than the one that described how the home looked at the time his mistress lived there (regardless of the fact that it looks nothing like it did then today because it had since burned down twice). But, it was fascinating nonetheless. A woman who grew up in the town and had been known to run into FLLW from time to time read excerpts from the book. That was more interesting to me than her dynamic reading.
That same day, after an hour drive each way to Spring Green and once back at the camper, I convinced Adam to come with me to see the Circus World museum. Barnum and Bailey’s home farm is located in Baraboo, WI which is the same town as our resting stop. They used this area as their winter residence until they could afford to move it to Florida. That makes much more sense to me. Why would they winter in a harsh climate like WI? Free lodging, I guess. Reviews on the museum said to take kids during the summer when they have performances and being that it was the last day of their season there were none. But, since we are just big kids and could get over the disappointment of no performances we ventured there anyway and were not disappointed in the least. It was fascinating! I know that in the day and age when this circus was in its prime they did not treat the animals with the utmost respect, but I love the circus anyway. The fantastical, seemingly magical lifestyle of a travelling circus mesmerizes me. This museum has the largest display of circus wagons anywhere in the country. And to think they are over 100 years old and still work! My favorite part of the exhibit was the display on clowns and the description of the different types of clown faces. I had no idea it was such an art form. I wish we had more time to spend there, but we had arrived just one hour before their closing and really needed three and one-half. The front desk lady said she had been known to lock people inside the museum, so we ran through it just in enough time to get out alive.
We could not leave WI without visiting a cheese factory. So, the next morning we awoke as early as we could to drive to the Carr factory nearby. Apparently the best time to see the cheese making process is early in the morning, but we were not quite early enough. I had read the process takes from about 8-1130am, but in reality they began unloading the milk from local farmers at 130am and the entire process was done the day we arrived by about 10am. So, we missed the actual cheese making, but watched an informative video. The factory we saw has been making cheese using the same families’ dairy cows for almost a century. As they put it, “their cows have names.” I guess they use small farmers who have so few cows that they can name them. Our favorite cheese we tasted there was called Melange which was a mixture of sheep, cow and goat’s milk. Yum. I also learned that a good cheddar is supposed to give you a twinge of a sour feel when you eat it just in the back of your jaw. You learn something new every day. We walked out having purchased a 10 year aged cheddar for its geschdalt. It was a treat.
Wisconsin and its cheese did not disappoint, but if I lived here I would be as round as the rest of the people I saw in the area. I think they need to start growing some vegetables and varying their diets!
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