Explore Wisconsin? Sure! Why Not?

Despite starting out under an air-quality alert with a lot of smog and then driving into misty rain near Madison, I'd say that the first day of our trip out to Connecticut was a rousing success. 

For those of you just now tuning in, Shawn and I are on an extended road trip to pick up our son, Mason, from university. He's ending his junior year (3rd year) at Wesleyan, which is located in Middletown, Connecticut. Because this is also sort of our family vacation, Shawn and I always try to plan an extra day of travel so that we can do a little light exploring of at least one state along the way. (Depending on how we go, we tend to pass through several: Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and Connecticut.) This year, despite it being my home state and the closest to Minnesota, where we are starting out, we decided to start with a meander through Wisconsin. (We will do more of the same on the trip back home.)

 

As you know, Shawn and I are fond of our Very Dorky roadside attractions. So, the first place we stopped on the road was a small, very Norwegian, but also very Conservative (more on that in a moment) town called Woodville, in order to see the lion-headed drinking fountain.

 

Image: Lyda kneeling, sipping from a fiberglass cartoonish lion, with its mouth wide open.
 

It is clearly child-sized, as I had to get down on my knees. As I noted to Shawn later, I was risking both the lion's teeth and the tepid, public water. I'm not sure which was more dangerous. :-) 

 

We stopped at Norske Nook in Osseo for lunch and the pie was just as awesome as everyone says.

 

Image: a luscious-looking pie.
 

This was their lingonberry and sour cream pie and it was actually heavenly. Totally worth the detour.

 

I had on our possible agenda a stop in Elk Mound to see a place that is supposedly haunted. It's an abandoned memorial to Dunn County Postal Workers. (https://www.roadsideamerica.com/tip/30733). The description sounded cool, but Shawn's arthritic knee has been giving her a lot of trouble and the idea of climbing all those stairs just for a view (even a spectacular one) didn't, ultimately, seem worth it. So, we drove past that one. We also pulled off in Warrens, WI, intending to stop at the Cranberry Museum, but I pulled into a spot with a wooden cut-out of cartoon art of a woman serving beer and some guy talking about how he'd help her when he was done fishing or some other lightly misogynist thing. We both sat in the car, staring at that for the longest time. Without saying anything, we both were clearly thinking about how in Woodville, there were all these signs saying "Welcome" in Norwegian, but every lawn was dotted with TRUMP signs and the real estate office literally had one of those posters that says, "In this town we... " and it's things like "pray to Jesus," "salute the flag" and other dog whistles that queer folks and/or BIPOC and/or Democrats are not welcome, actually. We'd passed at least two Trump 2024 signs on the way to the Cranberry Museum, too. So, we just looked at each other and I asked a very tentative, "Uh so, do you want to?" Shawn said, "Hell no. Let's not give this town our money." So, we never even got out of the car. I just turned it back on and we escaped back to the highway.

 

As it happened, that was the right decision because we pulled into Dr. Evermore's Forevertron about 45 minutes before it was due to close for the evening. 

 

This place was amazing. No words can truly describe it. So, I will give you a few pictures to get the flavor of it.

Image: Close-up of a junk bird.




 

Image: the impossible to describe Forevertron...

We could have spent HOURS exploring this place, even though it really isn't all that big? The main sculpture, pictured above, is massive--in fact, according to Wikipedia, "Dr. Evermor's Forevertron is the 2nd largest scrap metal sculpture in the world, standing 50 ft. (15,2 m.) high and 120 ft. (36,5 m.) wide, and weighing 300 tons."  Apparently, it was built to be moveable. Sections of it are held together by removable pins, with the idea that it could go "on the road." 

The whole conceit of it is pretty fascinating, too. The sculptor, Tom Every, imagined it as a Victorian device invented by a fictitious character, Dr. Evermore, who was hoping to launch himself into space, apparently, on steampunk vibes. In a way, it reminded me of Rez's Lady Poetesses stuff, where he channeled Lady Greystoke, or whatever she was called.  Like, Every clearly was having a lot of fun imagining Dr. Evermore's creations, you know?  

This place is 100% worth the detour. It's probably even worth it's own day trip.


Image: Weird bug-like scrap sculpture

Image: a steampunk-junky scrap-metal cockroach