Wausau Vacationland (what did you see?)

Wisconsin is not Iowa, but you do see a lot of this stuff up here.

And a lot of this.

We knew it would be a jarring change when we left the remote, pristine coolness of Lake Superior for the crowded heat, humidity, and downright tackiness in the heart of “Vacationland”; Wisconsin Dells.

However, the transition was made a bit easier by signs in towns along the route south that proclaimed Ashland to be the home of the Oredockers; Butternut home of the Mighty Midgets; Park Falls as the “Ruffled Grouse Capital of the World”, and; Ogema as the home of the “Christmas Tree Festival.”  

Before leaving Washburn we ask around a bit about the best things to see and do in the “The Dells” and pretty much everybody said; “water parks.” All that answer did was reinforce our already preconceived notion that our three-night stay there would be something we’d have to endure before moving on to prettier and more interesting parts of the state.

However, grudgingly, we’ve got to admit that we kind of liked this stop on our tour of Wisconsin. Certainly it turned out to be a lot better than we thought it was going to be.

However, that’s not to say it wasn’t hot and humid. Texas readers take note that we ran the AC for the first time since we left home; which was a good thing because it helped to drown out the noise from I-94, which was adjacent to our state park campground.

And it certainly does not mean that the area is not inundated with over-the-top tackiness as evidenced by a one-mile stretch of highway lined with water/amusement parks that feature replicas of the Roman Coliseum, the Parthenon, a giant Trojan horse and an upside-down White House. Nor does it mean that we did not eat both breakfast and supper at the Paul Bunyan All-You-Can-Eat Lumberjack Cook Shanty – on the same day! (Hey, give us a break, they don’t serve lunch). 

So, yeah it’s tacky and touristy; but it’s also kind of pretty (if you can tear yourself away from the Paul Bunyan Lumberjack Show which, admittedly, we attended, click on link above for details).

When he's not lumberjacking Brian is a majoring in finance at UW-La Crosse.

Dells is an anglicized version of dalles, which is a French word for a narrowed section of a river. For instance, The dalles on the Columbia River in Oregon are famous for being one of the last and most treacherous spots for settlers traveling the Oregon Trail (and there is now a town there named, appropriately, The Dalles). Likewise, the “dells” of the Wisconsin River held a similar reputation at roughly the same time (1830/40s) when massive log “rafts” were being floated down the Wisconsin River to sawmills during the heyday of the timber industry in the upper Midwest.

The Wisconsin River, just below one of its 27 dams.

The state gets its name from the river which is, historically speaking, probably the state’s most important geographic feature even though the state borders two of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. The name of the river is also derived from an anglicized pronunciation of a French word that was itself a derivative of Marquette’s interpretation of the Native American word for the river, which Marquette spelled “Meskousing”. Map makers back in Paris changed the spelling to Ouisconsin which was further anglicized into Wisconsin.

In 1909 the first of 27 dams was constructed on the Wisconsin River (which cuts diagonally across the state, from the Michigan border in the northeast to the Mississippi River on the southwest) near the town of Kilbourne City that had been named for a railroad executive but locals continued to call Wisconsin Dells. The town name was officially changed to Wisconsin Dells in 1931.

The dam in downtown Kilbourne City/Wisconsin Dells backed the river’s waters above it into the rocky cliffs and ravines and made possible the quiet and scenic two-hour boat tour we took one day. Fortunately, much of the area along the river is part of a state natural area and there is surprisingly little commercial development in eyeshot of the water, even though the river itself transports lots of tourists and other boaters.

However, long before the dam was built an inventive and creative photographer named Henry Hamilton Bennett opened a studio in 1865 and started taking photos of the scenic and unusual features along the river, gaining a reputation as one of the best landscape photographers of the 19th century.

Bennett’s photos enticed people to visit the Dells from the relatively nearby urban areas of Milwaukee, Chicago and the Twin Cities and businesses sprang up to assist these tourists with their leisurely pursuits. Essentially, this very same dynamic continues to drive the economy of the Wisconsin Dells area today.

One of the photography tricks that Bennett pioneered was a technique that allowed him to “stop action” so that an object in motion was not blurred in the photo. And to demonstrate this technique he photographed his son jumping across an opening between two rock spires that are about 100 feet in the air near the river a mile or two north of town.

People thought it was a trick; wanted to see the jump for themselves; and were willing to pay for the privilege. Over time the jumpers transitioned from human to canine, but it is still a staple stop on the river tour for tourists like us. Check out this video of the dog jumping the actual opening between the spires; Betsy’s “stop action” photo of the same; and our very own attempts to leap across the chasm, which has been re-created on the carpet at Bennett’s studio (now a state-run historical museum) in downtown Wisconsin Dells. Looks like we both made it across right!

Naturally, after all of this hard work, we had to stop for some refreshments which led to some interesting bar-stool conversations. At the Moosejaw Brew Pub we listened to a motor-mouthed (female) Homeland Security agent from the Dallas-Ft. Worth area talk about the shootings in Dallas and anything else that popped in her head. She and her husband (who got in a few words) and their teenage son (who did not) were in the area running marathons and triathalons? Then, across the street in very different ambiance of the Brat House Grill, we chatted up a couple of low-key locals, one of whom was an NYC transplant who sold timeshares at a local “resort”.

We also managed to sandwich (pun intended) the Paul BunyanLumberjack Show (click on link for video) in between the Paul Bunyan all-you-can-eat breakfast and the Paul Bunyan all-you-can-eat supper. What’s troubling about this – and one of the lumberjacks even admitted it – Paul Bunyan is from Minnesota, not Wisconsin (or Maine, another state that falsely claims the Big Guy). We just can’t believe they make up stuff like this and try to foist it on naïve tourists who don’t know their history!

Speaking of jarring change; something else that we saw, which is not made up but also seems out of place here in Wisconsin, is the International Crane Foundation.

Back in the 1970s a guy from Baraboo, WI (which is just down the road from Wisconsin Dells) went to Cornell University and met another student that shared his passion for cranes. The two guys then talked the parents of the Baraboo guy into letting them lease the parents’ horse farm as a refuge for cranes, created the ICF and basically saved the Whooping Crane and, perhaps a few other varieties of cranes, from extinction. Not bad!

The refuge is also the only place on earth with all 15 types of cranes and we took a very cool (actually, it was pretty hot and muggy), exceptionally-well-guided, two-hour tour of the place and saw all 15.

Sand Hill Cranes are the most common with more than 600,000 and Whooping Cranes the rarest with less than 600, still a significant improvement from the 21 Whoopers that existed when the Foundation was created in 1971.

While both of these varieties of cranes are native to North America we were surprised to learn that most crane types are found in limited ranges in far off places like Russia, China, Australia and Africa.

A Gray Crowned Crane from Africa.

 Click this link to see more of this crane.

Blue Cranes, the "national bird" of South Africa.

Our very own Sandhill Crane.

An Red Crowned Crane from East Asia.

A Siberian Crane from (duh!) Russia.

After completing our “crane-immersion” session we drove a few miles south of Baraboo to Wisconsin’s most popular state park, Devil’s Lake and hiked a portion of the Ice Age Trail.

The trail meanders across the central portion of the state, following the line where the ice age glaciers stopped.  North and east of this line the topography is relatively flat as it slopes down to either Lake Superior or Lake Michigan. To the south and west it’s hillier. At Devil’s Lake the glacier essentially carved out a big hole in the rocks that is now filled with water. As the forces of erosion work their magic on the rocks that remained when the glacier retreated the result is a pretty, clear lake with some great viewpoints around its edges.

After three days in the Dells we moved about 120 miles up the Wisconsin River to another state park on the outskirts of the town of Merrill (pop. 12,000), which is sort of like a suburb of Wausau (pop. 40,000). Both of these cities were big sawmilling centers back in the day when the river was the primary (only?) means of transporting felled trees to the mills.

This three-day stop at Council Grounds State Park was our nod to “really getting to know” the heavily-forested, sparsely-populated northeastern portion of the state that borders Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. However, considering that we were a good 100 miles or so from the Michigan state line, some might think it a rather faint nod.

Our next-door neighbors showing their Packers Pride.

The truth is, staring at the Wisconsin map months ago back in Texas, I wondered if three days here would be three too many? It looked pretty boring. However, as it turned out, we could have easily spent a week poking around these two pleasant cities. Wausau in particular made an impression; one of the nicest, most robust cities of its size that we can recall seeing.

The campsites at Council Grounds are located in a deeply-wooded area of tall trees and it was dark, damp and muddy when we arrived. So we hunkered down in trailer where we got an excellent television signal.

The next day we rode our bikes on a pleasant but somewhat confusing trail along the river into downtown Merrill which has a beautiful 1902 courthouse and several other historic structures and features along with a beautiful park that meanders alongside a creek.

Because it was Friday and the Friday Fish Fry is a central part of life in Wisconsin we ask around for advice about the best “Fry” in Merrill. We got a lot of advice but no consensus. So, after quaffing a few beers at the brand new Sawmill Brew Pub, which is located in a beautifully-renovated former Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources office, we settled on the “Fry” at the Fraternal Order of Eagles (F.O.E.) lodge and were quite pleased with our choice. It was the quintessential small-town “lodge dining experience” with a substantial bar area and a plain dining room where everybody seems to know everybody.

The Eagles may be best known (at least to me) for a project they undertook in the 1950s and early 1960s to combat juvenile delinquency by placing monuments listing the Ten Commandments in public places in towns and cities around the country. Some of those monuments, including one placed on the state capitol grounds in Austin in 1961, were challenged in the early 2000s as violations of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. The Texas Ten Commandments monument survived the challenge by a razor-thin 5-4 plurality decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005 (argued by then-Attorney General Greg Abbott) that seemed to hinge on the “primarily secular” motives that inspired the F.O.E. to place the monuments in public places. I’ve passed by the monument in Austin many times over the years but this was my first visit to a F.O.E. lodge. While I did not notice any references to the Ten Commandments at the lodge in Merrill (nor, for that matter, any juvenile delinquents) the fish was fantastic! 

Fish Fry Friday at the F.O.E. Lodge in Merrill, Wisconsin.

It was a pleasant evening and, when we got back to the trailer, we lit up our first campfire of the trip. Having a campfire was on our “must do” list because Wisconsinites love campfires almost as much as they love to ride lawnmowers. Consequently a thick haze of smoke hangs over every campground in the state (and everybody’s yard looks really nice). We were pleased to finally make our contribution to the smoke pollution and have our eye out for a used riding lawnmower.   

As previously mentioned (before wandering off track with the Ten Commandments discussion) we got a TV signal at the campground and tuned in to the local news to get a weather report. It was a bizarre, yet fortuitously serendipitous, newscast. Bizarre because the station’s computers had crashed and the entire program was being live-streamed on an i-phone. Fortuitously serendipitous because they were broadcasting on location at the Colby Cheese Days in Colby, Wisconsin. Colby is only 25 miles or so west of Merrill. Road Trip!

Wisconsin multi-tasking; eating deep-fired cheese curds while wearing a fish fry t-shirt.

We headed over to Colby the next day for what turned out to be a very low-key (lame?) “festival”.  However, we ate a couple of rounds of delicious, fresh curds fried up by one of the town’s Lutheran churches (every Wisconsin town seems to have at least two Lutheran churches) and watched some four-year-old kids participate in a tractor pull before bailing on the “festival” and  encountering another fortuitous serendipity at the Colby Library’s annual book sale. While Betsy was buying books I perused the travel brochures and came across one for the Yawkey House Museum in Wausau.

So we headed off for Wausau with a slight detour to stop at the exact mid-way point between both the equator and the north pole, and the Greenwich meridian and the international date line (seriously, I’m not making this up; look at the photo).

We made it to Wausau just in time for the final Yawkey House tour of the day. 

Tom Yawkey's cousin's house...who knew?

Cyrus Yawkey was a third-generation timber baron and he and wife Alice built the house in 1901, extensively re-modeling it just six years later. When Alice died in 1953 she left the house to their only child, Leigh, who immediately gave it the Marathon County Historical Society. Thus, the house is in pristine condition and we had a great tour guide and were the only people on the tour. It was fun and informative.

 Also, in case you are wondering, Cyrus Yawkey was the first cousin (once removed) of Tom Yawkey, the long-time owner of the Boston Red Sox. Apparently, I was not the first person to ask about this.

We spent some poking around downtown Wausau and stopped in at the visitor center where they give people a commemorative coin for going to the equator/north pole/meridian/date line midway point. We knew about the coin but had forgotten about it until a guy walked in asking for his coin. To get the coin you have to sign a register and tell them where you are from. So I go up after they guy to sign the register and the guy is from San Antonio! What are the odds? We ask him what the hell he is doing in Wausau, Wisconsin and he says he is moving there because he likes downhill skiing?

Downtown Wausau, Wisconsin; the downhill skiing capital of America?

We’ve moved on now to the Door Peninsula on Lake Michigan north of Green Bay where will be staying for a week in a place called Egg Harbor. After we leave here we will spend the next three weeks working our way down the Lake Michigan shoreline. Stay tuned for details.