Wisconsin, Here We Are

We left Karen’s on May 31,2016 and drove to DeForest, WI, just north of Madison and stayed at a KOA.  The drive up was a bit rainy. We’ll be back later this month, so we only stayed 2 nights.  

Donna did well in the rain, but it was exhausting.

That gave us a chance to tour the Trek bicycle plant, and Donna a day to catch up on work.

No photos inside, Please

Donna wanted to sign some friends up for this

This is where the expensive bikes are made

A lot of specialty bikes.

Our next stay is six nights in Chetek, WI (north of Eau Claire).  We took day trips from there, the first was to Menominee, WI to tour the Mabel Tainter Theater.  

This work of art was built posthumously for Mabel, by her father, at the urging of the local preacher.  He would also use it as his church.   Check out the photos, they probably don’t do it justice. 

The portrait of Mabel was painted after her death and her sister posed for it.  The body is that of her sister and the head is Mabel’s taken from a photo.  

Marble stair case

Abby peeking out 

Quilt depicting the theater

Drinking water originally had silver cups

Quilt depicting the times

Quilt depicting the times

Center tower is a radiator

Stained Glass by a Tiffany Artist

This preacher had quite a fancy church

Was this preacher was an ancestor to some televangelist?

Mabel Tainter

This door protected the Library

Curtain ropes

Lighting center

Oaklawn farm is where the Tainters lived.

Oaklawn Stock farm

Mens restroom with original fixtures

Mens restroom with original fixtures

We also thought the Chippewa Moraine Interpretive Center and State Recreation Area would be interesting.  
(Moraine noun

1.

a ridge, mound, or irregular mass of unstratified glacial drift, chiefly boulders, gravel, sand, and clay.

2.

a deposit of such material left on the ground by a glacier.)

We put the address of the interpretive center into MapQuest and followed the directions.  We ended up in the center of a small town and I didn't even see a name for it.  I must have blinked.  There was NO interpretive center here, so we tried Google Maps.  Again we entered the address and proceeded to follow those directions.  These instructions were different, so this must be the way.  We followed along with google maps and drove into a dense forest on a dirt road,(not gravel).  The road got narrower and narrower and there was water on both sides.  It was pretty neat, but not where we thought we were going.

We found a place to turn around, thankfully, before we heard banjoes.   We backtracked our route to the main road and were going to give up.  We headed back to the campground and noticed a brown state sign off to the right.  It was to the Intrepretive Center.  So, after about 2 1/2 hours of driving, we found it.  The volunteer told us that mapquest had entered the wrong address for the center and they were trying to get that fixed.  AHH, the adventures.

Another place we visited while staying in Chetek was the Hunt Hill Audubon Camp.  It has a nice trail around a large lake.  There is an active beaver site there.  

Donna had to work and there were mundane things that had to be accomplished, so we stayed at the RV taking care of things for a couple days.