Wednesday morning we continued to enjoy the park by hiking the roughly two-mile Goldfinch trail through woods and along the Fox River. Then we moved on toward the suggested POI I mentioned in my last post, shunpiking through the hills and farms and small towns of southern Wisconsin arriving at the New Glarus Brewery about an hour before the tasting room closed. NGB is a wonderful craft brewery that has made a reputation for only being available in Wisconsin. We sampled three of their beers, then asked if we could overnight in their parking lot: permission granted!
Thursday morning we started with a brief drive through the town of New Glarus. It’s a fascinating town that celebrates it’s Swiss heritage. A place to spend more time sometime.
Cows in New Glarus
Then it was on to The House on the Rock! OMG! We spend almost all day there!
Built by Alex Jordan from the mid-1940s until his death in 1989, he went from building his dream retreat on a rock outcropping near Spring Green to becoming a combination of Margret Woodbury Strong, P.T Barnum, and Sarah Winchester. He built room after room and building after building to house an enormous collection of stuff to entertain and mystify the people who came to see his unique creation. He started by charging $0.50 a person to see his retreat, then realized that he could support himself from that and started collecting more stuff to attract more people.
Imaginative Planter designed by Alex Jordan
Fascinating but ultimately an overwhelming display of excess. I can’t begin to cover all the various collections from dolls and doll houses, to military hardware, to circus models, to maritime things, to orchestrions (some that fill whole rooms), to the self-proclaimed world’s largest carousel.
As we were driving away toward our next overnight, we passed Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright’s studio and school. We promised ourselves we’d come back to New Glarus and Spring Green sometime and continue or FLW obsession (we’ve been to Taliesin West and many FLW creations).
The night was spent at a delightful county park on the shore of Lake DuBay, Portage County. Officially called DuBay Park, I’ve also seen it as DuBay Lake Park, it has several loops along the shore and across the road with all sites having electric service (which we didn’t bother to use since it was only one night).
[Photos to follow.]