Wisconsin's Great River Road

(Some of this was written while I was stuck without a wifi signal, and my computer's writing program has very different ideas than I do about font and spacing and so forth.  It'd take me too long to integrate these comments where they belong chronologically, but they're all about driving along the Mighty Mississip.

The Great River Road
The Mississippi River passes through 10 states, that each have a portion of what's called The Great River Road, designated a National Scenic Byway.  At the Visitor Center on Day 3 the attendant said in her opinion the (famous) Wisconsin Dells had gotten too commercial; she much preferred the River Road, and she gave me a detailed Visitors Guide to the Road.  I'll include some information from that here and there to add context to what I was seeing.

The Mississippi River forms Wisconsin's western boundary with Iowa, and half of its western boundary with Minnesota (the St. Croix River forms most of the other half).  So in Wisconsin, the Great River Road is State Route 35 and runs from Kieler, at the southwestern tip of Wisc., up to Prescott.  It runs through a string of small towns, mostly founded based on the river.  And it's beautiful.

Wisconsin's share of the Great River Road
This whole southwestern part of the state is known as the Driftless Area, and I never got a clear idea of exactly what that was, other than this is the one area of the state that wasn't covered by glaciers, so its land forms are different than the rest of the state.  But I didn't see any difference and guess I need to have a guide show me, or tell me in more detail.  Wisconsinites all tell me the Driftless Area is beautiful, but as far as I'm concerned, most of the state is beautiful.

I started first at a rest stop near Kieler, because it looked on the map to be an overlook of Dubuque, across the river in Iowa, and where the Mississippi leaves Wisc.  Sadly, it didn't overlook anything but a bunch of evergreens because it was farther inland than Google let on.  (Yet another instance of how we shouldn't trust Google.)

Dickeyville Grotto

The non-riverside River Road runs through Dickeyville, known for the Dickeyville Grotto.  This internet photo is what I saw from the street, but it goes much farther back in from the road with multiple 3-dimensional mosaics.  From the street, it's one of those what-is-that? sights.  Farther down the road is the town of Potosi, which claims to have the longest main street without an intersection in the world (3 miles).  It also has the National Brewery Museum, and I was sorry I didn't know about it before so I could have planned for it.

The River Road doesn't actually run beside the river until the town of Wyalusing, where the Wisconsin River finally dumps itself into the Mississippi.  I stayed at a state park there, hoping it would overlook the joining, and I guess it does, but that morning the fog was as thick as pea soup and I couldn't see a thing.

 

Great view, huh?
The river's there somewhere.

Historical significance of the site

Explaining other half of the "view"

Explaining half the "view"

So foggy you can't see where the tops of the photos are.






Just above Wyalusing is the oddly named Prairie du Chien, site of the only battle fought in Wisconsin during the War of 1812 (before statehood). 

I stopped next at Lynxville, at the Lock & Dam #9.  There are nearly 30 of these set-ups on the Upper Mississippi, with numbers 4-9 in Wisconsin.  They're run by the Corps of Engineers, and they seem like quite an engineering feat.

the dam stretches across the river

dimensions of the lock

Shallow river = the need for locks

bottom half of sign

top half of sign

You can see this sign doesn't cover the entire length of the river, but it hits most of it.  Nice illustrations and explanations along the way.

"rafting" means logs, not boats

you can see how shallow it is here

even though the clouds didn't lift much, you can see how beautiful the river is

All along the road, the visitors guide mentions the serious bird-watching possibilities, especially during spring and fall migration.  All kinds of waterfowl, ranging from Canvasbacks (ducks) to swans and white pelicans.  I didn't see anything that seemed odd to me, but it's August.

I passed through La Crosse, the largest city along the route with more than 50,000 residents. 

Fountain City is home to the Corps of Engineers and has the largest natural harbor on the river.

We stopped for lunch and leg-stretching at Alma, near Lock & Dam #4.  Across the street from the lock entrance is a sign: "Best town by a dam site!"  They claim to have great Bald Eagle viewing, along with other bird species.

I'm told the land along part of this route is a sand prairie.  I never could quite figure out what that meant - I didn't see either sand or prairie, though I looked - but I believe it's there.

Not only is Lake Pepin a natural lake, it's also the widest naturally occurring part of the Mississippi.  The lake was formed by sediment deposited by the Chippewa River entering the Mississippi, with water backing up behind the deposits.  The town of Pepin is near the birthplace of Laura Ingalls Wilder, for whom a stretch of the highway was named.

At Prescott, the end of Wisconsin's share of the Great River Road, the Mississippi meets the St. Croix, with the former moving into interior Minnesota and the latter defining the state border.

I heard on the radio that Eau Claire, which I happened to be traveling near at the time, will host a Big Rig Truck Show for the tenth (I think) year.  Apparently, owners and admirers of big rigs come from all over the country for this trade show.  One of the events they’ve planned for this year is a demolition derby.  As the organizer said during the interview, “It may be a dirty, messy work of art, but it’s still a work of art.”  It actually sounds like a lot of fun will be had by all.

 Here and there, we’ve been plagued again with what I’m pretty sure are deer flies.  This photo I got off the internet is very nearly the actual size of these things.  They’re big and very annoying, especially for Dexter for some reason.  It was the same last year in New Hampshire, I remember.  I guess we’re far enough north for them again.

Wisconsin Public Radio has a lot of different programming than in other states.  Here they call it The Ideas Network and have regular daily shows with subjects of local interest.  All well produced, but still not a lot of the nationally syndicated shows I’m used to.  That’s where the Big Rig interview came from.

It was followed by an interview with someone from the Wisconsin Historical Society, who said there were a lot of Germans among the early settlers in this state.  I learned that they could keep even eggs and carrots for a long time by storing them between layers of sand or sawdust, something that would never have occurred to me.

The town of Eagle (southwest of Milwaukee) is planning a historic German pig roast – a Spanferkel from the 1860s.  They’ll spit roast a whole pig over a fire for many hours and then serve it with side dishes from traditional recipes, including beer that’s also from a traditional recipe.  I saw later on their website that the online tickets had sold out.

I’ve been noticing during these interviews that a lot of Wisconsinites pronounce the name of the state differently from the way I’ve always heard.  I say wis-CON-sin.  They say wih-SCON-sin.  At first I thought it was just the way that particular person spoke, but I kept hearing it from many people.  It’s a little thing and I’m sure I noticed only because I heard it on the radio, where I don’t have a person to look at or respond to.  I don’t hear it from everyone, but I do hear it from most people.  Except for that, though, I don’t hear even as much of an accent here as I did in Indiana.

I passed through Holmen and saw signs for the 12^th annual Rockin’ the Prairie shindig.  This area of Wisconsin is considered to be in a prairie, and I’m sure biologically that’s true, but I’ve passed absolutely zero that I’d ordinarily expect to see on a prairie.  Nonetheless, on the fourth Saturday of this month there’ll be a fund raiser for the First Responders in the area that sounds like a lot of fun.

Is there anybody else besides me who thinks our society has its priorities screwed up when people who save our lives and our property have to be funded like this?  And when schools that educate the people who will run society when we’re past our prime have to hold bake sales for funding?  Just asking.

The village of Trempealeau (TREM-poh-loh) seems to be quaint and charming with its downtown right on the river.  Don’t know how they handle high water situations.

looks just as mighty as it's called

At this point, the Mississippi River isn’t all that far along on its journey south, but it’s already carrying an awful lot of water.  Sometimes the water has found its way around chunks of land that have become islands, and sometimes those new arms flow so sluggishly they’ve developed a coating of lime green algae.

Fountain City has lots of signs up saying Happy 180^th Birthday Fountain City! For as new as our country is, 180 years is nothing to sneeze at.

I was a long way past La Crosse, but I passed some large buildings that said they were part of the La Crosse Milling Company.  In that area, the whole air smelled like cereal – specifically like a hot cereal we had when I was a kid that I think was called Ralston Cereal.  I liked it but may have been the only one in the family who did because we didn’t have it for long.  Funny how our memory for smells is so powerful when other memories vanish like fog in the sun.

It looked like there was a Corvette convention, or at least a convertible club, hanging out near Alma because I saw lots of top-down convertibles today, and it wasn’t even a particularly pretty Friday.  Some of them were clearly traveling together, as they stopped and waited while one of them filled up at a gas station.  I saw them when I was walking the dogs down Alma’s main street, and I kept seeing them for miles along the River Road.

horseapple or Bois d'arc fruit (online)

In a grocery store somewhere along here I was startled to see them selling horseapples, like I grew up with in central Texas.  The store called them hedge balls and were selling them as “nonedible” for $1.19 apiece, which seems like highway robbery to me, since we always found them cluttering up the ground around the trees when we were kids.  Would people use them for decorations or something?

Laura Ingalls Wilder (Little House on the Prairie, e.g.) was born in Pepin, and they don’t let anyone forget it.  They offer tours and have preserved her home and have gotten the road designated as the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Highway.  My sister liked her books but I never got around to reading them so was indifferent to all this hullabaloo.

Pepin is on the banks of Lake Pepin, the widest naturally occurring part of the Mississippi.  The lake wasn’t created by a dam but instead by water backing up behind sediments deposited by the Chippewa River. With an area of 40 square miles and average depth of 21’, it’s the largest lake on the entire Mississippi River.  It was on this lake in 1922 that water skiing was invented (by a Minnesotan).

Apparently Wisconsin had settlers from places other than Germany because I passed the village of Stockholm, pop. 88, now an artists community.  It hosts a one-day art fair in July that pulls in 10,000 visitors.

The River Road along here is a winding road that goes up and down many hills.  Thankfully, it’s been recently paved, so I had a comfortable drive.

I passed a billboard that read: "Because outside is the new inside."  Not a good ad because I don’t know what they were advertising, and I don’t actually understand what it means anyway, unless it’s left over from last spring.  But it sounded funny anyway.

The Willow River flows into the Mississippi north of the town of Hudson and south of North Hudson.  A marina along there was absolutely jam-packed with boats.  I imagine they’ll be pulled out of the water not long from now, because I hear some of the river will freeze in winter.

North Hudson calls itself The Little Village with a Big Italian Flavor.  They seemed to be gearing up for the Pepper Fest, which is apparently an annual event to celebrate the town’s Italian heritage, including a parade I think.  Proceeds go to various youth, school, community and service organizations, and amount to an average of $20,000 a year, which means to me they pull in a lot of visitors because that’s otherwise quite some haul for a very small town.

In Osceola (a Tree City USA), I saw a law office in an old (presumably refurbished) gas station – one of those built so long ago it was Art Deco.

There’s an Osceola Railroad on the St. Croix River. This state’s full of small railroads that are still operating, though I suspect mostly for tourists but am not sure.

Centennial marker

I stopped at the Interstate State Park, which straddles the river and is shared with Minnesota (hence the name).

The photo on the right celebrates the park’s centennial and includes what they call The Old Man of the Dalles.  I didn’t see the Old Man myself, though they say it overlooks St. Croix, which is about a mile down the road.

I’d stopped here mainly because they’ve got an Ice Age Interpretive Center.  I’d gotten curious about the influence of the glaciers, or lack of them, on the land formations in Wisconsin.  Sadly, I’m still curious.  The Center was supposed to open at 9:00, and the guard at the park gate confirmed that, but I waited until about 9:20 and even knocked on the doors, but didn’t see a soul, even though there was a car parked outside the whole time.  Really a shame.