Field notes from a stranger in a strange land.
What is The Driftless? You may well ask. Hint: It’s not the title of a Clint Eastwood movie.
Turns out it’s a corner of southwest Wisconsin that was left untouched by glacial drift back in the day.
I know this because I know many things. Plus I just spent a week adrift in The Driftless, so now I’m an expert.
First, The Driftless is much less flatter, hence more geologically interesting, than the rest of “America’s Dairyland.”
The Driftless still has a lot of dairies. But the cows tend to graze on hillsides rather than flat fields.
We stayed in Richland Center, where Frank Lloyd Wright was born.
He designed a ginormous warehouse here that is supposed to be evocative of a Mayan temple.
It is now a lounge that is only open for five hours on Fridays.
While we were there we joined a small but enthusiastic band of heartlanders for No Kings Day.
We drove to Prairie Du Chen (prairie of the dog) on the banks of the Mississippi River.
We happened upon Rendezvous, where a small but enthusiastic band of faux-pioneers pretended to be French fur trappers looking for a good time.
We briefly crossed into Iowa. Cause why the hell not?
We biked the Elroy-Sparta rail-trail. Where we made new friends.
And kayaked the Kickapoo River. Where chaos ensued.
And stayed at Twin pines B&B, where they had a lot of old stuff scattered here and there.
We visited historic Muscoda. On the historic Wisconsin River.
Jill had historic ice cream.
We lunched at the historic Sportsmen Club. It had so many historic mounted deer heads that the historic walls were beginning to buckle historically.
And went to Pier Park, which oddly, isn’t a pier at all but a “natural bridge,” fantastically shaped by time, the elements and the tiny but irresistable Pine River.
Some of the rock formations have been so eroded as to resemble nothing so much as warped demons from Hell.
That is all.
FreeGNV 