The birth of the fiberglass cow

So, up at dawn, as is our tradition, we decided to take advantage of the early morning and shoot the Wisconsin Dells pictures. I have to say, while I do love to see water parks, roller coasters, large fiber glass sculptures - I won’t ride on much in a water park or amusement park. And Wisconsin Dells was sooo, sooo, so … much it was mind numbing. That being said, I did convince M. to go into Magic Quest, the interactive video role playing game…


He was apprehensive that it was going to be for the average 7 year old and require a level of jumping into ball pits that neither of us could handle. In fact, it WAS made for the average seven year old, but fortunately one did not have to pay for the magic wand to wander through the set up. We wandered, I was gravely disappointed. It’s funny, there are a lot of touristy kinds of things that I see right through, but there is something about the kitsch of midways that I fall for way too much.

That being said, I also wanted to go through Alien Adventure and the haunted house. You will see pictures of those in the “did not do“ section. For once, however, I backed out not because I am a complete wimp, but because they looked so … awful that I just couldn’t bring myself to do it and still write y’all.

The Dells were something to see, though. I’ve never been overwhelmed by summer, teenager fun spots. It was like Myrtle Beach met Vegas 100times more. Never would I have thought I would have too much weirdness. Anyway, we were going to ride the boat trip through the Dells (the only thing that seems like it might have something to offer the non-thrill rider) BUT after waiting around a fair amount of time, it was determined that the jet boats were going to go out, but we’d have to wait at least an hour for the regular boats. We just couldn’t do it and we didn’t want the jet boats. So we left the plastic candy mountain pools and bungee jumping behind and headed out of town.

For the first time in my life, I was happy to leave the chaos. We started to head West toward MN. But there were still a few more large fiberglass animals in our future.

About halfway between the chaos and MN is Sparta, home of FAST, where they make all those large strange things that are on display in Wisconsin Dells. It was so cool. A huge field out behind the workshop filled with the molds.






We talked to one of the young men who worked there, who was quite pleasant. He told us they just finished a giant eyeball that went to Chicago. He also explained how the casting process works. They carve out of Styrofoam like stuff, then spray the fiberglass over it and then fill the mold to make the thing. I recognize this is not the clearest of explanations, but I’m tired. The office was very nice and gave us a free catalog.

It was a little odd to be walking past giant ice cream cones and body parts in a field that had tons of wonderful butterflies, a blue dragon fly, grasshoppers like I haven’t seen since my youth. It was great and we saw the beginnings of all the …crap that was on the side of the road in Wisconsin Dells. It was actually rather fascinating.

Today was also the day for culinary adventure. I tried curds (very good). We then tried Butter burgers and fried curds at Culver’s - the regional fast food (it was not so good.) Later, for dinner (in Red Wing a the Liberty) we had Walleye (fish), which was very good.

From there we crossed the Mississippi and headed up rt 61 in MN. What a wonderful, beautiful road. For about 50 miles the highway follows the Mississippi. It was absolutely gorgeous.

We stopped at the MN Maritime Art Museum. A really nice little museum. It had a special exhibit of fishing lures. Who knew there were so many and so many kinds? An exhibit on the Titanic survivors. I started to read their letters, but it was too creepy and sad. Maritime paintings and impressionist paintings, which was interesting since we were standing in MN, looking at paintings of New London, Long Island Sound, Gloucester, etc. The difference in landscape was very striking. Ironically, they also had a Norman Rockwell exhibit and some really cool local folk art, which was my favorite. Carved otters, turtles, nature scenes. The red hat ladies were coming through when we left.

From there we stopped at a large concrete statue making factory and store, which turned out to be not so exiting. We opted not even to get out of the car, but down the road they advertised the world’s largest independent toy store. We stopped there for a pit stop, but saw more than expected -- how often can you tell some one you stopped into a toy store to use the rest room and saw three live llama’s being led thru the store. They were my size and very nice. We petted them and moved on to Red Wing (J’s town!)

Deciding to stop here for the night we’re planning to see pottery tomorrow. Tonight though we walked through town after diner and saw the Red Wing shoe’s largest shoe. Yet another thing that you don’t see every day.