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Highlands of Southwestern Wisconsin; A Multi-Season Destination
If you appreciate country fresh air, rolling hills with beautiful vistas and a delightful combination of kitschy and sophisticated entertainment you can do no better than southwestern Wisconsin.
To be specific, the best base for tourism and fun in the southwestern part of the cheese and dairy state is the little town of Dodgeville located 40 miles west of the state capital Madison, Wisconsin.
Dodgeville is a community spread across a series of hills. It has a quaint downtown and the requisite Wal-Mart on the outskirts. In between you will find a panoply of stores, hotels, service industries and the Lands End distribution center, now owned by Sears. Dodgeville does not sport any big hotels or exceptionally fine dining. But that is not the reason most people go to Wisconsin. Most go to get a dose of country living with reasonable amenities at hand so you can clean up and drink a few beers on a deck overlooking a lake or river. That is exactly what you get around Dodgeville, and it's usually more than worth the trip.
You can stay at the hormonally kitschy Don Q Inn, a roadside hotel featuring theme rooms based on historical periods and exotic cultures. The establishment is both as good and bad as it sounds. There is a Cave Room and a Medieval Room, an Asian Room and an Arabian Room, and the list goes on. We spent a couple evenings with friends dipping our legs in a shiny hot tub made out of a giant cheese vat while drinking wine and eating snacks. A metal statue of a urinating cherub was perched next to the tub. This is what passes for delightful entertainment in Wisconsin, a center for often lowbrow fun in the Upper Midwest.
Our overall goal for the trip was considerably more refined. From Dodgeville we traveled up the road to the Frank Lloyd Wright property known as Taliesin. Our tour guide did chastise us soundly for taking photos where we did not belong, but other than that the tour was informative and pleasant. Frank Lloyd Wright chose the Taliesin location along the Wisconsin River because its native landscape features lent themselves well to his architectural style, which celebrates open space, sightlines and natural forms in all phases levels of design. Taliesin was designed largely to the architect's own tastes that included low ceilings that people of above average height must duck.
Wright designed for principle and effect, not necessarily accommodating the whims of his clients. Even patrons were told to adapt their lives to his sometime radical notions for living. True believers were either all in or left out because the architect was not known for compromise. His stubborn vision answers questions for the rest of us. We visit sites like Taliesin because there is so much compromise and uncertainty in the world it makes us feel good to know that at least one prick knew how to get his own way. Wright's life was a soap opera in every respect, rife with money problems, marital infidelities and social controversy. He was both prima donna and a pimpernel and in many ways suffered for his selfishness. But the work that came out of the man was prodigious if sometimes procrastinated. Pretty much Frank Lloyd Wright captures the essence and pain of what it means to be a genius. Perhaps that is why it is so strange and wonderful to find one of his masterpieces stuck on a hill in southwest Wisconsin. Such drama seems out of place. And yet it belongs here.
There was no question it was the Wright Way or the Highway back in Wright's day. Perhaps that is why one of his helpers ultimately went crazy and hacked Wright's wife to death with a hatchet before trying to burn the Taliesin property to the ground. Brilliant control freaks like Frank Lloyd Wright are enough to make people crazy.
One would never know the sordid history driving past the bucolic Taliesin property. But if you want even more evidence that Wright could drive some people to distraction, drive 15 miles south of Spring Green and Taliesin and find the weird concoction of architecture (if you can call it that) and ugly acquisitiveness displayed at a now-famous property called The House on the Rock. The monstrosity was built by a man named Alex Jordan who had apparently been rejected as a student by Frank Lloyd Wright, who told him; I would not hire you to design a chicken coop. Jordan set out to prove the world wrong by building a giant mess of a house that is dark, confusing and by most measures of normal human behavior, uninhabitable.
Just about everything about The House On the Rock is overcooked, the grounds too calculated, the collections too obtuse and random to matter. The lone exceptions are a decently pleasant outdoor garden and a few interesting objects such as a Civil War cannon in the wildly eclectic collection of knickknacks and hobberknocks. Basically everything else about the place screams Ugly American and there seemed to be plenty of those wandering around the day we visit as well.
Call it snobbery if you will, but the pretention of The House On the Rock is pre-emptive of snobbery, which is an acceptable reaction if you have an ounce of discretion in your bones. Despite (or because of) its middle-American milieu, The House On the Rock has become a major tourist attraction with an lodge, resort and golf course attached to the property. It is first and foremost a marketing success. You almost can't drive a major road in Wisconsin without seeing a sign for the place.
For all its supposed mystique, in less than 20 minutes our party of four suffered a claustrophobic reaction and wanted out. We completed just one of the 3 or 4 tours they offer because we'd simply seen enough to last a lifetime. The sacrifice of 18 bucks for the experience made us glad we got off cheap. That is because architecturally, The House On the Rock juts into the air in all directions, like a lurching piece of lichen craving the light, while the interiors are contrastingly dark, covered with shag carpeting (even the walls!) reminding you there is a reason why people hire interior designers.
Should you bother with The House On the Rock If you are naturally inquisitive and have sympathy for the instincts of the acquisitive, you might love the place. But you should be prepared that The House on the Rock is first and foremost a tourist trap and not an architectural achievement on the order of Frank Lloyd Wright's estate up the road at Taliesin. Sure, it took some doing to build a goofy looking house on top of a rock in Wisconsin. But that is about where the achievement ends. The so-called Infinity Room resembles a giant wooden penis from the outside and from the inside uses windows and mirrors to make you think you're walking into some sort of Neverland. You walk to the point of infinity as if you were a giant sperm. Such sensations are not representative of any real architectural insight or accomplishment, but they seem to match quite well with the theme rooms back down the road at the Don Q Inn.
That's how it goes with some attractions in southwestern Wisconsin. You get the good with the bad and wind up with a middling good time. Drinking alcohol on sun-drenched decks or in roadside bars covers the rest.
So we went with the flow and spent some time in downtown Spring Green in a visit to a bar and restaurant called The Shed one Sunday morning. The food was great, especially the home made pies. We cracked a cold beer before noon just to break with the sanctity of Sunday morning. This is what you do in Wisconsin; dispense with normalcy in favor of a wandering sensibility.
Where Wisconsin really shines is its natural beauty. We rode our bikes on hilly country roads near Dodgeville where drivers seem to respect the fact that you are simply trying to enjoy the fresh air and get some exercise. No one honked at us annoyingly, and there are published guides available to illustrate the best routes. Serious cyclists can get in rides of 40, 60, even 100 miles of peaceful training. For recreational cyclists, the Military Ridge trail covers 40+ miles between Dodgeville and Madison. The crushed gravel trail is a former train line and offers level, easy riding. There is a $10 fee for using the trail, and officials do check you out.
At Governor Dodge State Park north of Dodgeville you can camp and hike and swim and canoe in a large, sequestered environment that offers recreation year round. Cross country skiing is exceptional in winter, but summertime is great for family fun on several reservoirs throughout the park. Wisconsin zings out of state visitors with high fees for park entrance and camping. It even cost $4 to purchase a pass to ride mountain bikes on the trails. On a solo camping trip to Governor Dodge I'd spent $32 in entrance fees, camp site rentals and other passes before even entering the park. By contrast a visit to state parks in Pennsylvania cost me nothing in terms of fees. Even the beach at a pristine lake was free.
Other southwestern Wisconsin attractions include the American Player Theater Shakespeare production in Spring Green. The outdoor performance we attended was serenaded by whip-poor-wills, flycatchers and circling bats. The acting was good too. Spring Green also hosts artist and writer colonies.
The Wisconsin river flowing east to west across southwestern Wisconsin offers float trips and swimming in summer seasons. In autumn the hillsides come alive with color that lasts from late September through mid-October. For hunters and fisherman, there are state lands that allow public hunting.
The DodgevilleSpring Green area is not so touristy as Wisconsin Dells and Baraboo areas to the near north. But there is a peppering of quirky things to do from mining tours to visiting quaint little ethnic (Norwegian) museums and traditional attractions like the Cave of the Mounds in nearby Mt. Horeb. Taking Route 18 west from Madison is the best way to cover ground yet give yourself access to explore. For scenic driving take Route 60 west from Spring Green to follow the Wisconsin River down to the Mississippi. This stretch of road captures Wisconsin at its best, with river bluffs and quaint little towns providing happy scenery.
Plan your trip around one or two things to do and make the rest up as you go along. There's always a roadside bar or two with a deck on which to sit and stare at the hills if you run out of ideas. That's life in Wisconsin, where life is what you make it and cheeses are just alright with me.More resourceshttp;www.taliesinpreservation.orghttp;www.thehouseontherock.comhttp;dnr.wi.govorglandparksspecificgovdodge
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