Roadside Attractions
Roadside Attractions
Dane is driving down Highway 61 and we turn onto South Sleepy Hollow Road. I’m riding shotgun and soon I'm oohing and ahhing as we pull over near the Museum of Unremarkable Objects.
Before he can put the car in park, I’m out the door and already being bossy. “We’ll start with the museum shed and then move down the road from there.” I don’t want to miss anything.
It’s my first visit and Dane’s second. Dane discovered the area while working his Wisconsin moth trap job and couldn’t wait to surprise me. Unbeknownst to him, I had already planned a “date day” stop at the museum.
We learned that Martha Querin-Schultz had stopped her husband, Steve, from cutting up and grinding a large stump left by a cottonwood tree that fell in 2016. That stump, located across from their driveway, encouraged the artist in Martha to get busy. She started decorating it with doll heads and doll parts.
Soon neighbors were leaving dolls and other installations on the stump and on the trunk that lay nearby. The project started to take on a life of its own—so much so that some started referring to the area as Creepy Hollow!
Later, on a trip to Glover, Vermont, Steve and Martha stopped at the Museum of Everyday Life. Martha was impressed and decided to open her own Museum of Unremarkable Objects, where she displays ordinary objects and their histories, and encourages people to leave something there to be included in an exhibit. We loved it but were sorry we hadn’t brought anything fun to leave behind.
Stopping for roadside attractions is something Dane and I love to do. After over 18 years of date day adventures, we’re pros. If we haven't been there yet, we will be eventually. The odder the roadside attraction, the better.
The week before this outing, we made a trip to Dr. Evermore’s Sculpture Park in Sauk County, an amazing, rambling work of art featuring Forevertron, the second-largest scrap metal sculpture in the world. Dane posed in front of the 50-foot tall, 120-foot wide sculpture with his arms wide open, grinning.
Its creator, Tom Every (aka Dr. Evermore), was born in Brooklyn, Wisconsin, and was influenced by his family collecting scraps for the war. By the age of 11 he had started his own successful salvage business, and when he retired in 1984 he started building his sculpture park in North Freedom. Every died in 2020, but thankfully the park lives on, and efforts are being made to keep it from rusting away.
We’ll go out of our way to stop at the Dickeyville Grotto on our way to Dubuque. And we’ve detoured after lunch at the Matsumoto Ramen House in Sparta to visit the Paul and Matilda Wegner Grotto near Cataract. We haven't been to the Grotto Gardens in Rudolph yet, but it’s on our list.
Anything that looks interesting as we cruise the Wisconsin roads is fair game for a stop: the world’s largest muskie in Hayward, goats on the roof at Al Johnson’s Swedish Restaurant in Door County, the world's largest hodag (mythical animal) statue in Rhinelander, the world’s largest bicyclist in Sparta, and the Rock in the House in Fountain City. We haven't yet witnessed the world’s largest potato masher in Plover, but with Dane’s love of potatoes, we will.
I surprised Dane a few years ago with a stop in Rock Springs at the Wisconsin Big Cat Rescue. Jeff and Jenny Kozlowski opened their place in 2005 as a nonprofit educational center licensed by the USDA. We enjoyed seeing the lions and tigers that were displaced because private owners couldn’t keep them anymore or zoos felt they weren't beautiful enough for the public.
The massive House on the Rock in Iowa County is great for a once-every-decade visit, while Kinstone might become a daily visit if only we lived closer. Located near Fountain City, Kinstone is a modern-day megalithic site featuring stone circles, a dolmen, standing stones, a labyrinth, a thatched-roof cordwood chapel, and a few friendly cats. Founded in 2010 by Kristine Beck on a 30-acre section of her family's farm, Kinstone is a truly magical place and well worth the drive. We loved the Tree of Intention, and both Dane and I wrote our prayers on ribbons and attached them to the branches.
When we go to La Crosse, we smile as we pass the World’s Largest Six-Pack. When biking around on county roads, we make a point of stopping at Driftless Antiquish or climbing up the hogback in Steuben. And when we visit the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium in Dubuque, we also ride the Fenelon Place Elevator.
But for now, we’re busy keeping our eyes open at roadside rummage sales for dolls and doll parts to add to all the wonderful art on our next trip to the Museum of Unremarkable Objects.