Out of Our Rut Blog Welcome Page

Welcome to the Out of Our Rut blog landing page.

Who we are:

We are a couple of former engineers that lived and worked in the Rochester New York area for over 30 years. When we were laid off from two different companies, one day apart, we took that as a sign to change things up. We had built a beautiful home on 50 acres and loved the place, but with plenty of time on our hands, we began to travel more and realized that when we were on the road for weeks on end, we didn't really miss all the “stuff” we had back home. Plus the work involved with maintaining our home and property seemed to be the only reason we would head back home. That prompted us to get out of our rut and sell 95% of our possessions and our home and move into our 38 foot motorhome and travel the country full time starting in June of 2016.

Chris and Jack Hiking in Washington State

At Pullout Along Rugged Oregon Coast

Our mission:

To explore the country with a strong bias towards outdoor activities. Our passions are hiking and geocaching with some mountain biking on the side. I am an avid photographer. I guess working at Eastman Kodak for 32 years had an influence in that. And while we live in a motorhome and stay in many campgrounds, we really are not campers. We seldom have campfires and don't have a corn hole game. We rarely stay at a campground for its amenities. We pick a place that is near where we want to explore. We think of it more like our home happens to have wheels and can move around. Our desire in these travels is to slow the pace. We didn't want to see if we could get to all the National Parks as quickly as possible. We like to keep a travel day to less than 200 miles and if the place warrants, stay for a week or more.

At Geocaching Headquarters in Seattle for #10,000

The blog:

For friends and family (as well as us) to keep track of what we have been up to, we have created this blog. It chronicles where we've been and what we've done as we wander around the country. Each stop along the way will, at minimum, get mentioned in the blog. Some longer stops in areas we enjoyed may get multiple blog posts in order to give that stop it's due. Generally the blog has lots of photographs as I find it difficult to eliminate photos I like. The blog will talk about the campground to some extent, but it shouldn't be considered a campground review. We seldom seem to exhaust the things we want to explore before we exhaust ourselves and need to move on. That means we may completely skip some activities or places in an area that others may consider essential. We look at that as a reason to come back in the future.

Pretty Sunset in Quartzite Arizona

At the Window in Big Bend National Park

This landing page:

The problem with just about any blog is that fact it is chronological. This is fine since that is how the events occurred in real life. But since our blog is so much about a given location, it can be difficult for somebody to find a specific blog post for a given location. I even find it a challenge to remember when we happened to be at a given location if I wanted to look something up. For instance, if someone asked about Twin Falls Idaho. I know we stayed there but it might take me awhile to figure out that we were there in June of 2017 to get them to the right post. If I could only look at a map of all the places we have stayed and have an easy way to get to the relevant blog post.

Since I already use Google My Maps to keep track of our locations, I have created a special map that has all of our stops since going full time. None of the routes are included in the map since that just seems to clutter it up and don't really add value. By clicking the link below the map, an interactive map with all of our stops will open in another window. It is then possible to move around the map and zoom in an area of interest. Clicking on any pin on the map will pop up the name of the location along with a link to the blog post(s) associated with that stop. Since I am nearly always 2 to 4 weeks behind in the blog, some of the most recent map points may not have a link to a blog, but they will in time. The GREEN pins are locations that happen to include one of our annual or yearly reviews.

So if you want to see what we found to explore in a given area, this should provide a much easier way to find the blog post.

Click HERE to open interactive Google map

2025 Year End Review

With 2025 coming to an end, we are celebrating nine and a half years of living on the road full time in our 38 foot motorhome. We began and finished the year at our RV lot in Titusville Florida at The Great Outdoors (TGO). We purchased the lot almost 2 years ago. It’s a fairly basic lot with a nice flat concrete driveway and the standard full hook up utilities but it does have a 10 foot by 12 foot shed which is very convenient for working on projects over the months we will be stationary here. The resort has a lot of nice amenities but we don’t take advantage of most of them. I must admit that I do miss the occasional winter spent out in southern California and Arizona where the hiking and views are a lot nicer.

We started out 2025 wrapping up some of our doctors appointments in an attempt to get our old bodies in shape for another six months of travel. Our plans for the year were to explore some of the upper Midwest. As we looked into what we wanted to see and do in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, we picked out a few events that were both location and date specific. These types of stops have a much firmer window that form the rough outline and timing of our journey.

The first event was to take part in a Habitat for Humanity build in Marquette Michigan in the Upper Peninsula. The two week window for the RV-Care-A-Vanner program was from mid to late June. The second planned event was to attend the Oshkosh Air Show in Wisconsin. This weeklong show runs in late July. With those two points on our map we have quite a bit of distance and time to fill in before, between and after these events.

It is definitely a time consuming task to map out a route, plan our camping stops and figure out how long we want to stay in areas along the way. We spent a few weeks over last winter researching things to see and do in various cities along the route. Where is the good hiking or points of interest?  I use a Google Map and a website called Furkot to piece together a plan. As we get a better handle on our route and timing, we can start to make reservations at various campgrounds and by the end of April we had a 70% of the nights reserved out through Labor Day. We have found that after then, we can be much more serendipitous about our planning for the route back to Florida.

Below is a map of our route for the year. By starting and returning to the same place, the map is a bit confusing. I have a link below the map that will open the actual Google Map which allows others to zoom and pan around to get a better view of the route. Clicking on any of the pins for a travel stop will pop up a window with the name of the stop as well as the blog post related to that stop.

Click HERE to open the Google Map

We left Titusville in late April with just over 7 weeks to make our way to Marquette. While getting the rig serviced in South Carolina, we needed to make a quick drive up to Ohio for a death in the family. It was nice to see so many relatives and friends even if it was at a sad time. We continued our journey with 2 weeks in a few state parks in the southern Appalachians.  In Cincinnati, we got a chance to get together with family and have some Skyline Chili and Graeters Ice Cream. We managed to sneak in a stop at a National Park and get our motorhome windshield replaced in northern Indiana. Then we worked our way up north through Michigan stopping at a few Elks Lodges before crossing over the Mackinac Bridge into the Upper Peninsula. The time spent working with the Habitat for Humanity affiliate in Marquette was quite rewarding and we learned a few construction tricks.

We had about 3 weeks before the Oshkosh Air Show and we got to explore the western side of the UP at a few different campgrounds before working our way south into Wisconsin. We really enjoyed the air show and you’ll read more about that later in this post. Then we continued west into Minnesota where we spent the next 37 nights at various county and state parks. I was able to talk my wife into a side trip into eastern North Dakota to experience what others have called the Disneyland of geocaching - more on that later as well.

It was about this time that we “called an audible”. We had previously planned to head back to Marquette and help out again on the Habitat build and see how it had progressed since our stop in June. But after we had talked with some fellow campers while in Minnesota, we decided to return to Minnesota to check out the north shore area along Lake Superior. This gave us the opportunity to even meet up with my nephew and his wife from Cincinnati while they were in town for her high school reunion. By then it was late September and we figured we better start making our way south to avoid the cold and snow that is inevitable for this area.

We stopped in the Apostle Islands in northern Wisconsin for several days where we got a chance to explore some of the unique landscape along the shoreline. As we headed south, we got to experience a cranberry harvest up close and personal and visit Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin both in Wisconsin. We continued through parts of Iowa, Illinois and Indiana with Chris making a return to her college town of Peoria after 40 years!

Coming through Tennessee, we got to spend a week back in the mountains to see the fall colors before timing our drive through Atlanta on a Sunday morning to minimize the traffic. A few days in a state park in Georgia and a couple of overnight stops at Elks Lodges and we made it back to Florida. It felt good when we returned to TGO after being gone for 190 nights. Things have definitely slowed down over the last two months as we get back to doing some work on the motorhome, our lot and getting in doctors appointments.

Here are a few more maps to help show where we spent our time. These “heat maps” are shaded to reflect the number of nights spent in each state - dark red is more nights, pale red is fewer nights. The first one is just for 2025. We camped in 13 different states this year with Florida, Minnesota and Michigan coming in the top 3 spots. The second map is similar but includes all 9.5 years we’ve been fulltime. The final map is the full 9.5 years but divided down to the county level to get a better understanding of where we were in each state.

Our 2025 Camping Map

Our 9.5 Year Camping Map

9.5 Years at County Level

Lots of people ask “how much does this lifestyle cost?”  Well the table below should help answer that. It doesn’t include items that would be spent if we were living in a sticks and bricks home like groceries, dining out, health care, clothing. But it does include camping costs as well as fuel for both the motorhome and the car as well as the miles driven. We did put on more miles on the rig this year but not significantly more.  Nothing else was all that surprising. Since the actual table has so many years now, I only include the past six years.  One other aspect is that the cost per night here at TGO is initially an educated estimate but I won’t have our last rental income check for the year until mid February at which point I will update the spreadsheet and this table.

Just the Stats for the Past 6 Years

The table does breakdown the type of places we have camped into four categories: boondocking, state parks, private campgrounds and Elks Lodges. While we tend to like state, county or city parks over private campgrounds, location is our most important consideration when picking a campground as well as availability and do we fit in the site. This year we did bump up our state park number a little bit compared the past couple of years. Our overall cost per night worked out to be just over $32 - a bit higher than many years but again not significantly higher.

Like we have done in past year end reviews, we have looked over the 49 stops from this year and tried to identify our favorites. After the votes were tallied, we came up with 8 clear winners. Don't look at this list as the best campgrounds we stayed at during the year. I will provide the name of the campground we stayed at but these winning stops are based purely on its location or what we found to see and do in the area. I will also warn readers that one place on the list might be a mediocre location if you’re not an avid geocacher but we found it to be quite entertaining.

For each winning stop, there is a short description of what we liked about it, a link to the first blog post for that location which will provide much more information about the stop and some of our favorite pictures from the stop. Since I am behind on my blog writing, there are some of the stops without the link to the post but this will be updated as they are written. In chronological order, here are the top 8 stops for 2025.

• Cloudland Canyon State Park, Trenton Georgia - We had done a day trip to this park back in 2021 and fell in love with the park and it’s wonderful hikes and views. We managed to get a spot for 5 nights and found it to be a rather roomy site. The final 8 miles into the parking lot is up a rather steep and curving road. It is doable in a rig our size but not necessarily fun. We repeated one of our favorite hikes the West Rim Loop. By staying in the park for multiple days, we were able to hike Sitton’s Gulch Trail which follows the base of the valley along a creek. This park is not too far from Chattanooga so we spent one day exploring some of the sights in that town including the Chattanooga Choo Choo. Cloudland Canyon is a nice relaxing place to visit in northern Georgia.

Cloudland Canyon Blog Post

Cloudland Canyon View

Large Overhanging Rock

• Union River Big Bear Campground, Silver City Michigan - Situated in the far western part of the Upper Peninsula, this private campground is pretty much surrounded by the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park. We stayed here for a week after completing our Habitat build in Marquette. It is a remote location that didn’t have any cell coverage for our devices but there was reasonable WiFi that worked in our rig. There are many hiking trails within the park and we take advantage of many of them. The main feature of this area are the numerous waterfalls - more of them than can be seen in the time we were here. We had found a decent guide that rated the falls on beauty and ease of getting to the viewing location and we managed to hit a great number of the better ones. The only real problem with this stop was coming in early July - the bugs were pretty bad at times. If you can time your visit for the fall colors, I bet the views would be spectacular and the bugs would be less of an issue.

First Porcupine Mountains Blog Post

Lake of the Clouds

Beautiful Bond Falls

• Hancock Recreation Area Campground, Hancock Michigan - This stop isn’t all that far from the Porcupine Mountains but there is so much to see and do in this area that it would be a challenge to attempt both areas from one campground. Situated on the Keweenaw Peninsula that juts out into Lake Superior, this part of the UP was formerly a big copper mining area. Several of the old mines and facilities have been taken over by the National Park Service and offer a wide range of interesting tours. We did head up to Copper Harbor to explore an old lighthouse and fort. This area is known for some excellent mountain biking be we didn’t get a chance to try any bike trails and only got In minimal hiking since there were so many other things to see and do and we only had 5 nights in Hancock.

First Keweenaw Peninsula Blog Post

Shaft-Rock House at Quincy Mine

Eagle Harbor Light House

Incredible Stone Building in Calumet

• Camp Scholler Air Show, Oshkosh Wisconsin - Usually I don’t try to rank our tops picks for any given year, but this stop was so much fun that it was easily our favorite place of 2025 and rates up with the Albuquerque Balloon Festival and the Lake Havasu Pyrotechnics Show as bucket list destinations. Similar to these other two, Oshkosh is only on the list because of the event that takes place every July - the EAA Airventure Show. There are around 12,000 mostly primitive camping sites in a 400 acre field so you’re not here for the camping experience. But for a full week, you can join in with roughly 100,000 other visitors each day and partake in everything aviation related. We are not at all into airplanes or flying but we still had a great time. There are 4 hour long airshows each afternoon and two nights during the week are nighttime airshows with planes, fireworks, laser lights and drones which were some of the most incredible events to behold. My blog post listed below will provide all the details about attending and what you’ll see while at Oshkosh. Add it to your bucket list!

Oshkosh Air Show Blog Post

Large Group of Warbirds During Air Show

Colorful Aerobatic Biplane

Nighttime Air Show Begins

• Bear Paw Campground Itasca State Park, Shelvin Minnesota - In mid August, we spent 9 nights camping inside Itasca State Park in northern Minnesota. The park’s claim to fame is being the headwaters of the Mississippi River. It’s one of the few places along this 2300 mile long river where visitors are encouraged to walk across from one side to the other. It’s only about 15 feet and ankle deep so it isn’t all that impressive of a feat. There are many miles of hiking trails to enjoy. The 11 mile paved bike path right out of the campground can be linked with a gravel one way wilderness drive for a great 17 mile loop around the lake.

Being there for an extended time, we were able to venture out of the park to see some other sights. The Heartland Trail a little southeast of camp was a wonderful bike ride out of the town of Walker. Possibly the highlight of the stop was a day trip to the town of Detroit Lakes to see the trolls. These 6 art installations are scattered all around the area and we found it is a full day to get them all in since most of them are not right at a parking area but require a bit of a walk. But the effort was worth it.

 First Itasca State Park Blog Post

Calm Waters of Lake Itasca Near Sunset

The First Few Feet of the Mighty Mississippi River

Chris Mimics Ronny Funny Face Troll

• Turtle River State Park, Arvilla North Dakota - Located 25 miles outside of Grand Forks is the small town of Gilby North Dakota. Small is an understatement - population ~240 people! The nearest campground was this state park about 10 miles away. Why did we want to go to this blip on the map in the middle of farm fields and not much else? That’s easy - geocaching. We had heard about Gilby on a geocaching podcast we routinely listen to and it sounded quite intriguing. When we put together our travel plans for Minnesota, I realized that we were only going to be 150 miles from Gilby and talked Chris into heading there. This place is known as the Disneyland of geocaching mainly because of one very creative cache hider named Trycacheus.

We spend 3 full days driving all over the backroads of Gilby in search of some of the most creative caches we’ve done over our 15+ years of geocaching. Most of the hides involved some sort of puzzle that must be solved in order to open the final cache container and each puzzle was very unique. Some were complicated and required a fair amount of thought while others were simply cute and fun to solve. Brainpower was used for most of them but a few required strength or throwing accuracy. In our 6 nights there, we found 71 caches with 50 of them having over 100 favorite points. We were there a couple weeks before some big geocaching event but that probably worked out in our favor so we could enjoy the time spent solving them in solitude. There were a few other things to see in the area but not many. So if you are a geocacher, this is a must do stop, otherwise you will likely skip this part of North Dakota.

 

 Blog Post from Gilby

Giant Anvil Weathervane is a Geocache

ET Phone Home Bike Cache

Geocaching Swiss Army Knife Cache

• Black Beach Campground, Silver Bay Minnesota - This stop wasn’t planned until a couple weeks before staying there. We only decided to consider checking out this part of Minnesota known as the “North Shore” after several people talked about how beautiful it is and a tour of the state should include seeing it. It’s an area that extends about 150 miles northeast of Duluth to the Canadian border near Grand Portage all along the northern shore of Lake Superior. We worked 4 nights into our schedule to check it out. There are a fair number of campgrounds along the route and some of the state parks looked nice but didn’t have availability during our timeframe. We picked Silver Bay because it was roughly halfway along the North Shore so we could easily explore in either direction.

There are numerous places to see with lots of waterfalls and other attractions. Gooseberry Falls and Split Rock Lighthouse were two of our favorites. One day was spent exploring all the way up to Grand Portage just before the border crossing. We did a beautiful hike there and found lots of places to stop at on our drive back. If you do make it to the area, you should really check out Betty’s Pies in Two Harbors. Had we only known to include the North Shore as we were planning our tour of Minnesota, we would have allotted more time to explore.

 Blog Post from Silver Bay

Split Rock Lighthouse Reflection

Gooseberry Falls State Park

Black Beach

Finally Saw the Northern Lights

• Top of the World Campground, Tellico Plains Tennessee - This was our last long stop before heading back to Florida for the winter. We really enjoy spending time in the Appalachian Mountains and doing so in the fall is even better. Having spent most of our time in these mountains on the North Carolina side near Asheville, we picked this out of the way campground to spend a week exploring. We found some quirky things to see in the area including tours of Mayfield Dairy and Sweetwater Valley farms where we saw robotic cow milking equipment in action.

There are many nice hikes to do in this area but it might be most famous for Cherohala Skyway - a 43 mile stretch of road from Tellico Plain TN to Robbinsville NC. It’s a very scenic drive through the mountains and we had (accidentally) timed our visit to be near peak autumn colors. This road ties into another drive called the Tail of the Dragon and many car enthusiasts come here from far away to drive these roads. The day we drove a section of it, there was an Aston Martin car club enjoying the drive - a total of 38 from vintage ones like James Bond drove to brand new models. They would have been much more fun to drive than the Jeep!

 Blog Post Not Written Yet

View from Our Campsite at Top of the World

River View Along Cherohala Skyway

Indian Boundary Lake TN

Below is a map showing all 435 places we have camped in the past eight and a half years. For additional information on any of them, click on the link below the map which will open the actual Google Map I use. Pan and zoom on the map and by clicking on any pin, a window will pop up with the name of the location and a link to the blog post(s) for that place. Those interested in hiking, mountain biking, geocaching or nature photography, may find some of the posts useful if you plan to visit an area we have explored. Our blog posts are more about the interesting locations we discovered during our stops and less about campground reviews so don't expect to find much information about what campground is the best in a specific area.

Click HERE to Open Interactive Google Map

We still haven’t made any plans for where 2026 will take us but I’m sure we will come up with something in the next couple months.

Spring Green Wisconsin

Map of this blog's locations click this link to open the map

We had fun learning about cranberries in central Wisconsin but it is time to continue south. We have one last stop planned for the state. Our destination is Spring Green - about 35 miles west of the state capital. The main reason for picking this town is to be able to visit one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s homes. We are big fans of his style of architecture. Generally we don’t plan a travel stop based on visiting one of his homes but one of his more famous residences is in Spring Green. This location would also work well for visiting Madison Wisconsin to tour the capitol and wander around the University of Wisconsin campus. We have only been able to tour a few of his homes: Falling Water in Pennsylvania, Taliesin West in Arizona and the Dana-Thomas House in Illinois plus a whole campus in Florida that he designed - Florida Southern University. Taliesin in Spring Green was one of his primary residences and is now run as a museum offering tours. We had selected Wisconsin Riverside Resort for the four nights we plan on being here. This is the type of campground that requires reservations well in advance during the summer months. Coming here in early October, the place was barely half full so getting a site was not an issue. It was a fairly straightforward drive of 113 miles from Warrens.

Taliesin - Our Reason for Stopping in Spring Green

There are several different tour options of Taliesin ranging from 90 minute self paced tours for $40 up to a 4 hour estate tour for $102. Chris was convinced we should go for the long tour and booked tickets for the next morning. It is only a few miles from the campground to the main visitor center at Taliesin so we didn’t need to get up exceptionally early to make it there for our 9 AM tour time. The tours start from one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s last buildings - Riverview Terrace overlooking the Wisconsin River. Our group was about a dozen people and the tour guide. We hop on the small bus which takes us over to the main estate.

Riverview Terrace

Spire Detail

Taliesin View from Bus

The full property is about 800 acres and has a multitude of buildings scattered throughout. We start at the main residence on the north side which is more of the service entrance with garages and similar mundane uses. We work our way into the main courtyard where we are better able to see the size of this building.

Chinese Guardian Lion

Side View

Courtyard

Taliesin is purposely built into the brow of the hill rather than at the crest. There are lots of elevation change in the courtyard with beautiful stonework and art pieces all around.

Garden Sprite Statue

This is a big home - around 37,000 square feet. It was built over the period of decades so it was more of an ongoing project than a single large build.  There were a couple of fires over those years that gave Frank ample opportunity to work new concepts into the building over time. We head inside and start to tour the main rooms.

Unusual Floor Lamp

Our tour guide seemed to know all the information regarding Wright and Taliesin so we learned a lot about the man and this property as we toured between rooms.

Walls of Windows and High Ceiling

Detailed Artwork

Given how this place was added to over the years, I would have expected to have obvious discontinuities from one section to another, but for the most part, the flow was pretty seamless. Wright does utilize a theme of “compression and release” in most of his designs that might feel a bit strange to how homes are built nowadays. Many of the hallways and entrances have low ceilings and narrow passages that tends to drive people from one room to the next where the visitor is presented with some bright, open room often with incredible views  out the massive walls of windows.

Work Area

Dining with a View

One of the things that we both noticed was the rather primitive furniture. In my mind, I associated Wright with mission and craftsman furniture - specifically Gustav Stickley. We had purchased some Stickley pieces over the years after we build our craftsman style home. I’ve even made several tables and bookcases in that vein. I just assumed Taliesin would be loaded with beautiful quartersawn white oak furniture. So it was a bit shocking to see that many of the pieces of furniture were built out of simple pine or worse - plywood! I asked the tour guide at one of our breaks about this observation and she says that much of the furniture Wright designed for this home was more like test pieces to try out a design and they would be built with cheaper wood products. I guess it makes sense but was a bit unexpected.

Cozy Desk Nook

Fireplace

Music Corner

Given the size of the home, it takes quite some time to explore it all especially when the tour guide has all sorts of fascinating stories to share along the way.

Frank Lloyd Wright Signature Tile

Old Musical Instruments

Wright has a bit of a reputation for building homes that are beautiful and blend in perfectly with the surrounding landscape but often have blatant operational issues like leaky roofs. One of the rooms with a large wall of windows even has a window that forms a 90 degree angle with no support in the corner. It looks amazing but when a took a closer look at how it was done, I notice there was over a quarter inch gap all along the two pieces of glass. It’s not too bad of a problem on a nice day like today but could be an issue during the typical Wisconsin winter or a rain storm. It sounds like the maintenance to keep this and the other buildings on the property is a bit of a challenge and I’m sure our tour fees help pay for repairs.

Wright Head and Beautiful Lamp

Cantilevered Walkway

The bedrooms are on one side of the house with some nice outdoor walkways that overlook the surrounding fields. Wright had a penchant for the orient so there are a ton of pieces of art all over the house reflecting his tastes.

Bedroom

Artwork Wright Collected on His Travels

We head back outside for one last look around the perimeter of the house. I will say that Wright picked a beautiful property and designed the home to work into it perfectly. Owning this much land has its perks because most homes would have been surrounded by housing developments by now instead of active farm fields.

View Into Courtyard

Another Angle of Taliesin

Dramatic View from Taliesin

Speaking of farm fields, this property was actively farmed back in the time Wright lived here. Today, the fields are leased out to local farmers so the property can maintain its rural nature. We walk over to the Midway Barn built in 1949. At 200 feet long, it’s a big barn. The “Milking Tower” was designed by Wright which was rather unusual. The tour doesn’t take us inside to see how the cow stalls were designed but it was probably unique as well.

Huge Barn

Milking Tower

We continue on beyond the barn and stop to see the house Wright built for his sister in 1907. This home was restored in 2017 and is sometimes used as housing for some special guests. There are a couple other cottages built nearby that were used for fellows attending Wright’s programs. One of the is currently a private residence so no touring of this place.

Cottages Near Sister's House

Private Residence

The most unique building on this part of the property is the 60 foot tall windmill. Dubbed “Romeo and Juliet”, this 1897 structure was built to pump water for the nearby school built on the property for his aunts. When asked to build a water tower, Wright felt the need to make it be unlike any other water tower. It is actually two structures combined. The diamond shaped “Romeo” was oriented to shield the shorter “Juliet” tower from the prevailing winds.

Romeo and Juliet

We head down the hill to the Hillside Complex which started out as the home school building in 1887 but evolved over its early years into a larger school which ran until 1915. During the 1930’s, Wright repurposed the building to become the area where his Taliesin Fellowship members would work out of.

Hillside Complex

There are some very large rooms where Wright’s fellows would draw up plans for homes or commercial buildings for his wealthy clients. The tour guide had all sorts of fascinating stories to tell about how the design process worked.

Overlooking Lunch Area

Main Drafting Area

We end up in a theater that is still used on occasion for local events and lectures. It was recently restored and can seat 100 people. We conclude our tour at this point and head out to the waiting bus that would drive us the mile or so back to the main visitor center where we had started. It was a bit after 1 PM by now and we were hungry. It would have been a quick drive back to camp for lunch but since Riverview Terrace has a functioning restaurant, we decide to have lunch in the dining hall that Frank designed. It was definitely a long tour but well worth the time and money.

Theater Seating

After lunch, we drive just down the road to Unity Chapel - one of Wright’s earliest works from 1886. This is where he was laid to rest in 1959 At nearly 92 years of age. There was a foundation renovation project taking place so we could not check out the chapel very closely.

Since this part of Wisconsin was new to us, there were a few counties in the area that we should find geocaches in. Technically it wouldn’t be too challenging to get 3 counties since Spring Green is in the southwest corner of one county with another across the river and the third just a few miles to the west. But when we looked at the geocaching map, we spotted a highly favorited cache at some sort of sculpture park. From the pictures, Dr. Evermor’s Park was definitely an unusual looking place. It was close to a 25 mile drive but we decided to to come up with a route that would include a stop there. We worked in a stop at Arena Cheese. There wasn’t much to see through the windows of cheese production, but this might be our last chance to get some fresh cheese curds while in Wisconsin.

We make it to the parking area for Dr Evermor around lunch, so we ate our food we had brought along before heading in. I was somewhat surprised by the number of cars here today. It wasn’t the nicest day and it was a Monday so I was expecting us to be the only visitors but it turns out a handful of others were drawn here as well.

Dr Evermor Park

This isn’t a huge place - maybe couple acres -  but there is a lot of “artwork” on the grounds.

Ostrich?

Really Big Bug

Closeup of Big Bug Eye

Some of the pieces are quite large and complex topping out at 40 to 50 feet tall.  I wouldn’t say there was any consistent theme at least to someone being of sound mind. I’m not saying Tom Every - the creator - was crazy but it would seem he was at least a bit quirky.

Epicurean

Largest Sculpture

There was one section of the park that seemed to have a large number of musical based sculptures. He worked as a demolition expert and industrial wrecker, so that would at least explain how he came into acquiring so much scrap metal. After looking around the grounds, we set off to find the geocache that is hidden here. The problem is that with this much “stuff” laying around, it could be just about anywhere which gave us a needle in a haystack feeling. It wasn’t clear if anyone wandering around was a caretaker that might know about the cache hidden here. But after a few minutes, I spotted something a bit suspicious and made the find.

Tall Spider

Bird Beak

On the drive back to camp, we stopped by Peck's Farm Market. It’s a big place and with Halloween coming up in a few weeks, it was jam packed with pumpkins and supposedly had farm animal which Chris hoped included goats.

Peck's Farm Market

Large Pumpkin

The skies had clouded up even more and we got a couple of sprinkles but it never truly rained so we could wander around. They did indeed have a few types of goats as well as ducks, cows, miniature horses and even white deer.

Saying Hello

Ducks and Geese

Miniature Horses

White Deer

There were a few of the outbuildings that were decorated like haunted houses with a wide assortment of scary creatures. We picked up a homemade treat and finished up the day back at camp waiting for the weather to clear up.

Free Haunted House

Alien Autopsy

Pirate Themed Haunted House

The weather turned nice again for our last full day in the area. This was good news since we were hoping to spend the day wandering around Madison. Touring inside the capitol building would be fine on a rainy day, but we also wanted to walk the campus at the University of Wisconsin. Both of our destinations are just a couple of miles from one another. We choose a parking garage in between them and set out the next morning to explore Madison.

Wisconsin State Capitol Building

There are guided tours of the capitol building on the hour frequently throughout the week. We shoot to be there for the 10 AM tour. We are directed to the place where the tours start and ask if there is room for the next tour. We are informed that a couple bus loads of schoolchildren are coming and there will be multiple tours starting as soon as they arrive. We look around the main area beneath the dome while it is still relatively quiet.

Inside the Rotunda

Lots of Murals

Under the Dome

A few minutes later, the rotunda is filled with noisy grade school students and lots of teachers and chaperones. They get divided up into smaller groups and are given a tour guide. We survey the situation and realize there isn’t necessarily a way to know which group will be the best for us to tag along with. Our group heads into the state Supreme Court chamber where we are asked to sit and learn about the judicial branch and the history of the building.

The Children Arrive

State Supreme Courtroom

I got the feeling that these tour guides have done multiple large groups before because they seemed to move us from one area to the next and not really run into the other groups along the way. We proceed into the house chambers and learn about the state animal - the American badger. The North Hearing Room has a beautiful stained glass ceiling and elaborate historical paintings around its perimeter.

Wisconsin Badger

House Chambers

North Hearing Room

It seemed like the tour went smoothly and quickly. Afterwards, the tour guide caught the few adults that had joined in on her tour and explained some of the other areas we should check out on our own as they aren’t part of the tour or at least not when it is a huge group of kids. As we head off on our own, we spot many of the kids sitting in small groups down on the main floor and being very quiet. I couldn’t tell if they were working on some questions from the tour or eating lunch but at least it was fairly calm in the building.

We work our way past the senate chamber that we never got to see and go to the stairs to the observation deck. Some of the kids were up there so the guide asked us to wait until they came down the spiral stairs and once they were gone, we would have the deck to ourselves. We find the views of downtown very nice. The building is situated on a small sliver (about half a mile wide) of land between two lakes - Lake Mendoza to the northwest and Lake Monona to the southeast. This makes the Wisconsin capitol the only one built on an isthmus.

View from Observation Deck

Statues Above Observation Deck

Inside the building just below the observation deck are a lot of displays explaining all about the construction of the building and some of the novel systems built into it. For instance, this building had a pneumatic clock system. Iron piping runs from the master clock on this upper floor went to all 170 secondary clocks throughout the building and a puff of air every minute advanced all these clocks so every one displayed the same time. We enjoyed our visit here. It would have been better if our tour group hadn’t included 25 kids but we still learned some things.

As we leave the capitol building, our plan is to walk the 1.5 miles west to the UW campus. Since it was close to noon, Chris had previously researched places to eat and had chosen State Street Brats for lunch. Since she knows I like brats and they are kind of a Wisconsin specialty, it was clear I would enjoy stopping there. Apparently they had a wide enough of a menu to allow her to find something she would like as well. UW is a campus intertwined in the city so there are lots of students walking the streets going to and from classes. We get our food and grab an outdoor table so we can people watch and eat.

After lunch, we continued onto campus. Chris had investigated things to see and do here so we had a bit of a planned mission. We worked our way north to the edge of the one lake. It is definitely a pretty setting for a campus that is in a big city.

Soothing Granite Fountain

Wisconsin Badger Mascot

Along Edge of Lake Mendota

There are lots of neat old buildings but also a mixture of brand new construction. There seemed to be lots of students wandering around and it didn’t seem to be limited to just the breaks between classes.

Looking Across Library Mall

Beautiful Science Building

Music Hall

One of the buildings we visited was the Chazen Museum of Art. This free museum has rotating art displays and is fairly large so there was a lot to see inside.

"The Generation Below Them"

Beautiful Rabbit Sculpture

Another stop on campus is the Wonders of Physics. Being geeks at heart, we felt we needed to check this place out. There are numerous interactive displays that were actually very interesting and even baffling. The only problem was the a team of students that were in the middle of creating a video to show off the displays so we needed to keep out of the way as they worked.

The geology museum was of interest to us as well. We have done our fair share of geology stops this year with many stops while we were in the Upper Peninsula earlier this summer. Admittedly it’s just a bunch of rocks that we were staring at but we still enjoyed it. The fluorescent minerals always seem to be fascinating. First you see them under normal daylight conditions and then the room lights are turned off and ultraviolet lights come on and make them all look vibrantly different.

University Logo in Flowers

Great Stained Glass

Fluorescing Minerals

Globe

We went as far west as the Allen Centennial Garden. Our reason was mainly to find a geocache hidden along the paths but we found the place was pretty nice as well.

Building at Allen Centennial Garden

To head back to the car, we decided to take the walking path that follows the shore of the lake. Being a beautiful afternoon, it was a very busy place but still pretty. We eventually needed to cut back south onto city streets to work our way back to the parking garage and our car. It was well after 4 PM by now and we were tired from all the slow walking around Madison so we were content to hop in the car and head back to camp.

Outside St Paul Student Center

Over the next several days, we will need to make some distance to get to our next reserved campground in southern Indiana outside of Evansville. It will be 4 travel days covering over 550 miles and 3 states. It’s a bit faster pace than we like but that’s how the plans worked out.