Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum, Pepin, Wisconsin

​Friday, 29 July 2016.  Let's see now, where did we leave off with our adventures in Wisconsin.  Oh, yes, Day Two of our wine tasting along the Great River Road (aka Wisconsin State Highway 35).  I'm afraid I'm gonna have to do one of those "flashbacks" that are so popular on TV and in films.  After visiting a winery and cidery on Day One, we stopped in Pepin (also on the GRR) to take a gander at the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum located there. The museum is quite small (as museums go) but Lynette remembered the LIW stories from her childhood.  I guess 1st Grade and 3rd Grade teacher (same woman) at Union Gap, WA, elementary, used to read the LIW stories to her classes. Hence the tie-in to our stop in Pepin. In 1996, Pepin became the official starting point of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Highway, which links LIW sites across the upper Midwest.  The LIW museum here features many items Laura and her family would have recognized and recalls the era in which she lived.  Admission was only $5, so took the tour  -- which took us all of an hour, tops. But it was quite interesting (wink, wink) and I ended up taking a lot of pics. So, sit back and enjoy today's blog entry.  Ciao!  

So, this is where we are, in Pepin, WI.  Remember, our campground for the three days we were here was in Nelson, just south of Pepin.

 A shot of the entire museum (minus the replica of the cabin) as it sits on the Great River Road in Pepin.  If I turned 180 degrees, we'd have a beautiful view of the Mississippi River.

 Lynette posing for me in front of the museum, just before we went inside.

 A little bit of history.....

 Lynette posing with a replica of a covered wagon.....

 Isn't there a game like this called "Shut the Box?"

 The type of old dolls that LIW might have played with.  I thought they were kinda cool.

 Lynette posing with typical women's garments for those times...

 Typical stove...

 Kitchen dishes...

 Assortment of whatever...

 My Grandma Heid had one of these.  Believe my sister, Sandi, ended up with it.

 We had one of these growing up.  Wonder how many of today's youth could identify this?

 I call this "Jason's Tools #1".....

...and "#2"

Wine Tasting in the Upper Mississippi River Valley -- Day Two

We are still in Minot, ND, today; leave tomorrow morning headed into Montana on US Highway 2.  Thought I'd try to get a couple more blog posts done this afternoon.  Let's see, believe we're on Day Two of our wine tasting adventure in the Upper Mississippi River Valley (UMRV).  I found a better map to depict our journey up and down the Great River Road (GRR), and you should recognize many of the towns and villages I mention in the narration.  I believe I've already mentioned Stockholm and Pepin in the Day One blog post.  Oh, and remember, we used Nelson, WI, as our base.

Day Two saw us heading south on the GRR (aka SR 35) looking for the Danzinger Vineyards in nearby Alma.  This small town of about 750 people is another excellent example of those quaint, historic UMRV burgs with specialty/antique shops, restaurants/pubs, B&B's, and art galleries.  Alma sits right on the river banks with beautiful panoramic views of not only the river itself, but of the docks and the lock and dam. 

Danzinger Vineyards came in at #2 on the list of the wineries we visited here in the UMRV AVA (Villa Bellezza was #1).  Not only a beautiful setting, but some really great wines.  We ended up buying a bottle each of the Edelweiss and the Golden Sunrise, plus I just couldn't leave without a bottle of Raspberry Rapture, a sweet dessert wine with natural chocolate and raspberry flavors.  To say it was "yummy" is a huge injustice.  It was scrumptious!

Danzinger Winery at night.....

A sampling of the Danzinger whites.....

The next winery on our tour also turned out to be our least favorite.  The wines just were not that great at the Seven Hawks Winery in Fountain City.  To begin with, the wine tasting is done is a retail shop in downtown Fountain City.  Quaint little shoppe, but nothing to brag home about.  They did have an ice wine that we liked, and we ended up buying a bottle.  Ice wine is  produced from grapes that are picked while still frozen on the vine.  The water freezes, but the sugars don't.  Through this process the wines become very concentrated and much sweeter -- thus it takes a lot more grapes to yield a small amount of wine.  Ice wines -- essentially dessert wines -- are almost always more expensive than your average wine.  The Seven Hawks version -- Sleeping River Ice Wine -- took nearly a year to finish and is made with winter harvest Frontenac Gris grapes.  The taste is very nice, delicate fruit flavored, with a soft honey finish.  Will save it for a special occasion.  Seven Hawks also produces a nice ruby port, Fountain City Ruby, which turned out to be a very rich, port-style red dessert wine (chocolate and cherry flavors) -- and I bought a bottle, of course.  

            

While the wines weren't that great at Seven Hawks, the young lady pouring our wine samples was able to direct us to a popular local eatery, The Monarch Public House (i.e. tavern), an Irish style pub house.  The day so far had been wet and rainy, so I opted for the traditional Irish stew, with an appetizer of lightly battered cheese curds (white cheddar cheese nuggets), a Wisconsin staple (or so we're told).  Both were delicious, BTW.

After lunch, with rain coming down harder than ever, we continued our journey on the GRR toward out next wine tasting adventure, Elmaro Vineyard, in Trempealeau.  This winery and its tasting room turned out to be quite spectacular, if not a wee bit hard to find (thank goodness for GPS).  When we arrived, the fairly large parking lot was almost full -- including a couple small buses.  As it turned out, this winery is the closest to the interstate, so easy to reach, if hard to actually find.  Anyway, this place was jumping with people, but the Elmaro staff was keen to the task.  We ended up sampling wines served by a "mature lady" who doubles as a school teacher the rest of the year.  Excellent wine tasting experience, even if we didn't end up buying more than a couple bottles.  Again, just like Villa Bellezza, somebody's got some big bucks in this venture.  Beautiful grounds, great seating areas to sample wines and order some appetizers.  It was just a crummy day to be sitting outside.  All in all, probably our #3 winery out of the seven we visited.

Elmaro winery

We ended up purchasing three wines we liked: a semi-sweet white made with the Prairie grape; an Edelweiss, another semi-sweet wine made with the Edelweiss grape; and the only wine we bought made with organically grown Briana grapes, named, aptly, Simply Briana.

The last winery we visited, Garvin Heights Vineyards, was located across the mighty Mississippi, in Winona, Minnesota.  The rural road leading to the winery winds up from the river valley to a plateau where the grapes are grown.  In addition to making wines using grapes from their own vineyards, Garvin Heights also buys grapes from several local growers in the Upper Mississippi River Valley. This winery specializes in growing cold climate grapes developed by the University of Minnesota (I mention the specific grapes in the Day One blog post). These grapes have been developed after years of cross-breeding native American grapes with European wine grapes. The results have been a wide variety of grapes that not only can withstand the cold winters of Minnesota (and Wisconsin). but also still produce grapes that yield wine quality similar to those grown in more traditional wine growing areas.  Garvin Heights ferments these grape varieties separately and where desirable, blends the wines to make various wine selections.  This winery also produces several fruit wines and three port-style dessert wines.  We bought several bottles: a Bluff Country White, a sweet white wine made from several different grapes; a Choco Pêche wine made from Marquette grapes, with flavors of chocolate and peach (very nice!); and a port-style dessert wine, Riverport Red.

By the time we left Garvin Heights, the rain had pretty much ran its course.  We drove up Minnesota Highway 61, the equivalent of the Great River Road (Highway 35) on the Wisconsin side of the river.  Minnesota also calls SR 61, the Great River Road.  Only this one, unlike the one in Wisconsin, was a four-lane, divided highway all the way to Wabasha, where we crossed the river back into Nelson.  Just in time for another stop at The Creamery for some of their delicious ice cream!  The end to a great day of wine tasting in the Upper Mississippi River Valley!

Wine Tasting in the Upper Mississippi River Valley -- Day One

Using the Village of Nelson as our base of operations, we spent the better part of two days exploring the wineries of this region – and boy, were we pleasantly surprised by the many wines we sampled.  The Upper Mississippi River Valley (UMRV) is a massive wine appellation, or AVA.*   

* Regulations define a viticultural area (AVA) as a delimited grape-growing region distinguishable by geographical features; boundaries  are recognized and defined. These designations allow vintners and consumers to attribute a given quality, reputation, or other characteristic of a wine made from grapes grown in an area to its geographical origin.

In fact, the UMRV is the largest AVA in the world.  How large, you ask?  How about 50 times larger than the Bordeaux appellation in France.  How about them apples?   The UMRV AVA covers almost 30,000 sq. miles, including portions of SE Minnesota, SW Wisconsin, NW Illinois, and NE Iowa. This AVA has a cool continental climate which lead many wineries to prune after harvest and bury the vines in mulch to protect them from the cold winter weather. The Mississippi River and its tributaries provide sloping riverbanks that allow sun exposure and soil drainage.  Hybrid grapes flourish in this area, including Frontenac Gris, Prairie Star, St. Croix, Edelweiss, Briana, and LaCrescent.  We found ourselves consistently "liking" the wines made with the Edelweiss and LaCrescent grapes.  Many new wineries rely on these new cold-climate grape varieties developed by horticulturists at the University of Minnesota.  They resist disease, withstand winter temperatures down to –20 or even –40 degrees, and ripen early.

Fortunately for us, Wisconsin (and Minnesota) made getting around to the various wineries quite easy.  Wisconsin State Highway 35 (SR 61 across the river in MN) is also known as the Great River Road (GRR) National Scenic Byway, a 250-mile scenic drive along the Upper Mississippi River.  

The GRR not only offered us easy access to various wineries, but also afforded us breathtaking views of the river while meandering through dozens of charming river towns dotted with artist's galleries, local pubs and eateries, and wineries.  Here's a typical view of the many we got when we drove away from the river and up onto the bluffs.

Not sure if you can see in the photo above, but that's a small dam across the Mississippi (remember, this is the Upper Mississippi River, near its source, so it's not as wide as it is further south), with some locks for moving barges up and down the river.  We saw numerous barges during our three-day stay on the river.

For Day One we headed north on the GRR to our first wine tasting location, Villa Bellezza, in Pepin.  This winery turned out to be one of the most beautiful, while featuring some great wines.  Believe we left with a 4-pack (including one port and an ice wine).  Somebody has some big bucks in this place – just check out these pics.  

Driving back south on the GRR toward our next wine tasting stop, we noticed one of those "historical marker" signs along the byway...so, we stopped.  Got a couple great scenic shots of the river in addition to learning some history of this area.

A small tidbit of history..... 

Looking past the historical marker, across the Mississippi toward Minnesota..... 

Looking the other direction (up river), again, at Minnesota.....

Our next stop on Day One was the Maiden RockWinery & Cidery in nearby Stockholm.  I say nearby because we had to climb out of the river valley onto a plateau via some back roads.  But thanks to our GPS, we found this place after only a couple wrong turns.  I was NOT impressed by their ciders (far too dry for my tastes), but did enjoy a dessert wine and a port -- and I promptly bought one of each. I was going to list the various types of apples this establishment uses in making their ciders, but it was far too long, if you can believe that!  If you're interested, here's a link that lists all their apples.  I've never heard of a number of these, BTW.  I did, however, manage get a couple snaps of their apple orchards and a close up of the apples. Still a ways to go before the fruit is fully ripened, but good gosh, somebody needs to thin those darn things!  My HS football coach (aka fruit rancher and algebra teacher) is probably turning over in his grave right now!

These are about the size of a golf ball.

Well, that's about it for the Day One wine-tasting blog entry.  Only two wineries visited, plus the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum (separate post...more pics), but we also stopped at the Creamery in Nelson on our way home for ice cream.  Day Two of wineries (four in all) tomorrow. Maybe. Hopefully.  Before posting this blog entry, will include two pics taken by my sidekick on this traveling adventure.  Both are of me at a winery (I'm in the orange shirt), showing off my purchases and another taken when I wasn't looking at the camera, but standing at the bar sampling the wines!  Good evening to one and all! Cheers!

Three Days in Wisconsin: Wines, Eagles, and Laura Ingalls Wilder.

27 July 2016.  We recently spent three wonderful days (and four nights) in the Nelson, Wisconsin, area visiting wineries, taking in the sights, checking out the Laura Ingalls Wilder museum, and also the National Eagle Center in nearby (across the mighty Mississippi River) Wabasha, Minnesota. I thought about noting this time chronologically, but decided to give it a go via some sort of theme. Wine tasting, eagles, etc.  So, first up, our campground, Nelson's Landing RV Park (Nelson's Landing was the original name for the town, later shortened to just Nelson).  The park is unique in its design (a spiral road, with campsites acting as "spokes" of a wheel).

As you can tell from the above pic, the park is fairly new, but well on its way to bigger and better.  Our campsite (as you'll soon see) was situated almost directly a local area landmark, the Twin Bluffs.  There were actually three different bluffs above the park -- made for a beautiful setting.  Here's a shot of our motorhome on site, with the Twin Bluffs in the background.

Just off to our left and behind us, was a old farmstead.  I thought the barn looked pretty neat and took a couple snaps.  Here's one I like.

While walking Gabby (our Yorkshire Terrier) around the campground, I discovered an old building that looked like it might have been there for quite some time.  A sign on the front of the building read Nelson School, so I'm assuming at some point in time it was used as a schoolhouse.  Today, I believe it's an apartment complex.  Still, a neat looking old building with ivy growing all over the exterior. Here's a couple pics of the several that I took of this fascinating old building.

Just on the other side of the road from the campground's sign, was another, older building, most likely some sort of storage shed at one time.  It offered another photo op that I couldn't pass up.  A couple snaps for your viewing pleasure.

One last tidbit, before finally posting this blog entry.  While Nelson is relatively small (pop. 395), a major claim to its fame is the Nelson Cheese Factory (now called the Nelson Creamery).  The original founders of the cheese factory made cheese for over 100 years.  

Today the Creamery (http://www.nelsoncheese.com/) offers cheeses from not only Wisconsin (for which the state is famous) but from around the world.  Their inventory also includes a worldwide gourmet selection of food, including meats and fine wines.  The on-site deli features a selection of sandwiches, soups and salads -- we tried a couple sandwiches one day and they were terrific.  And their ice cream!  Wow!  The ice cream is to die for.  Must be because we're in dairy country in both Wisconsin and Minnesota.  Anyway, we tried their ice cream EVERY DAY we were there.  If you're ever in this part of the country, the Creamery must be on your to-do list!   One last pic, of the Creamery, natch!

Wisconsin Dells, July 21, 2016

The Travels of LynDen Haus rises from the ashes once more!  After an almost two-year hiatus, I am once more actively blogging.  I will still post a "Reminder" on Facebook, with maybe a teaser or two to get somebody interested, but the ramblings of the Winnebago driver as he traverses the highways and byways of these United States, will once again be on display.  So, as of July 21, 2016, we are once again in business.  Enjoy!

Travel update…and a pick-up.  Now, when I was growing up, a “pick-up” meant an impromptu athletic game of some type.  Or a chance “date”, as in picking up a girl while dragging Yakima Avenue (how I met my wife, BTW).  Or, in some western parlance, a pick-up truck.  However, I now have an additional meaning, which I will put to good use in today’s “Travel Update.”  In the film-making industry, a pick-up is a small, relatively minor shot filmed after the fact to augment footage already shot.  This usually occurs after continuity or quality issues are identified during the film editing process.  Such shots usually occur months after sets are struck, costumes/props stored, and cast and crew have moved on to other projects.  Since bringing cast/crew back onto a set obviously costs money, the director and producer carefully balance costs against whether the pick-ups are absolutely necessary to fix plot holes in the final cut.  I found this out while recently watching the Director’s Cut of the Hobbit (all three films, with additional footage and outtakes), directed by Peter Jackson.  All three Hobbit films were filmed back-to- back-to-back, and so used pick-up shots for primarily continuity sakes, but once in a while just for logical sequences.  BTW, the Hobbit DC is loaded with extras.  Two discs for each film, plus three discs for EACH move, with outtakes and behind-the-scenes of “how they did it.”  Very enjoyable.  

So, how does “pick-up” fit in with my Travel Update for today, you ask?  Well, in yesterday’s TU, I forgot to include the mention of a “side trip” we took off I-64 in Illinois.  As we were headed east on I-64, and passing thru the Urbana-Champaign area (home to the Fighting Illini, as several road signs made rather obvious), we encountered heavy construction.  Paving the interstate – our tax dollars at work.  I quickly checked a state map that I’d just picked up at a rest stop, and made a snap decision to leave the interstate, head north on a couple back roads, and bypass most of the construction.  We were actually heading east to Bloomington where we’d pick up I-39 and head north into Wisconsin (which is where we are tonight, in the Wisconsin Dells area).  So, it was an exit onto SR 47, north for about 40 miles, passing thru some neat little towns.  It was almost surreal, like something right out of the 1950’s.  Gibson City (pop. 3500), a quaint little town with several blocks of brick streets; and Sibley (300), to name two that I can remember.  When we got as far north as Forrest (1250) and US Highway 24, we turned west in search of I-39, passing thru several more little burgs such as Fairbury (3500); Chenoa (1800), where we saw several signs advertising the famous US Route 66 that parallels I-55 in Illinois; Gridley (1300); and finally El Paso (Illinois, not the one in Texas, pop. 2800), where we picked up I-39 north of Bloomington -- and where we continued our northward journey toward Wisconsin.  

After a peaceful night’s sleep in Hickory Hollow Campground, we jumped on I-39 again and sped toward tonight’s destination, Wisconsin Dells, one of the oldest resort areas in the state.   An easy drive of 190 miles, around Rockford, IL, part of it via a toll road (only cost us $4.30 for the motorhome and the car – not bad at all). Then thru Madison, where we joined with I-94 coming out of Milwaukee, and finally to Stand Rock Campground.  We got in an afternoon swim (this part of the country is under a Severe Heat Advisory today and tomorrow) and partook of a couple soft ice cream sundaes, all before 5pm when a huge rain storm hit this area.  Only lasted for about 45 minutes, but it was noisy in the motorhome – Gabby goes crazy during this type of storm.  

The only drawback to an otherwise pretty good travel day is that our one long slide on the motorhome won’t extend outward.  Not sure why, although I’m getting an error light on the control panel.  Since we can easy still live inside (just a bit more cramped), think I’ll wait till we get to our next stop in Wisconsin where we stay for three days and do a more thorough check of the system.  May have to make that call to CoachNet, our roadside assistance service while traveling.  They’ve been able to help us out several times just chatting over the phone with a Winnebago-smart technician.  Keeping my fingers crossed.  

One last tidbit, in the world of “for what it’s worth” department, here’s some trivia for the day.  Native Americans have long played a considerable role in the history of the Wisconsin Dells and are still a factor in the economic life of the region. The Winnebago, for example, hunted buffalo and raised crops on the nearby plains and also fished in the river, which either they or the Chippewa named “Meskousing,” meaning “where the waters gather”.  From the French spelling of this Native American term – “Ouisconsin” – came the present name of the river and the state.  Like I said, for what it’s worth.  

Oh, extra credit trivia.  What's up with the name of our campground, Stand Rock, you ask?  It’s named for a famous sandstone rock formation, one of several in the Wisconsin River Dells gorge.  Stand Rock was made famous by a man named H. H. Bennett in the late 1800’s who became quite famous for his pictures of the Dells.  Bennett set his sights on landscape photography early on and thought the Dells would make great photos.  He loaded a boat with his photographic equipment and took many pictures of the Dells. Realizing that the three-dimensional aspect of the rock formations would be lost in two-dimensional photographs, he began creating stereoscopic images that allowed viewers to see the Dells in three dimensions.  Bennett made his first stereoscopic photo in 1868, and they soon became very popular, being sold in cities across the US.  He continued to innovate in the field of photography by inventing a stop action shutter which allowed him to take photographs of instantaneous events.  Previously, it took several minutes for a camera to take a picture, and any movement of the subject being photographed over this time caused the picture to become blurry.  After Bennett created the new shutter, he was able to take clear pictures of moving subjects. The best known photograph taken by Bennett with this device was an 1886 image of his son Ashley jumping between two rock formations (Stand Rock) in the Dells.  The attached pic shows Ashley, leaping across Stand Rock and was used as proof that Bennett's advanced shutter technology worked.