Richland, Wisconsin 25 August 2014

After a joyous homecoming to Molly's Manor (where we had never been before, but Donna, our hostess, made it feel like home with a brilliant home-cooked meal and a comfortable bed) we girded ourselves for the assault on Iowa – sadly, we will have to do it again, plus Nebraska, on the way back. Flat, dull, commercial; mostly GMO corn and soy, punctuated occasional with scurrilous anti-abortion billboards. Sample: “God knew you before you were conceived.” Stinkiest dairy operations ever! How do they reconcile all that? Hint: $$$$.

But finally, as you can see below, we crossed the Mississippi, still mighty and riverboat worthy at Prairie du Chien (pronounced Sheen) and into hillier, greener, more conscious, less smelly Wisconsin. Details of Iowa can be seen below.

Today, we wandered up hill and through valleys, past dairy herds standing on grass, to Dr. Evermor's amazing sculpture garden outside Baraboo. The good doctor (of course an assumed persona) was in industrial salvage for years, until he realized what a shame it was to take beautifully machined bits of once state-of-the-art equipment and melt them down. His primary trick is to create faces on his critters, and to then flesh them out with salvaged parts.

In the background, and in one of the images below, the Forevertron, his magnum opus looms impressively. After visiting the salvage yard next door, and noticing that much of the present-day salvage is plastic, I couldn't help being grateful that Dr. Evermor, aka Tom Every, worked when he did, when industry ran on metal, glass, and ceramics.

High atop the 300-ton assemblage was a glass ball enclosed in a brass egg where the Doc claimed he was going to launch himself into space after shrinking himself with the generators and electrical monstrosities below. 

The doctor still lives, at 76, but is wheel-chair bound. It being a grey day after a nasty thunderstorm, we did not meet him.

Here (below) are some of my favorite samples: