My mom and I met a handful of times in the same area of Wisconsin for our Adventure Weekends. We usually stayed at the same cheap motel in the tiny town of Oxford because it was almost exactly halfway between us. We’d always end up driving around the area and exploring the towns, attractions, and countryside within about a forty-mile radius of the motel.
Whoever was in charge of naming roads out there must have had a sick sense of humor. You’d find Evergreen Lane right near Evergreen Road and Evergreen Court. 18th Road was not far from 18th Lane, 18th Drive, and 18th Avenue. Elk Road was by Elk Court and Elk Lane. And those are just a few examples. It’s a good thing we were on vacation and weren’t in a time crunch.
Here are some of the adventures we enjoyed there:
We found a miniature horse farm and got out to take pictures and feed them grass through the fence. Another time, it was a herd of cows.
I had read online that during one of our visits, you’d be able to see the crane migration at dawn in a certain area. We got up super early and drove out to the area described online, but we didn’t see a big flock or other cars congregated in that area. At least we tried.
I had also seen a bison farm advertised online. We tried to find it a couple times before we ended up coming upon it accidentally in a new location. Man, did those bison bolt when I got out of the car, and those things can run!
We visited a native plant farm, walked through their display garden, and bought some seeds.
Once, we walked from our motel to a tiny local library, where we found a table heaped with magazines they were giving away for free. We each took a little stack and spent the evening paging through our finds.
We stopped at a few garage sales we saw along the road. One of the homeowners had chickens. At the time, my mom was considering getting backyard chickens, and the owner talked to us for a long time about raising them.
We ate at a couple mom & pop restaurants.
We ate picnics in a park across from a farm field, where we watched a pair of sandhill cranes feeding.
We walked along the boardwalk by a lake, lounged on a wooden porch-style swing, and crossed a curved bridge with petunias dripping from the railings.
After a couple attempts, we finally found a trail leading to the top of a hill that we had heard about. We hiked to the top and viewed the sunset from a cluster of giant boulders, then scurried back down through the woods before the light faded so we wouldn’t get lost.
We went to a local art fair in a city park.
We shopped at a flea market.
We stopped at antique stores and thrift stores, plus other shops that caught our attention: a garden center, a greenhouse, a global gift shop, a gift shop that supported local artists.
We made a pilgrimage to an Amish bakery in the middle of nowhere.
We visited a bunch of tiny, old-fashioned main streets. The town of Princeton’s main street included a small public garden with benches, a curved walking path, hanging baskets, antique-style garden art, and a cafe table and chairs under a gazebo [Megow Park].
One of the most surreal encounters (in my opinion) was walking from an ice cream shop to the city park in downtown Green Lake and passing a guy playing an upright piano on the front porch of a house. I’m not used to hearing live piano music, with its natural volume and resonance, played outside in public.
This is also the area where we found the Rubber Chicken Fling [see story here].
It was at one of the thrift shops in this area that I bought a two-disc CD set called Lifetime of Romance. I got it because I recognized and liked some of the songs: Etta James singing “At Last,” The Righteous Brothers’ cover of “Unchained Melody,” and Patsy Cline’s version of “Crazy.” I’m not sure if my definition of “romance” involves failed relationships, but at least you could argue that it deals with the topic of love. Bafflingly, the opening song on the second disc is Bobby Darin’s “Mack the Knife.” In case you aren’t familiar with the song, it’s about a serial killer. I still don’t understand how that song choice got rationalized into the compilation.
Anyway, this album introduced me to the song “Stranger on the Shore” performed by clarinetist Acker Bilk. Whenever I hear it now, it’s always infused with memories of these long weekends in Wisconsin. To me, this song embodies the feeling of Those Lazy Days of Summer, a Sunday drive with the windows down, green fields sprawling for miles, heavy air, nowhere you need to be, wanting it to last forever.