Vacationing: Out on the Road

On Thursday morning I was sure I was forgetting something. The Dulcinea and I were readying for a four-day jaunt up north, my first vacation in about three years, and I was sure that I had neglected to pack one item or another. CDs? Check. 100% Deet skeeter repellent? Check. Swimming trunks? Check. Throwing caution to the wind, I started my vacation with the suitcase I had and not the one I might have wanted. I decided to eshew the interstate and instead to take Highway 12. A bit more scenic and less Illinois drivers.
(Preparing to enter the hills of Baraboo.) For the initial stretch of the drive we had some Goose Island Ramblers playing. It seemed appropriate since they seamlessly moved between many of the varieties of folk music to be heard in this state (jigs, polkas, waltzes, Norwegian fiddle tunes, country, et al) and often sang about various locales here in Wisconsin (e.g. - Hurley, Dickeyville, and the Packer Inn on Madison's fashionable east side). Plus their music is some of the greatest for driving ever recorded. The Dulcinea loves the song "Wreck of the Titanic" so she would turn the volume up when it came on and proceeded to sing along. This having been my first vacation in a few years, it was also the first trip I took where I had the incredibly handy and interesting Romance of Wisconsin Place Names by Robert Gard & L.G. Sorden. Take Baraboo, for instance. The book tells us that there were two Baribeau brothers who owned a mill at the mouth of what we today call the Baraboo River. At some point, they started a-feudin' and a-fightin' and things got so bad that one of them changed his surname to "Baraboo". Who knew that Frenchman could be so spiteful? To break our fasts, we made a pit stop in Tomah. (The town was named after Chief Thomas Carron, a Menominee Indian, whose first name was pronounced "Tomah" by French fur traders.) Now, when I think of Tomah, I think of two things: 1) that it's the hometown of friend of mine and 2) that scene in Primary where Hubert H. Humphrey has a tasty ham dinner there with some locals and stands out on a street corner to shake hands. I wish I had a copy of the film because I would like to know where he stood as it was no doubt somewhere on 12 which is the main drag in town. On the same street is the Greenwood Café. They indeed had good food as our breakfasts were tasty and the coffee most welcome. I was served a foodstuff with which I was hitherto unfamiliar - marionberry jam. I always thought that a marionberry was a former mayor of Washington D.C. and not a fruit. But, as I learned, it is a strain of blackberry. That we were getting close to "up nort" was very obvious from a couple things. First was the jar of Pleasoning on the table next to the salt & pepper. Pleasoning is a low-sodium seasoning mix that emanates from La Crosse and is ubiquitous at restaurants in the west central and northwestern parts of the state. (Can anyone verify if it is to be found in the Fox Valley and other easterly environs in Wisconsin?) The second giveaway was all the hunting/fishing gear and animals on the walls. There's nothing like stuffed and mounted animals on the walls to remind you that you're not in Madison anymore. I say "close to 'up nort'" above because, for me, the true "up north" doesn't begin until you get past Highway 29 which goes west from Green Bay to Wausau and through Chippewa Falls to the Mississippi. North of it lies only one city of any size (Superior); there's lots of forests and the rivers & lakes are so clean that you can actually swim in them without fear of dying from a bacterial infection. Plus there are Indian reservations with taverns where pale faces like me are not welcome. With breakfast done, it was back on Highway 12. Destination: The land of the Gloomnadoom - Black River Falls.