October 1 - Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin

The day dawned cold but clear, and since rainy days were forecast for the end of the week we decided to take the boat tour of the Wisconsin Dells while we had the sunshine. Mirror Lake State Park is just south of the Dells area, so the drive in was quite quick. The town of Wisconsin Dells seems to be attracting the same mix of tacky tourist attractions that make places like Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and Ocean City, Maryland, so eminently forgettable. So we skipped the town and paid for boat tours of the Lower and Upper Dells.

The Lower Dells tour was fairly short, just about an hour, and proceeded southward from the dam for a couple of miles along the Wisconsin River. The river in this section of the Dells is open and sunny, so we had good views of the sandstone formations. The formations on the Lower Dells tour had wonderful hues of golden sand mixed with some reddish oxides that were quite pretty. The very old Cambrian-era sandstone of these formations has a particular layered quality and is otherwise found only in Potsdam, Germany, Potsdam, New York, and Zurich, Switzerland. For geological consistency it seemed clear to me that we should rename Zurich as Potsdam, Switzerland, but I suppose the Swiss might object. Come to think of it, I suppose the good citizens of the Wisconsin Dells might object to changing the name to Potsdam, Wisconsin. There is in fact a dam between the Upper and Lower Dells and no doubt there are many if not a multitude of pots in the town, so it would be technically as well as geologically accurate, but it doesn’t somehow have quite the same ring. Besides, they’d have to change all the roadside billboards and there’s no way they’d ever do that!

Our Captain gave names for many of the formations; some we could easily see, like Hawk’s head., while others required a LOT of imagination. I was particularly intrigued by the “milk bottle” formation that had “Elsie the cow” in the middle of it—the cow silhouette was really accurate enough to have been painted on, which makes me suspicious. When we took a narrow channel beside one of the islands, we were brought up so close to the layered formation that we could almost reach out and touch it and certainly had an “up close and personal” look at it.

After we returned to the dock we sprinted across the street to McDonalds for a quick lunch before taking the Upper Dells tour. The McDonalds was interesting because the interior was constructed from large logs that were decorated in the fashion of a fancy hunting lodge or chalet complete with a huge fireplace and a moose head hanging from one wall. I felt this made for a very pleasant mealtime ambience but I also thought it was decidedly unusual for a fast food joint. However, the decorator obviously had a sense of humor because a stuffed silver fox had a hamburger in its mouth and a bear carved from a tree trunk was holding the golden arches sign for McDonalds in his paws. The menu, of course, was standard McDonalds fare and I had a grilled chicken with fries washed down with some iced tea. I was glad no hunters were there because I ate so fast I virtually wolfed it down, and then we ran back across the street to catch a shuttle bus for the Upper Dells tour.

The Upper Dells tour was quite a bit longer than the Lower Dells tour, lasting about 2 ¼ hours and involving two short shore excursions. The shoreline in this section was more covered in forest and overgrown with moss, so the formations often seemed somewhat darker than the Lower Dells, but that might also have been due to a change of the lighting conditions. We had a different Captain, an ex-teacher, and he also had a patter line with the names of some formations along with many bad jokes. We thought the formation named for Blackhawk was a particularly good silhouette of a Native-American profile, and the formation named “chimney rock” had, as you would hope, a clear resemblance to a chimney.

The second shore excursion had no canyons but instead gave us some really spectacular examples of rock towers and overhanging rock shelves. One tower is famous as the sight of the first “stop action” picture that featured a young man jumping from the bluff onto the top of a rock tower. A photographer named Bennett caught him in mid jump and the picture won a national prize, we were told. We also saw a huge shelf of sandstone that projected out in a cantilever fashion about 10 feet from the side of the bluff, absolutely flat with squared-off edges just like a table. In fact, it was so perfect I could have sworn a stone mason had cut it.

The trip back was fairly short, which was just as well since we had run out of space for pictures in our camera. If you are going to see the Dells and can only afford one boat trip, I would recommend the Upper Dells tour, but if you can afford both trips (about $25) I would recommend doing the Lower Dells tour first and then the Upper Dells tour. Seeing both was certainly interesting for us, but I think if you did the Upper Dells tour first you might be a little disappointed at the short length and limited formations of the Lower Dells tour.

Back at the entrance we asked where the nearest Wal Mart was and hopped back in the car to do some shopping on the way back to camp—it seemed like there was always “one more thing” to buy for the trailer. On this trip we purchased a 1500-watt electric space heater, 12-volt light bulbs, a 2-ton hydraulic jack, a hand wash cloth, a bathroom cup, a gallon of milk, and a set of leveling pads for the wheels of the trailer. The latter were interesting because they were nothing so much as a set of super-large plastic Legos in about a 1” width that you can hook together to form a platform for the wheels. I spent $30 on them and was very much hoping that they would work as advertised because I just hate wasting money.