Not Quite Minnesota, Too Much Wisconsin Flair.

It’s always great to be shipped to the Hudson area, because it’s basically a suburb/late night alcohol stop of the Twin Cities area, which means I can catch up with old friends who are willing to cross over the St. Croix River while I am caged in Wisconsin. Wisconsin is a great cage to be stuck in though, and there never seems to be enough time to explore the shops, cafes, and river walk in Hudson’s historic downtown. My absolute favorite boutique in the area is the La Rue Marche. Such a gem. Incredible clearance, gorgeous shoes, super helpful staff, and articles of clothing much too trendy and pretty for my dirt throwing, hotel living lifestyle. It’s kind of like a museum to me, so many pretty things to see. I’ll definitely be wearing my finds a lot this summer to get my money’s worth out of them! I also love Lavender & Thyme, right across the street. I got my first pair of Joe’s there and couldn’t believe how long they lasted me after wearing them practically every other day for 3 years. Even more artsy, trendy, and unaffordable to my budget clothes there, but most of the time it’s just fun to window shop. The food is fabulous in Hudson too. The mojitos at the San Pedro Cafe absolutely cannot be beat! But my heart belongs to the Winzer Stube, they do German fare better than any other place I’ve been to in Wisconsin. I guess I’m not the only one who thinks so, because they sign out front let us know they were voted the 17th best German restaurant in America, out of 404. Top 20 German food, mmm… $2.50 German drafts during happy hour, mmm… 50% off schnitzel dinners on Wednesdays, mmm… but alas, I’m still off meat and had incredible schnitzel envy. Nothing to complain about the krautfleckerl though, they’re spaetzle is top notch!


We also got to briefly visit the Minnesota History Center during a visit to the SHPO’s office to see an old friend. What a great facility! Great interactive exhibits, but I didn’t have enough time to explore. The only photo I took of one of their exhibits was of one of Prince’s outfits. If you’re going to take just one photo, this is definitely appropriate. Prince and I are the same height. Let’s go crazy.


Another fabulous, fabulous historical stop is the New Richmond Heritage Center. It was located right behind the hotel and peaked my interest right away. I initially thought it was a house and barn, but the facility actually has several historic buildings over 11 acres including two houses, the barn, a church, general store, school house, blacksmith shop, log cabin, and others. Some of the buildings are original to the site (including the Bell/Tierney Italianate-style house which is on the NRHP), but most have been trucked in and/or reassembled from other locales in northwest Wisconsin. Each building has been restored and set up as it would have looked in the past, but not all of the elements in each building are from an exact time period. A lot of school groups tour the facility, so you can pick up, play with, and explore a lot of the artifacts. Hands-on learning the way it should be!






Since we’re always on the lookout for cheap entertainment, cheap beer, and novelty, we honed in on this little downtown New Richmond gem right away. Seriously? Are they really called Bowlarena? I’m not sure, but the place was fantastic. Chipped up balls, wonky lanes, mechanical errors, and score-your-own bowling. We missed Monday’s $1 games, $1 shoes, $1.50 Miller products, and free juke box night, that mistake will NOT happen again. Regardless, bowling was only $2.50, a full night of laughs amounted about about $6 plus beer. Even though there are no projectors to display the scores, it’s still fun to make up silly bowling names… right, Cupcake?




And to leave you with, a shot of what people always want to know... what do we do? Well, sometimes we walk through plowed fields, stare at the ground, and look for artifacts. Usually with a gorgeous Wisconsin landscape in the background.

Wisconsin's Dirty South

And some more catching up with somewhere we spend a lot of time. Richland County. See you later this summer, STH 60. xoxo.

The Pine River, where it meets the Wisconsin.


Susan, along the Wisconsin.




Fawns playing in our survey area off STH 60.


A corn cob pipe! For real!


Steak and taters, wooooo!


Weggy Winery.

Catching Up

It's not even May, and there have already been four weeks of the field season. I've spent all four weeks on excavations in Burnett County, which made a couple of my blog posts last summer. The four weeks yielded thousands of amazing artifacts from a Terminal Late Woodland campsite along Webb Lake, one too many early wood ticks, and many nights at Heartwood being lulled to sleep by frogs and haunted by the cries of the loons.



Because of the hectic pace of last autumn's excavations, I lasped on a few blog posts. Here's a photo recap of what I missed. Black River Falls and Merrillan:

Majestic P!


There's always room for jello.


A sweet old restored bar in Merrillan.


Outside of Merrillan. Yep.



Merrillan.

Another Northern Gem

Where else can you see world-record sized muskies and genius dioramas of woodland taxidermy but northern Wisconsin?

Forget that big fiberglass muskie, go to the Moccasin Bar! You might even get a line from a camo-clad local such as, "Do you know what a wood cock is?"... the answer is, "the evidence" !!

Photo captions welcome!

History is Offensive

We're currently working in Superior, which I consider one of Wisconsin's armpits. Sorry Superior, you could really do so much better! The best thing about Superior is its proximity to Duluth, one of my favorite Midwest cities. Superior does have a high quantity of retro neon signs though, those are fun to look at. I'd go downtown to take some photos of them tonight, but downtown Superior is shady enough in the daylight. Okay, enough Superior bashing! Props to the Osaugie trail along the waterfront. It kicked my ass on a run today, but kept me going with enough stuff to look at.

While up here for work, we were given an interesting mission on the side... a sort of scavenger hunt. Word got back to the museum in Madison that there are a series of t-shirts for sale in northern Wisconsin (and Minnesota), that are pretty offensive to Native American peoples. Since every history has a dark side, we attempted to find some of these t-shirts to give to the museum to document a harsher part of Wisconsin's history.

Click here to see the particular t-shirts we were looking for.

Superior is a bit too close to the source of fire, so I'm not sure we'll have much luck here. There's still one day left to complete this mission. If we don't succeed, at least we got to laugh at a lot of other offensive t-shirts for sale. Below are a few I photo'd before my camera batteries ran out. Hopefully there will me more to post tomorrow! And here are some lovely suggestions from my Facebook friends, which may or may not be worthy of documenting as history:

"Purchasing Managers Do It By the Book"

"This isn't a beer belly, it's a gas tank for a sex machine." (worn by a rumored sex offender - ew!

An image depicting two unicorns humping under a rainbow. Brilliant!

"I will gouge out your eyeballs and skull fuck you!"

One with the silhouette of a car on it that says, "my other ride is your boyfriend"

"This isn't a beer belly....it's a blood reservoir for my penis"

"Swallow or it's going in your eye."

"If the heat doesn't kill the elderly, I will" t-shirt.

"My other car is up my nose."

What a Shame!

It's been two months to the day since I've blogged. I wasn't lying when I said I wasn't prolific. To my defense though, the field season has been fairly redundant. Burnett County was my second home from the end of May through mid-July. I returned briefly to Hwy 60 in Richland County, with a move and selling nearly all of my possessions in between. So let's recap the past two months!

So, Siren isn't a bad place to be stuck for a while, but any place for a while gets a bit dull. It was a bit far from the project area, which made for really long days when we kept hitting sites and finding artifacts. Too much work to do, wasting too much time driving. One of the local property owners told us of a place down the road, and regretfully, it took us a couple weeks to check it out. Now, the Heartwood Conference Center is definitely one of my most favorite places in Wisconsin to stay. It's in the middle of nowhere. It's surrounded by 700 acres of nature and has a private lake/sandy beach with free canoes, kayaks, and rowboats to use. There are trails to bike or hike, athletic fields with all the gear you'd need, a great internet connection, and best of all -- bad cell phone reception! We'll be up here for just about all the rest of the field season, hopefully staying in a cabin where we can cook and actually feel domestic for once. I'm hoping a bear comes strolling through at some point. There are frequently deer on the dirt road in, and I even saw one nibbling on some grass outside of my hotel room's patio door. Only downside = other vacationers. My work time/home life, their "vacation, let the kids loose to scream and run around so their out of the way" time. Yeah, I'm that grumpy chick who's been scowling at your loud children.

Because of an overload of work and a very small crew, I can't recall many shenanigans to write about. We've kayaked, jumped on the water trampoline, cooked and stuffed each other silly, and spent a lot of time just hanging by the lake. There have been a couple outings to Hayward, to remind us what an actual town is like (but not too often). A favorite with the crew is the Angry Minnow brewery and restaurant. I concur, fabulous beer! We strolled around Hayward one day. There are some great shops, but way overpriced and too many people. How much fudge can people eat? Answer - A LOT. I ran out of the candy store as fast as I ran into it, and with no purchases!

Another outing was to the Forts Folle Avione between Webster and Danbury, on the Yellow River. It a nice little museum and a historic fort with FANTASTIC guides!! A Native Mille Lacs man took us through the reconstructed Woodland village, which was mainly reconstructed by him - by hand. So impressive. Then a self-professed "half-breed" aka half Native/half French woman guided us through the French fur trade era trading posts. She was incredibly enthusiastic, which I was really entertained by, although some of my coworkers though she was a bit much. No way man, turn up the enthusiasm whenever possible! And to top it off, we finally saw a black bear there. After 6 or 7 weeks of being told by property owners about all the bears, a little guy was hanging around the park trying to steal food from campers. Not gonna lie, I probably would've fed him (I know, I know!).

And that about sums up a month and a half of "up nort" living. Yeah, the cultural interaction is pretty minimal. Less woods, more people, more serenity. Maybe we'll get a bit more rowdy and explore when the excavations start this fall. Or maybe I'll just keep taking ridiculously beautiful nature photos and stay peaceful.