Gravity Hill - Shullsburg, Wisconsin

The south western part of Wisconsin is an anything goes in the way of topography. High plateaus of clear skylines and drifting fields of amber evoke an almost Nebraska-isk sentiment; miles of black fertile soil and pig shit in every direction. Then the Earth can give way to canyons of sandstone and ruggedly cut ravines and flood-prone, no-name creeks; river bottoms with their mangled and tortured tree limbs invite imagination.

Shullsburg is a tight knit community on such a plateau. Solid, conservative, five generation farmers drive Dodge pick-ups through a tidy downtown of sturdy, red bricked buildings. Everyone offers a friendly wave; strangers are greeted with a welcoming conversation about the weather at the local filling station. But one gets the feeling, with street names like Judgment, Truth, Justice and Reckoning that the residents like their town just the way it is and don’t mind in the least that when you’re done visiting, you just as soon keep moving along.

South of town, just below the mud, lies a mineral deposit that has brought wayward travelers off the beaten path for years:    Gravity Hill.

It was no different for me.

Drive south of town on Hwy U, past the Shullsburg Regional Airport with its one grass runway and then, according to the barkeep at the Green Street Tavern about “1000 feet or so”, past Rennick Road. Locals have painted a large ‘GH’ in the south bound lane.

Stop. Put your car in neutral and witness as an unseen force pulls your car backwards up the hill.

No joke.

Enough said.

When you’re done, stop in at the Shullsburg Creamery in town.

*the south bound lane offers a far better experience, the northbound lane is a little more bumpy and thus the car does not travel nearly as fast or smooth up the hill.

Sprecher’s Bar – Leland, Wisconsin

Leland, Wisconsin, population: 50.

It’s a town on the way to nowhere and the 50 or so that call it home don’t necessarily mind that.

My wife and I had spent the better part of June rubber tramping across Western Wisconsin. Happening into Leland was by accident. A few years before, I had visited what I believed, was the only thing worth mentioning in Leland. And that was the Natural Bridge State Park a couple hundred yards east of town.                            http://wisconsinrambler.blogspot.com/2015/02/natural-bridge-state-park.html

The night before, we had camped out under the stars, a stone’s throw outside of the little town of Neptune, Wisconsin, a black dot on the map kind of town known for its ‘Elephant Trunk Rock’. The month of June had been dry. Bone-dry, in fact. We took advantage of the deteriorating populace of mosquitoes and threw our sleeping bags right there on the grass next to our fire pit. We passed out under an opening in the Alder trees, the faint passing of an occasional lonely car out on Hwy 154, lulled us to sleep.

The morning found us on what I couldn't say with any certainty wasn’t private property, so I whisked a quick breakfast together on the Coleman, poured a cup of what loosely resembled coffee, the dogs took a shit and we were on our way. We headed East.

Western Wisconsin is an expanse of land that is hard to describe. High plateaus with long sight lines, red barns and silos suddenly give way to Appalachian-like shadowed gorges and hidden ravines; places time forgot. We pass through the towns of Bear Valley, Mound, Sextonville and finally, Plain, Wisconsin; all just loose scatterings of buildings, a Lutheran church or two and quaint homes with kept lawns. There’s very little, if any poverty to be found. Around mid-day we roll into Leland, a town at first glimpse, very much like any of the others.

Nothing about the mundane blueish-grayish building on the right hand side of the road should have caught my eye, but it did. An Old Style beer sign swings from a rusty brown hanger as I hit the brakes on the Subaru and take a parking spot out front on the street.

Its noon. The June day is just beginning to blossom. Summer is still in its infancy, the scent of flowering lilac stubbornly hovers in the air. My wife and I get out and stretch our legs, walking stiffly into the bar.

Lunch is on my mind. I’m also not denying I could go for an amber pint with an inch of head on top. I stroll in and find the inn nearly empty. I suppose it is a Tuesday after all. Just one old man is tending the keep; we pull up a stool and I peer at what he has on tap.

What transpires in the next few hours is nothing short of simply spectacular.

The bar keep is Junior Sprecher, namesake of Sprecher’s Bar, 53951. He’s a gray haired man with a strong fire in his eyes, a balding whisp of snow-white hair and a strong barreled chest…. and he’s been tending this slab of hardwood for almost 80 years.

Yup. Eight Zero.

In fact, only two people have owned this piece of real estate in the last 110 years or so. Junior Sprecher and well, Senior Sprecher. Edwin is his given name and Jim, his middle. While most kids during his time would have been called by their middle name had they shared their father's namesake, Mr. Sprecher informs us that the family’s draft horse’s was called Jim. So from about age five or so, he’s been Junior Sprecher.

The selection of alcohol is limited but they come for the tête-à-tête. That and The Junior….a sandwich that is piled with a munificent sum of aged summer sausage and slabs of sharp cheddar. I've never had anything like it.

The walls are littered with the history of Leland. In effect, Sprecher’s serves as the town’s unofficial museum. Black and whites of a time long since past hang in cheap wooden frames, hung from crooked tacks. There’s a pool table with surprisingly good green felt and the woman and I try our hand at a game or two.

I’m no better than I was on our first date.

Senior Sprecher first owned this building when it held the General Store. He bought it in 1900. Over the years, they did what they needed to survive the Depression, the 1960s, the Carter Years and Skinny Jeans.

“I listened to the Joe Louis, Schmeling fight on the radio in the corner over there.”, Junior confesses.

Junior himself was a boxer in his prime, first bare-knuckling it in the alley behind his father’s store and later a fighter who earned a scholarship to box for the University of Madison. With his bags packed, Junior had to abandon his dreams when his dad fell ill. Junior’s been running the bar ever since.

“We’ve sold just about anything you could think of over the years. Fishing equipment, farm overalls, gloves, hats, things the people needed on the farm…I started selling guns too, when I knew they’d sell.”

Over the years, Junior hasn't re-stocked the walls with a lot of the things he once did. But you can still buy a deer rifle or a shotgun, a belt holster or knife and talk about your new purchase over some fermented barley. Gotta love Wisconsin.

We sit there for what ends up being most the afternoon. A few locals come and go. My wife and I fit in a game of pool while Junior chews the fat with visiting patrons. A group of three ‘bikers’ show up on Harleys. All three squeak as they walk in, fitted in their brand new leather. Accountants or lawyers we figure. They order Miller Lites and one, a Corona with a fruit wedge. They leave after an hour or so, revving their iron steeds excessively through the calm of the sleepy afternoon.

But there’s sometimes a half hour or more where it’s just us and him. The friendly smile never leaves his face, nor does the sincere enthusiasm of his conversation.

I feel almost sad leaving. Like I remember leaving my Grandma’s house on Sunday afternoon when I was a kid.

But my wife and I need to find another spot to spend the night and the heavy scent of freshly cut hay in the waning hours of daylight remind us of this.

We pay our tab. I order two of Junior Sandwiches for the road and we walk across the creaking floor and out the door. Junior follows us.

We head to the car and say goodbye. Our dogs, lying lazily in the shade of a century old Maple tree run and hop in the back. We pull away with Junior still in the doorway of the bar.

We’ll be back someday.

Natural Bridge State Park

Tucked mid way up a bluff in central Wisconsin, stands the largest natural arch in the Midwestern United States. And slightly hidden at the base of the arch, nestled in an unsuspecting crook is a hollowed out cave that may be one of the oldest known human inhabited places in all of North America.

Your cost to see both? The price of a Wisconsin State Park pass.

Buy one here: http://dnr.wi.gov/topic/parks/admission.html

Discovered by Native Americans, some 12,000 years ago, the sweeping sandstone arch that comprises the center point of Natural Bridge State Park, is a spectacle to behold.

My first trip to the park was in the late summer of 2008. Where I had heard of the arch is somewhat vague but never the less, it had been on my list for some time. Turning west off of Hwy 12, just south of Baraboo, I pointed my Subaru towards the rugged sandstone hills of central Wisconsin. Thousands of years ago, a giant piece of iron, almost 2000 feet in height and some 200 miles to the north-west that later became known as Rib Mountain, split the massive glacier that had pushed its way down from Hudson Bay in Canada. The result was this glacier-less area, where the landscape remained intact, resembling what it had for millions of years. In fact, some of the world’s oldest fragments can be found in boulders only 30 miles north of here at Devils Lake State Park.

The hustle and the bustle of the highway is quickly a memory in the rear view mirror as Hwy C becomes more narrow and winding. Old generational farms stand as reminders of a salt of the earth time, where relatives of the first pioneers to this area still work the land.

This has been a warm summer. The A/C in the Outback doesn’t work anymore and I’m thankful for the breeze coming in the windows as are my dogs in the back. It’s hard to keep my car between the lines on the road and there’s no chance I can do anything that resembles the speed limit. There’s too much to see. There’s nowhere in the United States like Wisconsin. I try and equate this landscape and these small knit communities to something in Pennsylvania perhaps. But the culture here is different. Its more independent; folks more friendly too.

I pass my first Amish wagon not more than three miles from Hwy 12. The driver gives me a gentle wave as I pass. I think to myself, what a wonderful existence. Such a connection to the land, such a dependence on everything that makes sense. I peer in the mirror and see the bobbling heads of the family grow smaller as I drive on.

The park comes suddenly. Had I been in a deeper state of fantasy, I could have easily passed it, at which point I would of ended up in the town of Leland, only a brief ¼ mile down the road. Where I would have stopped into Sprecher’s Bar and perhaps bought a new rifle while gulping down a hoppy elixir from a local brewery. Gotta love Wisconsin. (See my article on Sprecher’s Bar on my blog)

But I do see the entrance in time and make a hard right turn and drive only a hundred feet or so and park. The lot is small….and its empty. There are newer restrooms to the right just as you begin the hike to the arch. I stop and use them. They don’t flush, but I delight in the simplicity of it.

I press on, up the hill, digging in my heals and just catching my stride; I’ve gone no more than a few hundred feet, in my estimate, when I’m startled by the immense arch standing shadowing the forest before me.

It is a spectacle that doesn’t disappoint in the least. I stand with it before me, taking in the shear size. The northern face of the arch stands nearly 70 feet in the air, the backside of the arch, perhaps 35 feet. It is nearly 100 feet in length and stands in monolith fashion. I walk around the front of the arch to its eastern edge. I begin the easily climb to the main arch. The bridge is about four feet across and narrows in its span across to the other side. As I begin to walk across, the bridge thins considerably more than I had estimated. I’m standing now on a mere 16 inches or so of sandstone with a forbidding 70 foot drop to my right. The pucker factor intensifies and I find myself slightly frozen in place. I’ve stood on mountains in Colorado that far exceeded the circumstances I find myself in here, but for some reason I find this more than what I had anticipated. I turn, in an about-face and scurry back across the arch to its origin.

The arch is surrounded by scraggles of Glossy Buckthorn bushes and other thorn bushes unnative to the state and listed on the evasive species list. I wack threw the vines to the lower, north-west corner of the arch where I find an ancient washout in the standstone, that some might call a cave, but is more of a slight cavern running horizontal into the base of the arch. Its perhaps six feet high, no more and the ceiling lessons as it deepens into the sandstone. This is one of the oldest known inhabited places in all of North America. Archaeologists estimate early humans had been using this as a shelter beginning some 12,000-15,000 years ago. As I stand inside, my surroundings become eerily silent, the wind dies down and the forest seems to hush itself. I suffer a presence and energy I find unable to explain and stand for a moment to just soak it in before I quickly exit through the widening.

Outside the cave, I stand in silence for a few moments and admire nature’s handywork before picking up pace and heading back to the car.

My ride home finds my mind in a comfortable contemplation of my visit. What a lonely but sublime place, tucked so neatly back in the country I think to myself. I still feel an energy that has made itself at home is my psyche as I drive. The ancestors of our humankind lineage may have been standing right with me today, if only in spirit. The cracked and waving pavement of road stretches out in front of me and the motor wines. The setting sun sits behind me as I roll along towards home.