Tigers Oh My!

The route to our next stop was mostly on secondary roads not the interstates but all the roads here in Wisconsin were better than we had seen in Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania! One thing we had to watch out for were the slower Amish buggies but there were lots of great sights along the roads including several small cemeteries many of them with old tombstones visible. This route must go through several Amish communities as we often saw horse drawn farm equipment and buggies including one driven by a woman in Amish dress and a man using a horse and plow to till his garden.

We arrived in Baraboo in the early afternoon and had to call around to find a campground with space available. We finally settled in at the Dell Boo Campground which seemed a little pricey but perhaps not for the area. The campground does have lots of trees and the spaces are a decent size. Since we arrived too late to go to our destination at the circus museum, we did a maintenance load of laundry which should see us home and then just generally relaxed.

The next morning we left early and headed for our destination, Circus World in Baraboo. The parking lot was empty we were so early but by the time we got PoGoGo unloaded and down the road to the entrance building we began to see others arriving. The entry building leads into a museum of circus art and posters and has a small auditorium with a show about clowns which was our first stop after viewing the posters. The clown show with Ryan & Steve was hilarious as well as informative about clowns.

After that we headed out the back of the building to explore several smaller buildings showing the story of this winter home for the traveling circus. These exhibits were interesting and explained a lot about traveling circuses. At the far end of this area are the tiger cages with a show scheduled for only a few minutes in the future so we waited and were glad we did.

Before the show actually starts the tiger guy, Ryan Holder, made a few prints of the tiger paws by putting the paw in some colorful ink/paint and then printing it onto a canvas. These are then laid out to dry and can later be purchased in the gift shop ... you know I had to get one of those which I did later and now have on my wall with a picture they also sold of Ryan making a print with Zuri, the tiger. The Bengal-Siberian tigers then performed which was fascinating.

After the tiger show we headed back towards the main building and then crossed the river to the circus tent and the scheduled performances which included clowns again and dogs and elephants and acrobats and all one could find in a small circus. Geoffrey's comment about the whole circus visit and most especially this last show was that it made him feel like he was six years old again!

We finally had our fill of the circus, after I went to the gift shop of course. There I got the tiger paw print mentioned above, a hat of course, and an elephant head mug which absolutely grabbed me and said I had to have it!

From here we headed home which took two or three days but, except for some traffic holdups, was a pleasant ending to a great trip.

Now, if I can just catch up on the next three trips we took, I will be all caught up on this blogging stuff. Some of our adventures while NOT on the road and NOT at home will turn up in the next few blogs. We just can't seem to have a boring life!