The glaciers missed this corner of Wisconsin and left it beautiful. We're your halfway stop, so here's what we tell friends to go see. Coffee first, obviously.
Frank Lloyd Wright's home, studio, and school. Book the estate tour and give it a full morning. We're on your way there and your way back.
Impossible to describe, unwise to skip. The Infinity Room alone is worth the drive. Give yourself three hours minimum.
World-class classical theater performed outdoors under the oaks. Pack a picnic, catch the evening show, stop here for road coffee first.
Brick storefronts from the railroad boom, the old depot, and the friendliest block in the Driftless. Start at our counter and wander.
Not the brochure. The real list, from people who live here. Fuel up at the counter first.
Farm-to-table cooking that half of Madison drives an hour for. Make a Viroqua day of it.
The fly shop for the spring creeks. Honest advice, local patterns, and the intel you need before you wade in.
Guided fly fishing on Driftless spring creeks and the Wisconsin River. Trout, smallmouth, and the occasional musky story.
The crookedest river in the world, they say. Slow water, high bluffs, zero hurry.
Paddle the lower Wisconsin and camp overnight on a sandbar. Falling asleep on your own island is a Wisconsin birthright. Blackhawk River Runs, eight miles from our door, will set you up.
Kayak the quiet water, then dock for an Old Fashioned at Ishnala Supper Club. The most Wisconsin afternoon available for purchase.
Dinner at Reunion Family BBQ (say hi to Rusty for us), then live music at the Slowpoke Lounge & Cabaret. Coffee here on your way home tomorrow.
Hiking the bluffs at Devil's Lake State Park? Take the slow route and cross the Wisconsin River on the Colsac III, the state's last free ferry. Ice cream shops wait on the banks, and the correct order is one cone per crossing.
This list grows every season. Supper clubs, overlooks, trout streams, and cheese are all under review by a very dedicated committee.
The day trips get the glory, but this is the everyday stuff. Most of it is a short walk from our door, the rest a ten minute hop down Highway 14.
Every small town deserves a hardware store this good. Woman owned and run by one of the most capable people in the village, and she will know exactly which bolt you need from your vague description of the thing it fell off of. We are openly biased. We love this place. Just watch out for the bright pink forklift.
A circus and movement arts center a few doors down our own street, teaching juggling, tightwire, acrobatics, and aerial arts to kids and grown-ups since 2002. Fitting company: the Ringling Brothers first stepped into show business right here in Mazomanie in 1882. This town has been running away to the circus for a very long time. In summer you might catch their students walking down the sidewalk on stilts. Look twice, then wave. The story is on our Building page.
Malts, shakes, and diner food the old way. Coffee with us in the morning, a malt at Gordon's in the afternoon. That is a well-balanced Mazomanie day.
A restored mansion with a roaring twenties speakeasy and a beer garden out back. We handle your mornings. They handle your evenings. The village runs on a fair division of labor.
A neighborhood restaurant a few doors down, with old prints on the walls and conversation at the next table. Nancy's sourdough is worth the reservation on its own, and if Jeff is pouring the martinis, plan on walking home. Ask him about the clank of the flagpole clamps sounding like halyards and you have started a fine evening. Talk to the other guests too. They don't bite. Say hi to Sage for us.
The village pool and splash pad, hosting cannonballs since 1969. A smoothie afterward is basically mandatory and we happen to know a place.
Eight wooden lanes rolling since 1946, and no computers in sight. If you know how to score a game by hand, you will feel right at home. If you do not, consider it a history lesson with pizza.
The Midwest's largest shoe store, family run since 1947. You go in for one pair of boots. You come out with three bags and a story. Everyone does.
Naturally leavened breads, pastries, and donuts, from scratch and farm to table, plus sourdough pizza nights worth planning a week around. Some bakeries earn a stop. This one earns a detour.
A smooth, easy path right alongside Black Earth Creek. Anyone can walk it: strollers, grandparents, that friend who claims they do not hike. Take a coffee to go and let the creek do the talking.
Want the path less traveled? Oak barrens, prairie, and quiet bluff trails minutes from downtown. You will pass more deer than people.
Hillside vines above the Wisconsin River on one of the prettiest pieces of ground in the valley. Go for the view, the grounds, and a slow afternoon.
Step one is always the same. After that, pick your adventure.
Coffee at the counter, then kayak Black Earth Creek from The Shoe Box down to Lions Park. Dry off and finish with dinner at the Wall Street Gallery & Bistro, directly across the street from where you started.
Coffee first, then hike the Spring Green Preserve, Wisconsin's little desert. Lunch at the Riverview Terrace Cafe, the only Frank Lloyd Wright designed restaurant in the world. End at Tower Hill State Park, where they dropped molten lead down a bluff to make shot in the 1830s.
Coffee to go, then float the Kickapoo, the crookedest river you'll ever love. Dinner at Driftless Cafe in Viroqua on the way home. Sleep like a champion.
Coffee and a pastry, then wander the shops of Mount Horeb. Finish with dinner at the Paoli Schoolhouse American Bistro, an 1864 schoolhouse on the Sugar River.
The Driftless does not just do pretty. It does peculiar, and it does it with a completely straight face. Every one of these is real, and the first one is a short walk from our counter.
A museum of the smallest cars ever built, two blocks from our counter on Crescent Street. Free to visit, every donation goes to local charities, and it opens a handful of weekend dates each season. Check their calendar, then come argue over which one you would daily-drive. We have opinions.
The late Dr. Evermor spent decades welding the Forevertron, a 300 ton Victorian machine built to launch him to the heavens on a magnetic lightning force beam. It has not fired yet. The flock of scrap-metal birds alone is worth the trip. Hours shift, so check before you go.
Baraboo is where the Ringling Bros. put their circus to bed every winter. Seven National Historic Landmark buildings, the largest collection of circus wagons on earth, and a real big top show all summer. Elephants once strolled these streets. The town has never fully recovered, in the best way.
A roadside museum of perfectly ordinary things, dignified into art. Free, self-guided, open daylight hours, next door to a tiny art gallery that is also unremarkable on purpose. Leave something at the Sleepy Hollow Stump. We will not tell you what. That is between you and the stump.
A modern megalithic garden on a bluff above the Mississippi: stone circles, a dolmen, a labyrinth, and prairie in every direction. Started in 2011 and built to outlast everyone reading this. Open daily May through October. It is a long drive. That is part of it.
Not strange. Sacred. A thousand years before this bank held its first deposit, mound builders shaped this valley into birds, bears, and water spirits. Man Mound is the last surviving human-shaped effigy mound in North America, a horned figure 214 feet long, and more mounds still hold the bluffs at Devil's Lake. This is Ho-Chunk homeland. Walk gently and take nothing but the quiet.
Every great adventure begins with a red line crawling across an old map. Ours all start at the same place: a warm cup on Brodhead Street. X marks the spot, then the trail leads out.
Drawn for charm, not for navigation. Somebody left their hat. If adventure has a flavor, this week it is in the vault.