Vacation Hot Spot
In nearby Wisconsin Dells, Paul Bunyan’s Lumberjack Show features talented young men who compete in lumberjack skills such as logrolling, speed climbing, axe throwing and chopping, and log sawing with axes, handsaws and powerful chain saws.
Wisconsin Dells bills itself as the “water park capital of the world.”
“We have the big six water parks; all but one are both indoor and outdoor,” said Natalja Deduna, sales manager for the Wisconsin Dells Visitor and Convention Bureau.
However, Wisconsin Dells was a major tourist destination before the advent of the water parks, with boat tours on the Wisconsin River through unusual glacier-carved limestone formations. The Tommy Bartlett Show with its acrobatic water skiers has been a Wisconsin Dells fixture for more than 60 years.
Century of Granite
In Madison, the large granite state Capitol has dominated the downtown skyline for 100 years; it marked its centennial last year. Its ornate interior, with more than 43 varieties of stone from around the world, shines after an extensive 14-year restoration and renovation completed in 2002.
Visitors can go up in the dome, the only granite dome in the United States, stand inside a small Plexiglas inset and look down into the rotunda; they can also walk outside around the exterior of the dome for a 360-degree view of Madison, which sits on a narrow isthmus between Lake Mendota and Lake Monona.
Across the street from the Capitol, the Wisconsin Veterans Museum traces the state’s military history through innovative displays of artifacts, including a UH-1 Huey helicopter that flew in Vietnam and now hangs suspended from the ceiling, and a large collection of oral histories of veterans accessible in several computer kiosks.
“Every veteran is a story. We try to preserve and protect them,” said Karen Burch, marketing specialist for the museum.
“We can have all these [artifacts], but they don’t mean anything without the story. That is our mission, to tell the stories,” said Jennifer Van Haaften, assistant director.
