2014-09-24 Bennett Studios in Wisconsin Dells

Not many outside of Wisconsin have heard of Wisconsin Dells (WD). It's actually the name of their town here; a town not unlike Anaheim or Williamsburg or Orlando.

An attraction is created like Disneyland or Williamsburg Colonial or Walt Disney World and a whole industry of T-shirt shops, hotel/motels, restaurants, and funky attractions grows up around it.

Here in the Dells a man named H.H. Bennett in the 1870's came and photographed the unique landscape. He created 3D stereoscope pictures, sold them, and enticed people to come and visit the area.

His photography studio is here in town and has been in the same location in the same brick building for over 140 years, owned by his family until a 15 years ago when they gave it to the Wisconsin Historical Society.

It's a very nice museum with some hands-on displays.

His studio and all of the tools he used is still here.

His large format camera is even setup for you to take a portrait of your loved one.

Unfortunately, as with all good things, this too had to end. In the late 1800's the Brownie camera was introduced and consumers started taking their own pictures.

To survive he resorted to selling souvenirs of the Wisconsin Dells but still made his stereoscope pictures available as well.

Thanks to the Bennetts' everywhere, there are hundreds of people employed in cities selling boat rides, driving duck boats, giving amusement park rides, hawking t-shirts, and introducing people to their history through museums.

2014-09-23 Wisconsin River Boat Tours

The Wisconsin Dells. It sounds like a nice place. But who's ever heard of it? And what IS a Dell?

Much like Walt Disney enhanced the awareness of cities like Anaheim and Orlando, H.H. Bennett, a 3-D stereographer in the mid 1800's, is credited with making the Wisconsin Dells famous. His photographs showed vacationers that "nature as a playground" was to be enjoyed and not feared.

Because of him there are boat tours on both sides of the dam that splits this town, as well as the Original Wisconsin Ducks tour boats. Not wanting to miss a minute of water time, we went on all three.

The weather was spectacular once again and since we had a choice we did decide to do the 3 boat rides back to back to back.

Our first ride was a 2 hour journey on the lake above the dam. Although the tour boat had two levels, there were only enough people to fill the upper level where the best view was.

The guide narrated points of interest and stories as we headed for our first destination, Witches Gulch. Along the way we saw various rock formations of potsdam rock carved by the water. This rock and the strange erotions is only found in Potsdam, Germany, Potsdam, New York, and on a 12 mile stretch of the Wisconsin River.

Witches Gulch is a crack in the rocks created by a stream where they've built a wooden walkway hanging within the crack. It goes for about a quarter mile back to ... a Snack Shack. As we were walking back the lady behind us said it reminded her of the walk near Banff, BC. I turned around and said, "It's called Johnston Creek". Karen and I had been there 30 years ago and we both remember it fondly.

Back in the boat we went across the lake to the other shore to a place called Stand Rock. Hmm. How to describe this. There is this table rock about 60 feet high that is about 6' distance from the mainland. Back in the 1800's Bennett perfected stop action photographer and caught a guy in mid air jumping across the gap. Now, the job has gone to the dogs.

For the Lower Boat Tour we boarded a similar boat just below the dam.

We went downriver and viewed similar rock formations but heard some different stories.

Hawk's Beak was pretty cool.

The best ride of the day though had to be the Original Wisconsin Ducks Tour made special by our enthusiastic, funny, Jungle Cruise-like driver. These Ducks ARE the original. Started in 1946 using WWII military surplus DUKW amphibious craft. They are the same style you've seen in many cities, including Seattle.

What we expected was to travel through the city tour-bus style and then hit the water for a few minutes. Instead we wound through a paved forest, roller coaster style. Yeeha! Corny joke after corny joke, we all groaned.

The water part of the tour covered similar "ground" as the Lower Boat Tour but the jokes were better. We headed up a creek to get out of the river and then crashed into Lake Delton a few short minutes later.

Lake Delton had an influx of rain water in 2008 and breached County Road C. As the roadway deteriated, ALL of the water left the lake and emptied into the Wisconsin River. We got to see the repaired area from the river and also from the lake side. 5 houses were swept away at the time. There is just a field there now and the road has been rebuilt. Lake Delton is on the right and the Wisconsin River is at the tree line to the left of the red truck. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wqxIT5zAtI

Oh, and the "Dell" thing. Early French explorers called it "dalles", a rapids or narrows on a river. We anglicized it to Dells.