As soon as you veer off of 18 onto Bob Dylan’s Hwy 61 through those huge cut-through rock outcroppings you know something has changed. You have walked through Alice’s keyhole. The Mad Hatter could be lurking around any corner; the White Rabbit could spring out of the top of one of the soaring bluffs. Your ears are popping. Get prepared to be dazzled.
My main intention was to travel to LaSalle to finish up some research I am doing on a large-scope project, and perhaps eat an apple in Soldiers Mills at the apple festival, and sure, yes, I would keep my eyes open for the autumn color show that nature puts on this time of year…although I was going out a bit late. All of the leaves may have already fallen.
And there was one other motivator: I was going to check out a piece of property. The online listing was tantalizing: Amish-built cabin, primitive, gravity-feed water, no septic, no electricity, 3.22 acres of mixed hardwood virgin forests filled with deer, wild turkey, and (some other edible animal I don’t remember.) Abuts national forest land, has stream, taxes $700. $152.000 It sounded perfect for a get-away place. Plus I wanted to actually see an Amish-built house since they are supposedly champions at doing a beautiful job on construction and they don’t even use power tools.
I asked Reynolds to accompany me, and even though is was on very short notice “Hi. I’m going to the bluffs, leaving in 45 mins, wanna go?” He said. “YES!”
A little 5-hour drive; 4 ½ if you are already gassed up ($2.24 per gallon) which I wasn’t. OMG! I wasn’t ready to get tilted off my axis, but that is exactly what happened.
Once I hit “Squeaky Fresh Cheese Curds”, the town with the Silent Woman Café where the sign displays a headless woman with a serving tray, I could not imagine the color. Just electrifying. Everywhere I looked there was another painting. Majestic bluffs swathed in fluorescent lime green, shimmering gold and brilliant yellows, deep russets, edible oranges accented with inky black Angus steers, horses, Gurnesy cows, llamas, deep-cut steams, and those precise crop fields done in contours alternating bluff-colored corn shocks and effervescent green cover crops, newly sprouted, perhaps clover. It was so breathtakingly beautiful. I felt like I was stuck inside a postcard. And I knew right then that if I were to move here I would become a regional painter and I would try to capture all of this in watercolor so my collectors could feel this, feel shimmerworld. And the towns all have a sturdy old-fashioned church. The kind that are white clapboard, two stories high, with a bell tower and that spire that soars up to heaven. Praise be!
Then add in the roads…up and down, swing right, left, 60 mph, then 20, then 40, GO GO GO.
Run it to the end and you smack right into the Mississippi River sparkling like a million diamonds in the last bits of sunlight shining in a Renaissance sky of light blues and billowy pinks streaked with hot fuchsia.
I stopped to see my pal at the greenhouse and got the skinny on what it would be like to actually live there (Depressionville) and I asked for a recommendation regarding motels. He said I would be lucky to find anything and he made a few calls for me. The one near him had a bunch of rooms. He said that the color season must be over because they were all full for the past 3 weeks. So I was in luck.
At that Ren and I went to the real estate office and got the exact location of the Amish cabin (he had TWO!) and went over to C. It’s like an open house except a realtor isn’t there and you just walk right in and take a look at your leisure without any salesperson snow.
I called the realtor on my cell, no connection because of the bluffs, and had to find a pay phone, which is practically nonexistent out there. Found one in Ferryland and one cabin had an accepted offer and the other had an offer that was being presented as we were talking. Yikes! So I didn’t get one.
By that time it was a bit after 5 and I suggested dinner up in LaSalle, Minnesota. Ren said fine and zoom we were off traveling right up the river singing along with Bobby Z.
OMG! Up there there are actual bluffs right in the middle of the Mississippi. Now there are islands everywhere, but bluffs. Wow! Looked awesome.
We ate at a place downtown called Bub’s…pronounced boobs…haha. It’s a brewery and we watched Wisconsin take Purdue, well Ren did, while I chatted up some T.A.s and profs from the University and got some lowdown on the city. Call that research since I arrived far too late to go to the Historical Society as I should have. Still I was able to see the landscape and get the feel of the town, which was my principle motive.
Before we crossed back over into Wisconsin Ren had put down the cushy seat and fallen asleep. Which was fine because as it seems most men are able to sleep like rocks even with music blasting.
Now I am keeping an eye out for a room since it is a bit late and the drive back to the motel greenhouse guy called is over an hour away. NO VACANCY over and over and no I am out of the bigger towns and out in the country where tiny towns with one motel are located. And I am freaking out a little because IF I go all of the way back and all of the rooms are taken we are going to be S.O.L.
So I am stopping at every dinky motel with lights on and SORRY. OMG! Now I am back in on the bluff roads and my bright lights are not bright enough to drive these sharp and crazy roads and I could fly off into the ditch and there is not even one other car out here for miles and miles. I get all of the way back and go to the motel and it looks like there are only 6 cars there and there are 8 rooms but the motel office is closed. UGH! Only the lights from the Mobil station are on.
I thought of going to my brother’s place but if he has the cattle gate locked I won’t be able to get in (He’s not out here this weekend.) Still I take the chance. In the meantime Ren wakes up and I tell him of our dilemma and suggest we just find a place to park and sleep in the car, but he says that’s a bad idea, since it is like 33 degrees and we have no blankets, so fuck. Just go back to sleep. He mumbles, “I am too old for this.” And starts snoring again. Good.
I head back to the Mobil. Maybe we can park in their big lot. By the time I get there they have closed. It is 11:45. I have been driving for hours. I get out my cell and a brochure greenhouse guy gave me with motel numbers. PLEASE WORK. It does and through a grapevine of calls I find a place, ONE ROOM, at Walnut Hills Motel in a town 20 miles away. I beg the women to keep it for me and take off 90 mph. I haven’t seen any police anywhere. NO CARS at all.
Room 10 is mine. Thank God. I was frazzled, my hair was starting to knot up and breath, well didn’t have much left. For some reason I kept thinking of Mary & Joseph looking for a place to spend the night and everyone saying NO ROOM IN THE INN. Although tonight there was no guiding star, pitch black, and I didn’t need to deliver a baby, so not exactly the same, just somewhat.
Ren woke up and we piled out stuff into the room. Two king-size beds and a large fish print that said Endless Journey. We opened the Stoli and ate chips and Cheetoes and carrot sticks and Chunky’s.
Ren was awake. I was google-eyed. So we turned on the teevee and it was midnight. HBO was showing “Auto-Focus” which I had wanted to see and Ren too, so we stayed up. Wild early 70s style movie about Bob Crane (Hogan of Hogan’s Heroes) being a sex addict.
Ren let me sleep until 10:30, which I really appreciated. He woke me up all freshly showered with a Glazier donut and cream-laced coffee. I showered, dressed and we were checked out at 11, official checkout time.
Today, Sunday, was lay back time. I took pictures.
We did an art show at Common Ground, mostly landscapes, then went to Gordon’s Bay right on the Mississippi and did a picnic. It was blustery, but not as much as the day before. We had picked up some of that yummy Iowa beef at Michelson’s. He got the grill going and I took pictures of the river because I am doing two pieces, one called “The Book of Water”, another called “The Book of Clouds.”
Yum. We had steaks and Jays and sesame buns coated in garlic butter.
We headed home through the bluffs. It was murderous with tourists from Iowa and Minnesota. Every apple orchard was filled with cars, so I left without my apple. No Eve dance today.
In Squeaky we stopped at a railroad thing. No regular railroads. The little ones that developed this part of the country by taking workers into the remote areas.
In Annabel we stopped at Eye Gallery. It was mostly portraits done by local painters. The work was quite accomplished. But then I can easily see why so many artists live out here. It is paradise personified.
On the long ride back Ren and I talked politics and life and music and stuff as the sky turned navy blue, then burgundy and yellow, then bright maroon. “Red at night, Sailors Delight…”
Ren treated us to dinner at a Middle Eastern restaurant with belly dancers and shish-ka-babs. Too fun. I did get to dance after all!
I arrived home at 7:45, struggled to stay awake to watch “Desperate Housewives” and fell asleep at 9.
A 700-mile weekend.
