Wo Zha Wa

We didn't get there soon enough to park within ten blocks of the action. I don't know what the final crowd estimates will be, but Wisconsin Dells was a mob scene this morning. I'm sure the business folk are going to be pleased as punch.

We went first to the arts and crafts fair, with Tom continuing to look for his cow paintings. No such luck. I mentioned that the people who do them are not that far away in Spring Green, and he could just drive down there. But he claims half the fun is in the hunt. Whatever. The cow, to nobody's surprise, is the state domesticated animal of Wisconsin. The state undomesticated animal is the whitetail.

After finding nothing to buy at the arts and crafts fair, we headed over to the flea market. An interesting group of vendors, I must say, including one guy who loudly proclaimed he needed us to buy his stuff because he's a libertarian and had to get out of town. We managed to get out without buying anything there, too.

Then we wandered up and down Broadway a few blocks. All the stores are having sidewalk sales, so the sidewalks were crowded with stuff and people. Tom tried to buy tickets to a special show that the H. H.Bennett Photography Museum is having next weekend as part of the Stewards of the Wisconsin Dells Festival, but he didn't have enough cash. It's a fundraiser, so the tickets are rather steepish. He plans to go back early next week.

H. H. Bennett is an important 19th-century photographer whose work made the Dells a tourist destination over a century ago. He invented the process for stop-action photography and proved it in 1886 by taking the photo you see everywhere up here of his son jumping onto Stand Rock. It may not be obvious from the picture, but Ashley made it. I understand his father made him jump it about a dozen times to make sure he got a good shot of it. Today they have dogs jump the chasm for the tourist trade, and a dog and its trainer recently fell due to a missed signal. There's a net these days, though, so no one was hurt.