Didn't Try the Cheese Curds...

We've finished off our Dodgeville trip - had a great time with Dave and Joan! To finish the coverage of the weekend, after staying up till 3am Saturday morning, we slept in a little and had brunch at a very nice cafe a few blocks from their house in downtown Dodgeville (yes, we walked!).

We took the scenic route (where we startled the flock of turkeys shown here) for the dozen miles down towards Mineral Point, an early center of industry in 1800s southwestern Wisconsin because of the lead mines there. In fact, the reason the U of Wisconsin's sports team is called the Badgers is after the miners digging into the hillsides. Anyway, in the last decade or two, Mineral Point has turned into a very nice artist's community with galleries, shops and restaurants built into the hillsides. Featured heavily are the original buildings built out of the native limestone - just beautiful! It turns out that it was "Cornish Days", named for the Cornish mining community that moved from the Cornwall area of England. While we didn't partake of any of the festivities, all the galleries and shops were open late, which we did take advantage of... Interestingly, it resembles the mining town of Bisbee in southern Arizona - dying mining town (copper in Bisbee's case), taken over by former hippies and artists. There was really some nice art, one of my favorites was a stained glass mosaic artist at one of them...


We had an early dinner at Brewery Creek - an old converted warehouse (again, spectacular old limestone building) serving beer brewed on site with a nice selection of food from burgers to seafood. We had been there before a couple years ago and wanted to return, in fact, Melinda wore her t-shirt she had gotten there, and had some jealous looks from waitresses because they are no longer available!

We had a small star party schedule scheduled for a group up in the state park north of town, so rushed off to that, though it was mostly clouded out and most had left. It cleared up after sunset and we observed for an hour or two, though it wasn't as good of observing conditions as the night before. Returning to Dave and Joan's for a late night DVD and popcorn, Dave and I stayed up till 1am trying to make a movie out of some night exposures with Mac software... We left town about 10am Sunday, pulling into a house full of cats glad to see us about 3 hours later. The astronomy group from Dodgeville is headed to Yerkes Observatory next Saturday, and I may join them, since it is only an hour north of us here in St Charles...