The Road to Mineral Point

I've been slow to get a blogpost written because it took me a couple days to deal with some computer issues. Basically my computer kept telling me my startup disk was full and before I could upload any photos from my trip I needed to clear some space on my hard drive, but now that that's done I can start to tell you about my grand adventure in Wisconsin.

Friday, I left Chicago on a dark and cloudy afternoon. There were occasional sprinkles but luckily no real rain for the 175 mile drive to the southwest corner of Wisconsin. Before leaving I printed out a map from Google but also had my Garmin to navigate the way. I drove about halfway on the freeway and in Beloit, Wisconsin my Garmin decided to take me the rest of the way by the scenic route.

It was a little desolate but lovely with rolling hills and farms on country roads.

In just over 3 hours I arrived at Shake Rag Alley Center for the Arts. It's a wonderful facility housed in a cluster of historic buildings on beautiful landscaped grounds.

Shake Rag is an amazing place, I can't recommend it enough as a fabulous place to go for classes. It's a non profit school, run by a group of people who want a place for people to make art. The classes are small with great space to work in.

One of the other fantastic parts about taking classes at Shake rag Alley is it's in an architecturally beautiful small town filled with artists and galleries. I loved walking around Mineral Point and seeing all the stone buildings and houses, most of it was built in the 1800's by Cornish miners.

I loved seeing these little free libraries, they seemed to capture the warm and friendly personality of the town.

There's lots of hills!

I had to buy a mug from the Johnston Brewery Pottery

A gorgeous fern outside the studio/gallery that made me think of New Zealand :-)

There's a lot of deteriorating barns in Wisconsin, that are really amazing looking.

I had a pasty which is a meat pie, like a giant meat and potato empanada, that the miners used to pack for their lunch.

I bought a couple skeins of interesting yarn from Simply Scarves, although I have other ideas in mind for it than knitting.

I love these old houses!

One thing I hadn't expected to see in Wisconsin was a beautiful Japanese tea house and koi pond in the back yard of my hosts house filled with huge koi.

Beautiful!