Day One

I was as excited as ever to begin.  We were only planning on visiting the two in West Bend, but even so it was great to start the journey.  However, things didn't happen exactly as we planned.

We planned to visit Marker #17 first, Lizard Mound State Park.  Upon arriving, we found this.

The driveway into the park was totally covered in ice, and a sign posted said the park was closed for the season.  While it wouldn't be too hard to come back in a few months, this picture shows another problem too:  the sun was already going down.

The thing is, this wasn't even the first unplanned thing we encountered on our first day of attempting to visit markers.  As we drove to Lizard Mound Park, which is on the edge of town, we passed a marker that wasn't even on the list!

It was great to find a marker that wasn't even on the list to make up for the one we weren't able to access.  It said on the marker that it was erected in 2013, so I guess it will be added soon.  This marker represents an interesting part of West Bend--namely, one of the reasons Ripley's Believe it or Not claims that West Bend is the one city that never entered the Great Depression.  Companies like the West Bend Company kept people employed and helped to keep things going, even in those troubled times.  Incidentally, there is also a museum in West Bend dedicated to the West Bend Company, specifically the cookware that was created by them.  It's small but worth a visit, and it shares a building with a credit union (when you walk through the doors, go left for the museum, right for the credit union).  I don't know why they share a building, but it makes me laugh every time I think of it.

Although it was getting darker and darker by the minute, we drove across town to visit Marker #248, the Great Divide.