Elegant Farmer 1545 Main St., Mukwonago, 262/363-6770, elegantfarmer.com, pie $2

Activities

WISCONSIN'S WINDING WAYS We sent a photographer to get a taste of Wisconsin's food, people, and outdoor attractions, as witnessed on this fun road trip. • Launch the slide show

Horicon Marsh State Wildlife Area N7728 Hwy. 28, Horicon, 920/387-7860, dnr.state.wi.us/org/land/wildlife/wildlife_areas/horicon

DAY 2
I wake up early and take many photos of the fog blanketing the pastures. Ace and I chill in the gazebo for 10 minutes, and then I return upstairs, where Dorothy has left a tray of coffee. She serves us breakfast in the dining room, and explains that most of the ingredients are from the area. The apple cider tastes more like apples than apples do.

Dorothy asks if she may join us for coffee, and we grill her about the restoration and what it's like to own a B&B. The Priskes have yet to start on the third floor; it turns out there's a ballroom upstairs. They clearly believe in the importance of farm life and local, sustainable food, as do Shawnda and I, so we're kind of embarrassed to tell her we're headed to kitschy Wisconsin Dells.

But first (kudos again to Oddball Wisconsin) we check out the "Aliens and Oddities" exhibit at the MacKenzie Environmental Education Center. Inside what looks like a serial killer's shed is the field trippers' reward for putting up with the educational stuff: a hermaphroditic deer's one-antlered skull, an albino muskrat, and a two-headed piglet in a jar filled with formaldehyde. (Apparently, some kids once stole the jar so they could dip their cigarettes in the liquid and smoke them.)

We feed the ducks in the town of Lodi and then continue on pretty Route 113, taking the free ferry across Lake Wisconsin. In summer, Circus World Museum in Baraboo has performances and animal attractions, but it's September, so there's not much going on. We spend a half hour doing anything interactive: posing in wooden cutouts, trying on costumes, giggling at fun-house mirrors.

Wisconsin Dells is basically Las Vegas for kids—a strip of silly attractions and rides.

At Extreme World, I prove a total failure at go-karting, but rebound to try the Skycoaster ($20) and the Ejection Seat ($25). For the Skycoaster, we get trussed into a harness and hoisted, and then I pull a rip cord that sends us into a 100-foot free fall. We swoop back and forth, kind of like we're hang gliding. The Ejection Seat, which might better be named the Discombobulator, flings us into the air, and then we drop—over and over, ad nauseam. As soon as we leave, we wish we'd done the Bungee Jump, too.

The Kalahari Resort is both corporate and giddy—imagine a Marriott having a midlife crisis. The resort's outdoor water park is closed for the season, but the indoor one has seven big slides and no lines. My favorite slide is the one I call the toilet bowl: You're whooshed around a funnel and then dropped through a chute into a pool. Rather than give in and let herself be flushed, as it were, Shawnda ends up doing a painful move we name "cleaning the rim."

Climbing all the slides' stairs is work, so we grab a bite at The Cheese Factory Restaurant. We're surprised to learn it's a vegetarian establishment, but the linzer torte is out of this world. Shawnda brings custom-made T-shirts for every trip, and this year's say "Schlemiel and Schlimazel." Wearing Yiddish T-shirts to a restaurant with Christian books displayed by the door isn't ideal—or is it?

After decompressing, we have dinner at the House of Embers, drawn like moths to the neon martini-glass sign. It's the type of spot that has photos of Ava Gardner and other beauties in the men's room; I half expect to see Louis Prima and Keely Smith strolling by our table. Shawnda gets into an exceedingly long conversation with our Polish waiter about how the big Wisconsin Dells resorts allegedly trick young foreigners into working for them. Shawnda, it should be noted, feels as passionately about labor issues as men of a certain age feel about Ava Gardner.