We slept in a bit, and then headed north to Dyersville, Iowa, the home of the Farm Toy museum and an impressive Basilica built in the late 1800s. The farm toy museum was quite large, representing farm toys, past and present, US and Europe. Marianne worked through their quiz and won the prize, a pencil that changes color with temperature.
The Basilica was quite impressive, kind of a neo-gothic style, seats 1000 people, kind of amazing for a small town.
Then we pressed on through Dubuque Iowa, across the Mississippi River, and into Wisconsin. We stopped at a tourist information center, but there was no one there and very little information. Our destination for the art-metal shindig was Rich's home, out in the country a few miles south of Madison Wisconsin.
We found it with no trouble, and were warmly greeted. It took Richard an hour or so to get the camper leveled out, due to sloping ground, but he was ultimately successful. Then we could relax and chat and watch other people demonstrate various techniques. Dinner was around 8 PM, and involved more chatting. There was even some sculpture made by arranging forks! As we say, "Oooh, shiny!". We are easily amused. Marianne thought that the people were kind of leftover hippies, which is true. The age group is roughly 50 to 70. Talented and interesting people.
Saturday, Richard started working on a railroad spike knife. Michael had given a demo on Friday, which Richard missed, but Michael was willing to walk Richard through it. More or less basic blacksmithing, hot work on a hot day. First Richard twisted part of the knife as the handle, and then he continued hammering out the blade by hand and by power hammer. We did a little grinding to clean up the knife and sharpen the blade, and then hardened the blade. Good practice, good learning. We had a good group dinner, as we did every evening.
Chris and Richard with their hand and hat, "Hat in Hand".
Sunday, Richard and Marianne drove into Madison to go to church, and drive around the town. We saw the state capitol, but did not tour it, and drove around the huge university campus. Sunday was more socializing, although Richard did a little foldforming.
Monday, we packed up and started our drive to Illinois, to visit Teresa and her family.
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