Winter adventures Part Two: Anthropomorphic taxidermy, Ski Pa-troll and walking on water

Nasty, slushy snow is now falling by the buck­et­load outside.

I can hear it on the metal awnings come down in plinks, and I think I’ve fig­ured out my dis­dain for win­ter: I’ve only ever really expe­ri­enced it in Ken­tucky, nature’s weather nuthouse.

We’re under a win­ter weather advi­sory at the moment, but this week­end we’re sup­pos­edly (hope­fully) going to have temps in the 60s and sun.

I love Ken­tucky for many things, but its weather is some­times not one of them.

In Wis­con­sin — or at least the Wis­con­sin from my vaca­tion — the snow fell with a whis­per and was nei­ther harsh nor bit­ing, but rather invit­ing and comforting.

At this moment, I wish I could return to that, so I’m going to do the next best thing — rem­i­nisce via blog­ging. (For part one of my recent adven­ture up North, read this.)

After enjoy­ing New Glarus, we drove the four or five hours to Hay­ward, Wis., and were greeted with this scene.

Down­right idyllic.

That night Niel; his aunt, Deb­bie; uncle, Tony; and I went into down­town Hay­ward to see the quiet before the race. More than 20,000 peo­ple were expected to invade the town of 2,000.

And at my request, we stopped at the Moc­casin Bar for a drink.

I had only been there once before, on my first trip to Hay­ward in 2009 when we made it in time to go to Musky Fest — so named for the large muskel­lunge fish in the nearby lakes.

And dur­ing Musky Fest, a man with a hook for a hand leads the local march­ing band through the town streets, end­ing at Moc­casin Bar.

In the words of some of my fam­ily mem­bers: I shit you not.

Sadly, no hooked drum major this time, but the odd­i­ties were not in short supply.

This bar has walls of weird taxi­dermy dioramas.

And not just tro­phy fish a la Big Mouth Billy Bass but ani­mals posed in human-like scenes. This is the “wildlife museum” the bar adver­tises on its build­ing. If you are a PETA mem­ber, you may want to look away.

First up were the hip­ster chip­munks — hip­munks, if you will.

This next scene was very elab­o­rate. I believe the wolf, the judge, is pre­sid­ing over the “kan­ga­roo court” — ha! — and the bad­ger is accused of killing a woodcock.

The wild­cat is the sher­iff (not pic­tured is his gun and hol­ster), argu­ing that the wood­cock was killed out of sea­son. And the “squealer musk-rat” is the paid-off witness.

The con­fis­cated Old Crow liquor along with the cig­a­rettes, beer bot­tles and nudie play­ing cards under the judge’s bench are also nice touches.

I feel like I should be turned off by the taxi­dermy, but I’m kind of pulled in by it all. Maybe it’s the DIYer in me, but the atten­tion to detail must at least be acknowledged.

And spend­ing time tak­ing in the care­fully designed scenes, you can just imag­ine the cold win­ter nights that likely moti­vated some­one to spend the time putting it all together.

The next day, the four of us went back into town for the 40th annual Birke­beiner race. As stated in my pre­vi­ous post, the Birke­beiner is the largest cross-country ski marathon in North Amer­ica. It stretches 50 kilo­me­ters from Cable, Wis., to Hayward.

So the seri­ous skiers wear Span­dex. Learn some­thing everyday.

Or almost noth­ing at all.

And what blog post would be com­plete with­out a cou­ple of trolls — or the aptly named “Ski Pa-troll.”

Dur­ing the race, the most per­fect snowflakes fell. Here’s one against my black coat.

After a long after­noon schlep­ping up and down Hayward’s Main Street, we came back to the house, and Niel and I had a quiet moment walk­ing on the frozen lake behind the house.

We had watched snow­mo­biles tra­verse it since we got there, and a few peo­ple had set up ice fish­ing shanties.

Why can’t win­ter always be this pretty?

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