Monday was our last breakfast in Dubuque.  Mr. Poe didn't disappoint and chose another artery clogging menu item:

After breakfast we headed off for Madison.  We didn't have plans until dinner so we took an extremely indirect route.  First stop was Prairie Du Chien, Wisconsin which was once an important trading post but is not so important now.  We went to St. Feriole Island which is very pretty and has a park on the river.  Lovely:

This is the old Dousman House Hotel which was fed by rail and river traffic.  It's hard to believe that such a big hotel was ever needed on St. Feriole Island but here it is:

This is the old rail station:

From there we headed over to pretty highway 60 which follows the Wisconsin River.  It's gorgeous:

Then we headed to Dodgeville where, while looking for cheese shops, we saw this Boeing C-97 Stratofreighter which is randomly outside a hotel on the outskirts of town:

It was done up as a medical transport and seemed to have a lot of the original equipment inside:

Then we headed over to the House on the Rock which I have to say is the most massive collection of fuckery that I've ever seen.  The gardens are pretty, but the houses are like freakshows with everything that would sit still long enough covered in shag carpet and every room looking like an orgy room.  And the collection was nuts.  They had a Ziggy phone on display--  A FUCKING ZIGGY PHONE!  It was unbelievable.  I recommend visiting this place.  It's almost unbelievable.  Here are the pics:

This is 'The Infinity Room':

Mr Poe thinking "What the fuck was that??"

From there we headed to Madison.  Madison Wisconsin is a beautiful city.  Super pretty.  Super liveable.  I'd thought of Madison when I was leaving Santa Fe but concluded that I was more afraid of winter than earthquakes.  But when you're walking around Madison it's hard not to think about what a pleasant place it would be to live.  Although it was super hot when we went there.  Check out all this glamour:

We had dinner with my Aunt Mike and her friend and one the way home we headed to one of the local gay bars.  Madison has a surprisingly large number of gay bars for a city its size.  We went to Woof's which was a bear themed bar:

The people there were friendly and we would have stayed a lot longer but it was late and I was beat.  We headed home and went to bed.  It was a very long day.