Troll Town, Futuretron and Beyond!

Our morning started with a whimsical tour through Troll Town, a small Madison suburb’s grasping attempt to keep tourists driving through despite the re-routing of the main highway. Well done Troll Town; we were sufficiently intrigued, but mostly amused by a visitor center volunteer in that phase of life when time, and conversation has slowed to a crawl. After she’d answered our questions three, albeit slowly and with a bit of a cackle, we charged onward in our Volkswagen turned Delorean and burst into Futuretron!

Not knowing quite what to expect (it is the future after all), we mustered the courage to ask the surly keepers of Delaney’s Surplus where me might find the sculptures comprising Futuretron? A quick walk through a row of giant calculators, expired mustard, and hazard clean-up kits and we’d arrived. The future was a bit rusty but no less spectacular for wear. Check out the pics at Picasa...

We’d like to take a brief commercial break to thank roadsideamerica.com for these inspired stops along the way. If you’d like to participate, feel free to send us suggestions along the route!

Our visions of a future world continued with more sculptures through Minnesota, this time more functional than fantastical; the state was riddled with wind mill farms. T Boone Pickens would be proud, and so were we.

The dawn of pretirement ended as the sun set over South Dakota and we settled into a small town of roughly 500 to set up camp and with far-fetched hopes to watch the culmination of the Democratic National Convention. Ditty’s truck stop didn’t quite seem amenable to our request, but we found a friendly bartender, a $5 pitcher of Busch Light, and a patronage only half serious about uttering the word Liberal like a swear at Club Vega, the bar in town. Turns out our waitress was even a secret supporter of Hillary, although she couldn’t get the night off to watch given, as she said “it’s not really something you bring up around here.” Our journey into the future came back to the present after we’d soaked up the Fox News begrudging commentary, heartily thanked our bartender, wished our waitress well and went to sleep in a red state, feeling a bit more encouraged that the country might soon be united across “color” lines once again.

Trolltown, Futuretron and Beyond!