On Wisconsin

We left Minnesota on Thursday, Sept 14, and headed east into central Wisconsin. We’d made plans to meet up with Kayla’s cousin Karl and his wife Amy on Friday morning, so we spent Thursday night in nearby Wisconsin Rapids at Wood County Park. SWEET CAMPGROUND!! Too bad it was a drive-by. Even with our last-minute booking, we managed to get a site right on Wazeecha Lake.

Although we very much enjoyed our time in Minnesota and being “unpacked” for a while, it was really nice to be back in the Bettie Mobile. This would be the first of seventeen nights in a row that we’d be camping and sleeping in the trailer!

On Friday morning we moved on to Polonia, a small Polish community near Stevens Point, where Kayla’s aunt and uncle – Ruth and Milo Harpstead – had spent over five decades. (Please indulge me while I share some background about these special relatives!) Their primary residence was in Stevens Point, where Milo was a professor of soil science in UWSP’s College of Natural Resources. In 1974, they purchased a farm in nearby Polonia, providing a property where Milo could easily bring students for research. Among its unique features: it’s the glacial birthplace of an ice-walled lakebed; the remnants form a flat-topped hill that is considered one of the highest features in Portage County.

The farm was also a great place for Harpstead family recreation. Milo was a collector of antique cars and tractors, and spent lots of time restoring them and participating in car/tractor shows. The barn was his primary work space for these projects. Other parts of the property were rented out for farming Christmas trees and field crops. It was also a great cross-country ski destination.

After Ruth (older sister to Kayla’s dad) passed away in 2018, Milo continued to spend lots of time on the farm, and had lunch every day at the Polonia Cafe. In 2021, Milo donated 22 acres of the farm to the UWSP Foundation, ensuring its continued use as a field laboratory for the soil science students.

Through the years, Milo & Ruth kept a fairly strong presence with the Boettchers in Iowa, making frequent road trips to see Ruth’s siblings and nieces/nephews. They even traveled to Alaska for our wedding! Just in the last decade, we managed to cross paths with them several times in Iowa. They lived such an interesting life, filled with curiosity, adventurous travel, and generous volunteerism. All of this to say that Kayla felt pretty close to them and admired them both very much. And we were both completely entertained by Milo’s amazing stories. As we were making plans to pass through Wisconsin this week, we were really excited for the opportunity to meet Karl & Amy at the farm to reconnect with them and to learn more about these aspects of Milo & Ruth’s life.

After Milo’s passing last summer, the family decided to sell the farm. They’ve been working for months now to clean out the buildings and prepare them for new owners. What a project! Our visit with them coincided with one of Karl & Amy’s final trips to haul stuff out. The antique cars, tractors, and other collectables have been distributed among interested family members or sold, but a few key pieces were still there – such as a classic Oliver tractor that originally belonged to Kayla’s dad! He sold it to Milo sometime in the 70s and it’s been put to great use ever since! A highlight of the day was for Kayla to drive it around a bit. Check out this video and a few photos of our fun farm day:

In addition to walking around the farm and helping Karl & Amy load up their trailer, we got to have lunch at the Polonia Cafe and took a driving tour of some Stevens Point highlights, including a stop at UWSP. Karl had a quick errand with the College of Natural Resources, so we stopped by to see where Milo’s office and classrooms were. We bumped into a grad student who was managing some newly collected soil samples. At first she was extremely protective of them and really didn’t even want us to breathe on them, but when she found out that Karl is Milo Harpstead’s son, she pulled out her keys and gave us the VIP tour, complete with a closer look at some soil monoliths, which elicited stories from Karl about how they always had to collect soil samples wherever they went on family vacations.

Oh, by the way, another thing we learned is that the “d-word” is absolutely verboten. A bulletin board in the hallway was full of memes about this, here’s one of my favorites:

Karl & Amy had to head back to their home in eastern Wisconsin on Friday evening, but gave us permission to camp on the farm, which we happily did for two nights! It was perfect weather: tons of stars, a nice campfire, and we got to use all our “dry camping” equipment (like our awesome little “shower pig”).

On Saturday, we hopped on a rails-to-trails path and biked 8.5 miles from Amherst to Scandanavia, where we came upon Little Norway (go figure) – a perfect small town dive bar that happened to be serving up some decent beer and good sandwiches. The Wisconsin Badgers had just won, and an excited fan bought a round for the bar the moment we walked in the door! Oh, yeah, and the restrooms were for “Oles” and “Ingas”. Love it!