Boy, There's Nothing Going On In Sheboygan

Today I am in Sheboygan, WI. I had the only day off I'm going to have for at least a week here.

I tried to do something.

It was hard.

The city, according to its Chamber of Commerce:

It’s a great place to live, raise a family, retire, golf and is a world-class manufacturing community. In January 2005, Sheboygan continues to enhance its list of accolades by being ranked as the 13th metro safe city in the Country and also being ranked 7th most financially fit in cities under 200,000 in population.

Hmmm.


More than a half away on a two-lane highway, there was a museum that sounded remotely interesting. After driving along a two lane "county road" (that gives me confidence) there was a good thing and a bad thing.

The good thing: foliage. It was beautiful. The farmland I drove through was at times very nice, although some of the farms seemed to be falling apart.

The bad thing: if my truck broke down here, I might have to write the sequel to Deliverance.

I decided to turn back and stay close to my hotel. Truth be told I get lost a lot, and I didn't want to get lost in a place that seemed to have no people to give me directions.


So I settled on the Sheboygan Indian Mound Park.

In the Sheboygan visitors guide (yes, there is a Sheboygan visitor guide), it is described as:

Sheboygan Indian Mound County Park, located to the south of Sheboygan, preserves what was first known as the Kletzien Mound Group. The group originally consisted of thirty-three conical and effigy mounds, primarily deer and panthers, as well as one panther or water spirit intaglio. A number of mounds were excavated in 1926 by the Public Museum of the City of Milwaukee.
The local garden clubs saved the mound group from development in the late 1950s by raising money to purchase the site. The land was subsequently donated to the city for an archaeological park, and sixteen of the eighteen existing mounds were restored under the supervision of the Public Museum.
The Town and County Garden Club recently developed a nature trail and a guide to the trail that is available at the Municipal Services Building and the Department of Public Works.

This sounds really promising.


The sign says that these mounds are the burial sites from native populations dating 500-1000 AD. Ancient dead people! That's fun.


In reality, what I saw were huge piles of dirt, most of which were in the shape of animals. This got old pretty quick.


The trees were really nice though.


The best part of the park was a display that demonstrated how the natives were buried. It was not a real skeleton, but it was cool nonetheless. Fake ancient dead people are almost as fun as real ancient dead people.


Like any good park, there's an environmental message. When the park was dedicated, they wanted to remember "the oldest peoples of Wisconsin, whose love for their homeland kept it green and beautiful and rich in nature's bounty. May we learn to preserve it half as well".

I wonder how we're doing with that.

On a realistic note, the people here are really nice. When I went into a local Radio Shack to buy a boom box for my Siruis Satellite radio, I met one of the most helpful salespeople ever. They didn't have what I needed, so he jumped on the Internet with me and directed me to other stores.

That made my day.

I ordered Dominos Pizza at my hotel and watched Monday Night Football.

I found something to do.

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America's Treasures