A bike ride to Asylum Point

[dvoracek]

I had such a good time with my bike ride I thought I'd do it again. This time I'm going out northeast to Asylum Point.

FullSizeRender.jpg

Through Fairacres again, this time to the right through the tidy little townhouse collection on the east side.

fairacres.jpg

You have to go through the Northeast Industrial Park, passing one of two Oshkosh water towers. This is probably where my water comes from. Anybody else remember that Kodak booklet that recommended framing scenes with tree branches?

water.jpg

When I was a kid in South Bend, Studebaker, Bendix, and Singer Sewing Machines were huge multistory brown monsters in the middle of the city that came right up to the sidewalk. Now even some pretty heavy industry has a huge lawn and a little office complex fronting a massive flat building surrounded by cornfields on the outskirts of town. It's not as photogenic as Aramco Steel, but it's probably a lot easier to live around.

plexus.jpg

Now we're really out in the country. In flat Winnebago county, that often means you're looking at a wall of corn.

corn.jpg

Here's why it's called Asylum Point, the gigantic Winnebago Mental Health Institute, which also houses the state facility for the criminally insane. It's been here since 1871. Sarah's aunt was here briefly during World War II for something that at the time would have been described as a nervous breakdown.

image023.jpg

Asylum Point itself ends with a little island you have to cross this bridge to get to.

bridge.jpg

Prime feature is the lighthouse. It was built by the Works Progress Administration during the depression, but the the Department of Transportation decided it was unnecessary for navigation, and it's never been lit.

lighthouse2.jpg

[dvoracek]

Looking ten miles directly east across Lake Winnebago toward the much hillier Calumet County.

winnebagob.jpg

At the northern end of the park is a pathway that leads into the woods.

pathright.jpg

At the end of it is the Picnic Point Boy Scout's camp. I was here once when Andy was a kid for the Klondike Derby. In addition to sub-zero (F) temperatures, there's always a stiff wind off Lake Winnebago. Andy's face got slightly frost bitten and we spent much of the event in first aid.

boyscouts2.jpg

It's pretty isolated and I thought I was the only person around, but as I looked for scenes of the lake, I ran into this fisherman who consented to adding interest to the foreground.

fisher2.jpg

Going out the access road, you come across the Asylum Cemetery, in use from 1872 to 1973. For me cemeteries are usually just quiet parks, but this one out in the middle of the woods sort of gets to me.

asylumcemetary.jpg

A mile or so north I ran across this other historic graveyard that must have been way out in the middle of the section when it was active.

sunnyviewcemetery.jpg

I was going past it to go through the fairgrounds, for those of you who winced nostalgically a little bit when I said Fairacres by my house used to be the county fairgrounds. I always thought it was the ugliest fairgrounds in the state so I didn't mind when they moved it out here. This is the horse barn, which they were cleaning when I took this photograph. Good thing I hadn't brought my Smell-o-vision adapter. I don't know if it counts as dairy air when it's horses, but you get the idea. This has to be the shittiest photo I've ever posted.

barncleaning.jpg

All with the Populist. .15mm pinhole 24mm from 24x36mm frame.

[Ned.Lewis]

These are fun series to look at too.

[earlj]

Nice travelogue, Nick!