Potosi, Wisconsin

Our next stop was Potosi,Wisconsin. It was a little over an hour from Gays Mills. Potosi is home to the National Brewery Museum! And right across the street from the brewery and museum was a winery!

 We started off parking in the special events parking area.

 Our first stop was Whispering Cliffs Winery where I chose a bottle of red wine after tasting five different wines. Then it was off to the brewery. There were many types of memorabilia in the museum---from old bottles, to advertisements, to cans, to equipment.

This cave behind the building was the only place where the brewers could chill the beer as part of the brewing process.

Bob and I enjoyed seeing the old advertisements for beers we had heard about long ago.

This beer is for a beer Bob's dad and uncle used to drink when they lived in Ohio.

There were also antique steins in the collection.

This is an old bottle filling machine. It could fill six bottles at a time!

 Then there was the keg washer.

 To me, these looked like old oil cans, but they were the first type of beer cans. Notice the screw tops.

 It was a very interesting place to visit. 

After looking at the map, we found that there was a Corps of Engineers campground just west of town on the Mississippi River. We decided to stay there instead of the brewery. We could get electric hook-ups for $10. After setting up camp at Grant River Recreation Area we headed off to geocache and explore the area.

We drove south to Dickeyville to visit the Grotto and Shrines at Holy Ghost Parish. There was a virtual geocache located there and it sounded interesting. This is the front of the grotto, the work of Father Matthias Wernerus who was pastor from 1918 to 1931.  He built the shrine to show his love of God and his country.

 Father Wernerus collected items from all over the world to use in building the grotto. There were pieces of colored tiles, sea shells, gearshift knobs, petrified wood, antiques, onyx, river rocks and many, many other items. In the section dedicated to country, were statues of Lincoln, Washington and Christopher Columbus. It was quite an interesting collection.

 We also stopped to geocache at an old lead mine that produced most of the bullets for Union soldiers in the Civil War. There was not much left of the furnace, just stones stacked in the hill by the side of a country road.

That night at the campground, we had a beautiful sunset over the Mississippi River.

 Grant River Recreation Area was a nice campground, but its location was not so good. There were two train tracks within 100 yards of the campground and the trains were very regular all night long! We should have stayed in the brewery parking lot---who needs electricity anyway........