Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
made fresh on-site in the bakery. The New England clam chowder is also superb. It's so
good it's in the restaurant's website name.
Ice Cream
Since the Civil War, the family of
Kelley Country Creamery
(W5215 Hwy. B, 920/
923-1715, 11am-8pm Wed.-Sun., from $4) has been a dairy mainstay in these parts. You'll
love their ice cream, especially sitting on a porch looking at the cows the milk came from.
Head south on U.S. 41, then east on Highway B.
The
Fond du Lac Area Convention and Visitors Bureau
(171 S. Pioneer Rd., 920/
923-3010 or 800/937-9123,
www.fdl.com
) is well stocked to help.
Getting to Fond du Lac from Madison (via US 151, 74 miles) takes 80 minutes. From
Oshkosh (20 miles, 30 minutes), you'll want to take US 45 to trace the edge of Lake Win-
nebago. From Milwaukee (via US 41, 67 miles), it takes just over an hour.
The local
Greyhound
stop (920/921-4215) is at the Mobil gas station, 976 South Main
Street.
Lamers
(800/261-6600) also stops here on its run between Wausau and Milwaukee.
One of the most picturesque small towns anywhere, winding Ripon has an oddball and fas-
cinating heritage. Founded in 1844 by an organization called the Wisconsin Phalanx as an
experimentincommunalliving,itwasnamedCeresco,aftertheRomangoddessofagricul-
ture, and attempted to implement in pure form the democratic principles of French social
progressive François Charles Marie Fourier. A decade later, it came to fame as the birth-
place of the Republican Party. (This claim, incidentally, is hotly disputed by a few other
communities in the United States, but hey, in 2004, the U.S. Senate passed a bill recogniz-
ing Ripon's status, and even the U.S. Postal Service commemorated it with a postmark.)
Later, Ripon became the birthplace of another political pioneer—Carrie Chapman Catt,
one of the founders and first presidents of both the American Women's Suffrage Associ-
