GREAT RIVER ROAD - Wisconsin - page 564

Thursday nights Smith Gardens Community Farms (608/626-2122) fires up an oven
and creates magical pizza with ingredients from local farms. Go east on Highway O, then
north on 88 to Yaeger Valley Road.
PEPIN
One can race the Burlington and Northern freight trains rolling parallel to the road. (Pass
bymyfavoritebluffonthewholeroute—BogusBluff;alwayswonderedaboutthatnomen-
clature.) It's little wonder some have dubbed the stretch in and around Pepin the most per-
fectly realized stretch of the Great River Road. When the U.S. government made the heavy
decision to dam the Mississippi, it had already been one-upped by geology. Glacial retreat
and its “wash” had deposited silt at the mouth of the Chippewa River, eventually backing
up enough water to form a 22-mile-long by 2.5-mile-wide winding gem of a lake, Lake
Pepin. William Cullen Bryant wrote that Lake Pepin “ought to be visited in the summer by
every poet and painter in the land.” Lake Pepin is so unique geologically that for years in
the early 20th century Wisconsin and Minnesota authorities quibbled as to where, exactly,
the river channel—and thus the state boundary—lay.
Pepin is also lousy with “Little House” affixations. Laura Ingalls Wilder, the author of
the Little House books, was born on a homestead nearby in 1867, and the villagers are not
about to let you forget it.
Sights
Seven miles northeast of Pepin via Highway CC (or Sand Ridge or Short Cut Road) is the
Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House, thebirthcabinandwayside picnic groundsspreadout
over a handful of acres. More Little House amusement? In town there is a Pepin Historic-
al Museum, better known as the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum (WIS 35, 715/442-2142,
www.lauraingallspepin.com , 10am-5pm high season, free). It's full of displays and memor-
abilia pertaining to the woman in the famed line of books.