Under the Big Top

Eric took one for the team on this one (knowing his strong hatred and fear of clowns).  How could we pass up a destination called Circus World Museum?!  It was just calling us to visit.  As it turns out Baraboo, WI was the winter headquarters for Ringling Brother Circus...really cool, right?  Now not only did they winter here, but they were squatters!  Of course they were. 

Now this place has a rather large collection of circus memorabilia, possibly the largest, but pretty impressive.  There were many, many posters for ALL kinds of circuses, mostly Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey, which in our opinion was the best part.  

They also had a number of train cars...costumes...and a freak building that shared about Barnum and Bailey's freak show...Chang and Eng Siamese twins, the bearded lady, the dog man, etc.

 

It's a pretty crazy, strange place, but not too fun-except in one part you can wear some of their old costumes around and try walking the "tight rope" or "ride" a unicycle--not really, just sit on the seat and peddle on a stationary unicycle...However, I think they do live shows during the summer and perhaps that would up the "Fun" portion of visiting the Circus Museum. 

Overall, the Circus World Museum was very educational and interesting to learn about circus life, but that's about it.

Our Ratings:
Educational:  As you were learning a big part about circuses and the life of the owners and performers, we gave it a rating of 8.
Weird:  Since circuses are rather strange on their own and now you have a museum for it in the middle of Wisconsin, we gave it a weird rating of 6.
Fun:  To be quite honest, it was our least fun destination of our day today, so we gave it a rating of 3.