A while back I googled Circus in Wisconsin knowing that we would be doing a circus week and wanting to see if there were going to be any circuses coming up. Well, I found out that Barnum and Bailey was actually founded in Baraboo, Wisconsin and it is the site of Circus World. It hosts a museum of Barnum and Bailey plus other interesting circus things and during performance season there is a lot of fun to be had.
Baraboo is about two and half hours from us so it was a very long day but a huge success.
We left around 8am. I was planning on leaving earlier but we were waiting to see what the weather did first. We arrived around 10:30. We had a few minutes until the next Big Top Performance so we ran over to the elephant area first.
One of my favorite memories as a child was when I got to ride an elephant at the Wild Animal Park in San Diego so I really wanted to do this with the girls. I helped Abi up and then held Maddy in between us. We got to ride the elephant around for about 5 minutes. It was great.
It kept flapping its ear against our feet!
When Maddy and I got off I snapped a quick picture of Abi still sitting on the elephant.
Looking back....
They had picture cut outs everywhere and Abi just had to have her picture taken in every single one of them! Abi the horse trainer....
We made it into the Hippodrome about ten minutes before the performance. There were hardly any seats left so I do have that big pole in the way but it was still great. The ringmaster came out first and sang a song while the other performers joined him. There were acrobats, jugglers, a hula hoop girl, and clowns.
Then he announced each act. The first was this man and his wife and all their little doggies. The dogs were swinging, sliding down slides, dancing, jumping through hoops, and being generally silly. There was one little dog in the doghouse. It's part of the show was being the 'naughty' dog that kept coming out and doing the other dogs tricks. Abi was laughing hysterically.
At the end this carriage driven by a baboon with a huge dog as the 'horse' came out and all the little doggies piled in to leave the ring.
First, the baboon had to have some silly antics as well.
We recently got a hula hoop for the first time and Abi has been practicing like crazy so she was so amazed by the 'hula hoop girl'. This was pretty amazing.
Slinky...
she had so many hula hoops and she was really doing a lot of tricks with them. Pretty cool.
The next act was this lady on her horse. They jumped a bit, danced a bit, and then this mini horse came out and did some tricks with them like in the picture walking underneath the big horse. The most impressive trick was at one point when she was on the big horse and had this special jump rope type thing and they were running around the ring basically jump roping.
This clown came out between all the acts and did silly things to get the kids laughing. He wasn't a scary clown... just funny.
I thought the most impressive act by far was the trapeze girl. She was really high and over cement with no safety precautions and she did some crazy things. Here she is swinging while just hanging on by the tops of her feet....
and here she had clipped a ring on the trapeze and put the strap around her head in the chin area and was dangling and Spinning from it. Crazy.
The last act were some dancers and we ducked out a few minutes early to get lunch before the school crowd came out. It was a little chilly but not too bad.
This overlooks their river... the museum is on both sides of it. This was the housing area for the Barnum and Bailey workers.
The girls played on the playground and in the sand box for a few minutes after lunch.
Abi the clown...
Abi the wrestler?
We rode this really old carousel.
Then we went in to see the old restored circus wagons. Abi liked the sunburst wheel. It looked pretty neat when she spun it.
There were so many old wagons. They were really cool. I took a video of one of the musical ones. It will be in a separate post.
Abi taking another 'elephant ride'.
Abi got a pony ride.
Then we went into a tent with statues of some of the people that had been featured in the early circuses. Abi tried out a unicycle. It was stuck to the ground so it was 'easy'.
We both tried out the balance beam. This was so much fun. We spent a long time in here. Maddy would laugh like crazy every time we would do it.
Abi the snake charmer...
One of her favorite things here was this super old fashioned merry go round.
Abi the lion tamer...
and now she is a lion!
We had a while before the Children's interactive circus so we hung out pretty close to the area it is in by exploring some of the areas around it and stopping for a little snack.
Maddy the lion tamer...
two cute little lions...
In one of the buildings we were able to play around with a funny mirror
and build our own clowns.
then we got into the Interactive Children's circus about twenty minutes before showtime. We just played around while we waited for it. Abi
here she is walking into the ring...
working her magic on stage...
The finale with the kids playing the ringmaster, elephants, and lions... I did take video of Abi. That will be in another post.
There gift shop was pretty reasonably priced for the most part so we got some circus books for a couple of bucks and then said goodbye, got a picture, and spent the next two and a half hours driving home!
