Into Wisconsin and The Boeing C-97 at the Don Q Motel  · · PAGE 13.

July 23, 2019:  We departed the hotel in Dubuque, Iowa just before 9:30 AM Eastern Time and crossed the Mississippi River bridge into Wisconsin at 9:40 AM.  This Mississippi River sign is on the Iowa side of the bridge.  We passed this sign about one minute before the end of the bridge on the Wisconsin side seen in the image below this one.

Wisconsin must be on a tight budget when this is all you see on the east side of the river.

When you compare the Iowa sign on the other side of the bridge, they do a better job probably because they have a bigger budget for transportation.

This small wooden sign is not much, but at least they did not forget to welcome those of us entering Wisconsin via US 61 for the first time.

Wisconsin DOT finally put up the route markers about four miles into the state as the road has now climbed up the bed rock above the Mississippi River on the east side.

At exit 8, US 61 and Wisconsin 35 leave the four-lane US 151 as it continues northeast across Wisconsin.  My Garmin GPS 296 is keeping us on US 151 for now.

At exit 44 the GPS pointed us up Wisconsin state route 23 toward Dodgeville, Wisconsin.  The town was named for Henry Dodge, the first territorial governor of Wisconsin before it became a state.  The link on his name above is to a Wikipedia Article about his life and his service to our country in military and government positions in the US Congress.

This is farm country just a couple of miles south of Dodgeville.

We drove through the main part of town without seeing any traffic signals except for this one on the north side of town.  US 18 is the north side bypass for the town of Dodgeville.

Less than 1.5 miles north of US 18 is the Don Q motel with this old Boeing C-97 that was built for the US Air Force in 1952. The story about how it got here in 1977 is found online via this web link:  http://www.cultofweird.com/americana/don-q-inn-plane/   Here is news footage of the landing of this airplane on the old abandoned airport runway just north of the DON Q Inn.

When I passed the parked airplane on the way north, I decided I would stop to take some photos with my camera.  I was focused on the first place to turn around on the highway that I did not notice the sign for the "House on the Rock" tourist stop that brought us up this state highway today.

Coming back south to the hotel provided this view.  I discovered while preparing this page that the road to the right seen at the bottom of this image was the access road to the old abandoned airport where the C-97 made its final landing.  Here is more footage about this airplane: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLrITQ1lbQs 

This aerial image shows the full length of the abandoned Dodgeville Airport runway which was only 2,400 feet in length.  Today, the place is occupied by a construction company.  When it was an active airport, it was for small general aviation airplanes like mine.

Here is a closer view of Don Q Inn and the C-97 from Google Earth.

This view is from Apple Maps and has a better view of the BIG Q Logo on the lawn out in front of the motel and restaurant.

Here are my photos of the C-97 parked on the Don Q Inn front lawn.  I pulled into the parking lot at 10:30 AM Eastern time and began taking these photos.

The instrument panel shows signs of any valuable instruments that have been removed since the final flight of this C-97.

Almost nothing is missing from the flight engineer panel as all this stuff is very outdated.  This is old technology as this particular airplane was built by Boeing in 1952.

I have seen jump seats like these on a Lockheed C-141 US Air Force plane that took me from California to Hawaii in May of 1969.  That was 17 years after this airplane was built.

This is the only way to get into and out of this old museum piece of aviation.  The nose art is from the 1975 Mercury Cougar XR-7 car commercial that featured Farrah Fawcett and this airplane.

When I took these photos, the paint that covered prior ownership by the State of California is starting to show through.  I got back in the car and the GPS confirms that I departed at 10:45 AM Eastern Time.

You can learn more about the abandoned Dodgeville Airport via this WEB LINK:   http://www.airfields-freeman.com/WI/Airfields_WI_SW.htm#dodgeville