Barron County Roads and How They're Named

 Red Cedar River

Happy Friday everyone! Today I'm posting photos I took not far from our house on our way home from Wausau last weekend. All photos were taken in the same general area, which is west of Sand Creek on 1 1/2 Avenue or from Barron Dunn Avenue. Our area is full of natural beauty. It's a wonderful place to visit during the spring, summer, and fall. and the perfect place to visit in the winter if you like depressing darkness, bitter cold, and skiing. :-) But I'll have to admit, even in the winter time, it's beautiful here - mostly if you've got a good fire going in the stove, a hefty stash of popcorn, a stack of books, and dark chocolate. A couple nice big dogs would help too.

With Mr. C's ability to whip up a great morning fry, I sometimes think it would be fun to turn our home into a B&B, except that we'd probably get no takers. Even when people say they want to get out to the countryside for some peace and quiet, they're not usually talking about the very literal peace and quiet that we have here. We could offer good food, beautiful scenery, and lots of good books, but no traffic, no shopping, and no noise.

Since there were a few furrowed brows about the name of the road, 1 1/2 Avenue, in Wednesday's blog post, I thought I'd take a minute to explain how Barron County names its roads. Unlike Dunn County to our south, which seems to have absolutely no rhyme nor reason to their road names, Barron County is laid out on a grid with every street being named according to its distance north/south and east/west of the southwest corner of the [perfectly square] county. If you know this, you need never get lost in Barron County. Everything is measured from that southwest corner.

For example, if the address 320 27th street is where you want to go (I just made that up, but I suspect it actually is someone's address!), that location is 3 1/5 miles north of the south county line and 27 miles east of the west county line - so on a grid it's 27x, 3.20 y.  It makes so much sense.  And if you know your own address and can read the road signs, you can figure out how many miles you are from home. :-) That's always handy. 

Of course, once you enter a town, there are names like Oak, Maple, and Wisconsin. But out in the countryside, you'll find numbers.  And now you know the rest of the story!

 There were well over a hundred whitetail deer in this cornfield
and the one across the road. By the time we stopped
so I could get the photo, several had already bolted.

 Awwwww.
'Can they see us?? Stand perfectly still and maybe they'll go away.'

 Barron Dunn Avenue
Barron County is on the left;
Dunn County is on the right.

Did I mention that all streets run north and south and all avenues run east and west?

The stop sign is facing Sioux Creek Township

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!  I'll be gone to Texas for a week, so I won't be blogging, but will probably post the occasional photo on Instagram @cranberrymorning. Please make sure that the springtime app is fully installed in Barron County by the time I return. Thank you. :-)

Linked to Weekend Reflections

and Eileen's Saturday's Critters
and Deb's Friday Foto Friends

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