Baraboo is a small city in a very old landscape. The ridges that curl around it, the Baraboo Range, are among the most ancient rock formations in the Midwest, made of tough pink quartzite laid down well over a billion years ago and later pushed up into a crescent of bluffs that glaciers then flowed around, not over. The most famous piece of this is Devil's Lake, a deep, clear lake held in a gorge, with sheer purple cliffs above and a state park that is one of the most visited in Wisconsin.
In the town, a different kind of history lives. The Ringling Brothers began their circus in Baraboo in 1884, and the winter quarters of the show stood here for decades. Circus World, a museum on the old grounds beside the Baraboo River, preserves wagons, posters and the sights and smells of the big top, and the Al Ringling Theatre, a plush opera house from 1915, still stands downtown. Southeast of town, the little shack where Aldo Leopold wrote part of A Sand County Almanac, the landmark book of the conservation movement, stands in a quiet field and is open to visitors.
The riding is the sort the Midwest does quietly well. Roads through the range wind over rises and down into valleys, with farmland and forest, and the lanes toward the Wisconsin River and the Kickapoo country have easy curves and a sense of space. Wisconsin Highway 33 and 23 run west, while county roads loop through hills where hawks and turkey vultures turn in the thermals. The surface is generally good, though some county roads have frost heaves, and the Amish buggies seen in the western hills deserve caution.
Baraboo has fuel, supermarkets and restaurants, and Lake Delton and Wisconsin Dells nearby supply plenty of hotels and attractions, though those places are crowded in summer. The International Crane Foundation, just north, houses all fifteen species of crane in the world. The best time is early October, with color and cool air, but June is lovely too. Midsummer weekends bring heavy traffic around the Dells, so start early. Winter is cold, with snow and ice, and thunderstorms in summer can be violent, with brief hail.