There are good time warps and there are bad time warps.

A year-old Facebook post about Wisconsin removing tax funding for state parks is a bad time warp, a putrid souvenir left by the Badger State’s budgetary grim reapers in Madison. It showed up on a friend’s social-media feed the other day, riling him, me and several others in a way that was both an unnecessary irritant and a critical reminder that our elected public officials often have no clue as to how to serve the public.

A good time warp, though, is The Yellowstone Trail, perhaps our first true coast-to-coast highway. This “good road from Plymouth Rock to Puget Sound,” as its promoters hyped it in the early days, runs right through Stevens Point, and it’s an excellent reminder of how public and private entities work together to create good things – like public parks and roads.

The YT, when traveled properly, also transports visitors to times and places that seem straight out of Norman Rockwell paintings.

Or Terrence Fogarty paintings, like the one I’m enamored with in Danube, Minn., my first road-trip destination of the summer.

Danube’s history worth revisiting

Most folks won’t get a chance to recreate my campout in Danube’s Mueller Park, but that shouldn’t stop them from visiting this charming community of 500 or so in south-central Minnesota.

I was able to pitch a tent behind the bandstand in the park with special permission from the city council. Suzie Lueck, a member of the Danube Historical Society, requested it on behalf of a small group I was supposed to travel with.

Although the group fell through, I went ahead with my visit because I wanted to touch base with Suzie and her husband Cal, who are big promoters of the Yellowstone Trail and took their own trip down the trail to Yellowstone last year.

Suzie and Cal graciously invited me to spend the night in their home, but I wasn’t about to pass up the chance to experience a sleep-out in the heart of small-town America, right next to Danube’s water tower, the train tracks and the old Danube train depot that has been converted to a historical museum, run by members of the historical society.

The park was a beautiful setting for simply relaxing quietly on the bandstand, not worrying about a single responsibility.

The night was blissfully uneventful. A train went by shortly before 8 p.m., blasting its horn, which I always love. Most of the noise was evening bird life, however.

Danube gets quite peaceful around dusk, more silent than most state parks. I’m not sure I heard a single soul except for a nearby resident calling, “Here, kitty kitty,” from her porch.

I didn’t have to speak a word until Cal and Suzie dropped by around 10 p.m., after a baseball game, and we sat in the museum with a Minnesota beer and another 45 minutes of conversation.

The main attractions in Danube are the museum and the park itself, which hosts a number of free summer concerts and community festivals. The depot, which actually sat next to the Sheep Shedde Motel in neighboring Olivia for 30 years and was temporarily used as a bar, was purchased by Danube citizens, moved back to its rightful home, refurbished, and reopened in October 2006.

The depot is jam-packed with items like an old pot-bellied stove, an original depot bench, telegraph equipment, an ancient telephone switchboard, a few model trains, and plenty of other exhibits related to almost 120 years of news, history and people who lived in the town.

One of the most charming aspects of this kind of museum is that folks who work in them are often directly tied to the history in the exhibits. In documenting the history of key businesses and the town’s economic development, the museum includes such establishments as Lueck’s Garage and Elmer Lueck Motor Sales, where one would go to buy a Studebaker – both owned by Cal’s family members.

Such direct links to history makes for great storytelling, and over the course of my daylong stay, I heard plenty of stories from Suzie and Cal, as well as society members Rod and Mary Lee Black, who joined us for lunch at Danube’s Main Street Café and later conversation at the depot.

Rod, a former teacher and basketball coach, encouraged me to revisit the museum’s sports exhibits tied primarily to the now-closed local high school, whose class pictures are wonderful mementoes of fashion and attitudes from previous decades. Among the trophies and letter jackets, however, is what may be the most evocative artifact in the museum: print No. 1 of Fogarty’s “Harvest Moon Bowl.”

That painting by the renowned Minnesota artist captures the magic of a full moon over a Danube landscape that is perfect in every way, from the expansive sky to the golden farm pasture just beyond the green of the football field, where the Renville County West Jaguars are playing the Dawson-Boyd Blackjacks.

I was unaware of Fogarty’s work before visiting the museum, but since visiting his website (terrencefogarty.com), I’ve become a huge fan, despite the fact that I’ve never seen the appeal in art dealing with sport.

Fogarty’s work, though, is not so much about the game, whether baseball, football or hockey.  It’s more about timeless values symbolized in the places it’s played, which are often the small towns, rural fields and waterways of the upper Midwest: the innocence of youth, the joy of repetitive physical action, the stolid strength of an old barn and the natural world’s pure light as it highlights leaves turning or tracked-up, crunchy snow on the way to a natural hockey rink on a country pond.

Most striking about Fogarty’s work is the way it captures the beauty of the skies, rivers and general landscapes of Minnesota, as well as Wisconsin and similar locales. The land we live in is what makes our villages, towns and other communities so endearing.

The kids who play the games under those glorious skies in Fogarty’s paintings, as well as any adults who might be watching, are always winners, regardless of whether anyone is keeping score. The same goes for the real-life folks who live in these areas – all of us, given that we’re all under the same sky.

The beauty Fogarty captures so well enamors me every time I drive through Wisconsin and Minnesota, especially on the more rural portions of the Yellowstone Trail. Smaller, slower roads allow us to more easily enjoy the landscape and life in it, and I’ll be visiting places along the trail regularly in the next few months.

That simple beauty resides in Danube and Mueller Park, which are well worth a visit. In a couple of weeks, though, I’ll also write about several other parks nearby that are great places to check out.

Things to know before you go to Danube

U.S. Highway 212 is the portion of the Yellowstone Trail that goes through Danube. The town is 88 miles from the southwestern edge of the Interstate 494 loop around the Twin Cities.

The Danube Depot museum normally is open Tuesdays and Fridays 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. from May to October and by request year-round; phone numbers for several society members are available through the city’s website (www.cityofdanube.com, go to the “City Organizations” pull-down menu to find the society and its newsletters, which list the numbers on the right-hand column of each edition).

The only place I got to eat in Danube is the Main Street Café, which has hearty, simple and inexpensive small-town fare – burgers, chicken, homemade potato salad and the like. 

During a short stop in Olivia, just 4 miles east, I noticed that the old bank building (N. Ninth Street and W. Lincoln Avenue) has a place called The Back Forty that looks like it’s committed to bringing lots of different kinds of beer and meat to the table, including Kansas City barbecue.  Apparently, the Back Forty is one of only two Minnesota member restaurants in the Kansas City Barbecue Society, which (speaking as a former Kansan) is good enough for me.

Given that last week featured National Doughnut Day, I felt compelled to stop at Yo Yo Donuts in Minnetonka, my family’s go-to doughnut shop in the Twin Cities area. They’ll individually brew a tasty (but pricey) single-origin coffee for you; for a less expensive but still excellent cup, Yo Yo will serve Kickapoo Coffee from Wisconsin’s Driftless Region. And you sure can’t beat Yo Yo’s doughnuts.