Baraboo, Wisconsin: Circus World Museum

It's the circus that came to town and never left, with memorabilia, yes, but also with wandering clowns and a deafening steam calliope.

At Circus World Museum there is so much to see, in so many buildings. There are tons of artifacts and memorabilia. And there's a real circus in the summer, with young performers.

Make sure you visit all of the winter animal housing buildings, where they now house artifacts.

This location was the home of the Ringling Brothers, and thus the winter home of their circus before merger with the Barnum and Bailey circus. The Circus World collection of circus wagons is amazing. They are constantly working to restore new wagons, and many of them are one-of-a-kind. A couple of them are covered with gold leaf and are breathtaking.

Circus World Museum, Baraboo, Wisconsin, continues a successful practice started last year of selling bouquets of a dozen clown noses to raise money for the attraction's operations. This romance season, media attention applied a marketing whoopee cushion, sending requests sky high....