Having escaped S. Dakota we entered the 'real' midwest into Minnesota. We had decided to make camp in the little town of Melrose which has the attraction of being about midway on the Lake Wobegon Bike trail which extends for about 65 miles and connects with the Central Lakes trail which runs for another 55 miles. Before we could even make camp we got another blowout on a trailer tire...Really?! Again, our luck was bad/good in that we had been driving through torrential downpours for much of the day and the tire decided to blow in the parking lot of the campground and in town a couple blocks from a tire store.
We enjoyed our time in MN with some nice bike rides and....well, the people are really nice. Other than that, we just noted that there is really a lot of corn in this part of MN. There is a lot of everything green out here and we have really been enjoying it after spending so much time in the arid west. The down side is, of course, that it is quite a bit more humid and rainy than at home and we are still trying to adjust to it. The day we had come into town, a town just to the south had gotten 6-in. of rain in a couple hours. Wow! As noted, the people are all really nice...I took Kasha for a walk one evening and most people that passed us in cars gave us a wave hello. Kelly and I decided that people reach terminal niceness somewhere on the rural border of Minnesota and Wisconsin.
After maxing out the fun meter in Melrose we headed for the north shore of Lake Superior. Now that is some very scenic country up there. The lake is beautiful, and the rocky shoreline is pretty spectacular. Just the thought of that much clean, clear, fresh water is kind of mind-blowing. We learned some interesting facts that drive home just how large these lakes are. Taken together, the Great Lakes account for 95% of the surface area water in N. America and if spread evenly above the lower 48 states would create a lake 9.5 feet deep. That's a lot of water, most of which comes from Canada. No wonder some want to make it our 51st state...good luck with that. We took a drive up to the lovely little harbor town of Grand Marias which is pretty much the last stop before the Canadian border and, as nice as it was, we couldn't help but try to picture it in mid-winter. One of the locals told us that the previous winter the temperature had gotten down to 50 below zero. We'll take a hard pass on that one.
The next stop on our Great Lakes tour was the Apostle Islands about an hour's drive east of Duluth, MN. Another great spot. We stayed in a state park campground near the town of Bayfield, WI, a harbor town on the south shore of Lk Superior. There was a very nice, un-crowded swimming beach within walking distance of our camp which Kasha enjoyed very much. Every day here had to include a rigorous hour-long stick fetching session at the lake. The Apostle Islands themselves are situated within a fairly short boat ride of Bayfield so we splurged and took the grand tour boat ride which visited most of them. The islands themselves are very remote and mostly uninhabited, but the real attraction is the sea caves carved into the rocky shoreline on some of them. I won't try to describe them but take a look at the pictures below to get an idea. The couple camped next to us [Dan and Sheri] had a power boat and took us out for a boat ride on their last night at camp. This got us a wonderful, up-close view of the sea caves. The told us a story [and had pictures to verify] of snorkeling at the sea caves and being warned of a very large buck that had fallen in and was trapped at the back of a deep chasm that cut into the rocky shoreline. People were, somehow, able to herd it out into the open water where it could swim to a climbable section of shoreline and rescue itself. They had pictures of the deer swimming in the lake with the snorkelers in the background. Pretty wild.
From here we will be moving on the central Wisconsin where we can see more corn and green stuff. Until then...
Tom's Burnt Down Tavern, Madeline Island, Bayview
