Apostle Islands Area Campground, Bayfield, Wisconsin As Joan said in her post this morning, not a whole lot happened yesterday. We had to take Smooch to the vet because of vomiting and diarrhea, but I’m guessing that readers aren’t real interested in hearing the fine details about that. So since very little happened yesterday, except Joan’s terrific pictures of the rainbow over the sailboats, there just wasn’t enough to make a post, so I didn’t make one this morning. We actually had a pretty good morning today exploring one of the Apostle Islands, and I will write about that tomorrow morning like I usually do. But I just had one of those experiences that get the juices rolling and decided I’d make a post today after all. I want to talk about Pay Showers. Now, if ... read more

Visitor Center, Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, Bayfield, Wisconsin There are just four National Lakeshores and all four of them, as you might expect, are on the Great Lakes. I’m not finding much difference between a Lakeshore and a Seashore, in the National Park System. And both of them are bigger deals than people seem to think. We already knew that National Parks deserve several days to fully explore. But we discovered in last years trip that seashores (Gulf Islands, Canaveral, Cumberland, Cape Lookout, and Cape Hatteras) deserve much more than a single day. So we bumped up our planned stays at the four Lakeshores, and I’m glad we did. Indiana Dunes was our first Lakeshore stop and we were pleasantly surprised at how much there was to see both culturally (the early settlement communities) and naturally ... read more

Apostle Islands Area Campground, Bayfield, Wisconsin Yesterday started sunny and cheerful. We got everything hitched up and even felt we had time to take a shower before hitting the road. We were late, 11:00, getting started, but we only had about 240 miles to go and, besides, we were moving from Eastern to Central time, so we were gaining an hour. The drive really did go well, and we made it here with ample time to check in, unhitch, and make camp. But there was an hour or so that I didn’t think we would make it at all. Just about the time we hit the road, grey clouds started to build over Lake Superior. That’s not all that surprising - they do that from time to time and sometimes spill over onto land, dousing the ... read more

Isle Royal National Park It wasn’t quite the longest day of the year, but the next day when we began to see the certainty of land a few miles in front of us. Emerging out of the grey waters, the dark strip of an island slowly grew larger and more textured. I could see the outlines of the ridges that make up Isle Royal first. The definitions of rocks and trees became more real the closer we approached. After three hours of sloshing across calm, but boring water, the approaching island yielded a certain measure of excitement. As we got closer, the excitement became a bit more palpable. Just what was this island we call Isle Royale? What in the world had we gotten ourselves into? The first thing you notice is this isn’t just one ... read more

Fort Wilkins State Park, Copper Harbor, Michigan I know - how can we be back when we haven’t posted yet about being away! Well, I’m behind now. We were just so busy on Isle Royale that I didn’t get the chance to write about anything. It didn’t help that the connectivity was weak and sporadic. And now, there are four full days worth of rich travel experience to report. I admit that I’m having trouble getting my thoughts organized and down on ‘paper’. And then there are the pictures - between us we probably have a couple hundred snapshots. Editing them is not going to be an easy task. Anyway, I’m planning on spending a couple hours a day to fill in the last four days, but it might take a couple more days before I ... read more