Great Lakes - Day 7

The temperature change from the 4 hours further north and west is marked.  From 85 sunny degrees yesterday to a cool and cloudy 58 today is amazing.  Yesterday I wore shorts, flip flops, and a tank top; today jeans, long sleeve shirt and tennis shoes.  I almost needed a jacket this morning.  We had breakfast of biscuits, bacon, eggs and fruit – I made scones, biscuits and cookie dough at home and froze them so that we could have home made goods. 

We arrived at the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore visitor center in Munising, MI and Lorelei got her junior ranger book and off we went on our adventures.  First we did a short waterfall hike and then headed up the road a few miles to the Castle Rock overlook.  We took a few pictures and then were up the road a few more miles to the Chapel Falls area.  We had originally hoped to do the hike all the way to Chapel Rock but like everything else on this trip, we have been behind the very tight schedule that I set.  We hiked to the falls, took some pictures and enjoyed a snack.  It was a beautiful hike and initially we had the woods to ourselves where we discussed politics, social injustice, and many other interesting topics.  After our hike, we had a quick lunch and were on the road toward the Keweenaw Peninsula of Michigan. 

Unfortunately, the national parks visitor center for this historic park closes at 5:00 PM and GPS had us scheduled to arrive at 4:58 PM.  We didn’t have reservations anywhere tonight so we decided to *gasp*, skip a park.  We are trying to hit every park but sometimes, the goal of trying of get them all doesn’t allow for the flexibility of really enjoying the trip.  It’s not likely that we will get back to the upper Peninsula of Michigan any time soon but we will just have to be ok with missing that one. 

Having made the decision to skip the park, we re-routed towards tomorrow’s stop at Apostle Islands in Wisconsin.  Originally we would have continued skirting Lake Superior on Highway 2 but for some reason, unknown to us,  that highway was closed.  Our 4+ hour drive took us towards the middle of nowhere, Wisconsin.  The middle of nowhere took a turn in Mellen, Wisconsin where 2 days ago a very heavy storm came across Lake Superior and down the Bad River and washed out roads, took down trees and closed both highway 13 and highway 169.  These highways are the two that lead out of Mellen.  After discovering these road closures, we stopped at the Dollar General to ask for help in going north.  The locals named some roads that we had previously passed because they were dirt and I found them on google maps and so we were off on a dirt adventure.  Honestly, I did not know dirt roads like this still existed.  We’ve been in lots of strange places.  Goat trails as Scott calls them.  We lost a hubcap on won somewhere in North Dakota.  So we took the dirt road and passed farms and pods and saw for ourselves how the washout of the roads had wreaked havoc in north eastern Wisconsin. 

We made it back to a regular highway and followed it all the way to Ashland, WI.  Along the way we continued to see the effects of the rain storm.  I found a campground that was on the edge of Lake Superior and luckily they had spots.  It is a beautiful site, a few blocks walk gets you into Ashland and there is a boat access and a park.  The camp host told Scott how two days ago that same storm that had washed out all of the roads had brought water to the campground, the camper two doors over had water up to the top of the tires.  He said that the rain cloud came down really low to the lake and the rain was so hard and horizontal, you couldn’t see a thing.   Luckily though, tonight was clear and cool and dry and we enjoyed dinner at the picnic table and Luke and I watched the sun set from the nearby dock while Scott and Lorelei got the fire for s’mores going.  It was my favorite day.