Well, the Cinnamon Rolls were superb. As always. The HIE did not
have great walkie opportunities for Henry, but we made that up to him later on.
The Keewenaw Peninsula sure is lush and green! And with little wonder,
because they apparently do get a lot of … uh … precipitation here in winter. Yikes!
If you want to see how many THOUSANDS of inches of snow they get here every year, click on the picture for an enlargement.
First stop: The Beginning of Highway 41.
Some readers may wonder why on earth we would make such a big
deal out of this stop. After all, every road has its beginning and its end; if
you happen to be in the area – like when you visit Key West you take a selfie at
“Mile Marker 0,” which is the end (or the beginning, depending how you look at
it) of US Highway 1. But no one goes to Key West specifically for that reason,
right? You go to Key West for other reasons, and take in this sight while you’re
there.
But Sue and I had each lived along US 41 when we were both
living in Charlotte County, FL. I’d traveled that highway pretty much every day
I went to work, for 20 years. My experiences with that roadway went back even
further, as it was the route my parents took to visit relatives living in Southwest
Miami. In fact, growing up in the part of Florida that I did, US 41 was known
as the Tamiami Trail, or simply “The Trail,” because it was THE pre-interstate
route from Tampa to Miami, with all sorts of stops in between, including
Sarasota, Fort Myers, Naples, Ochopee (that’s another story for another time), Everglades
National Park, so yes, we went to this area of Michigan specifically for
visiting the beginning of US 41.
To get to the site, you pass by Fort Wilkins State Park. But
unfortunately that park is not dog-friendly, so we passed on it. Another
unfortunate revelation was that the Copper Harbor Lighthouse is privately
owned, so there went my notion of Sue and me taking turns climbing to the top
of the lighthouse to look out over Lake Superior while the other one let Henry
play in the cold waters of the lake. A helpful – and believe me, I am being
VERY generous with this label of “helpful” – park ranger suggested that we
could access the lake by traveling the unpaved roads (uh-oh) of Copper Country
State Forest and she “helpfully” gave us a Michigan Department of Natural
Resources map by which to navigate.
Flashbacks to driving in the Henry Caldera. Logging road after
logging road, veering off this way and that. And the map was no help at all. We
finally met up with a vehicle driving toward us, and I flagged them down to ask
about the condition of the road ahead of us. The young man said, “Depends. How
good a driver are you?” To which I replied, “Pretty fair, I guess.” He sized up
my vehicle and said, “You’ll probably be OK then.”
“Probably?”
I thanked him and, noticing the kayaks secured to the top of his Land Rover, hopefully asked, “So how much further until we can get to the lake?”
I thanked him and, noticing the kayaks secured to the top of his Land Rover, hopefully asked, “So how much further until we can get to the lake?”
He said, “Gee, I don’t know. We were looking for a place to put
in, but never found one so we camped out here for the night and we’re just now
getting away. I don’t know how to get to the lake from here.”
Scrutinizing his Land Rover, with its dings and bumps and rusted
places and need of a paint job, remembering his query as to how good a driver I
may be, and not wishing for my own vehicle to prematurely attain the state of
his, I thanked him, wished them well on their journey … then found a suitable
place to turn around.
Back on paved road again
we walked along the lake’s edge as best we could,
Copper Harbor Light
then headed toward Eagle Harbor, and what we hoped would be
easier access to the lake. Happily, along the way we found a couple of different places where
we could just savor beautiful Lake Superior in all its shimmering, non-pink,
glory.
Arriving at Eagle Point
there was no place to turn but south. The question became: Do we
continue the journey eventually to turn east through the UP toward Sault Ste.
Marie? Or do we turn for home? Going through the UP has its delights, for sure!
But they are delights that deserve more than a drive-by. They would deserve a
more carefully thought-out trip, perhaps in another year or so.
Then the question became: make a straight shot south, through
Green Bay, Milwaukee, and greater Chicago? I knew from previous experience that
Chicago traffic can be brutal unless you hit it just right, and the odds of
hitting it “just right” were not in our favor. (Not that they ever are, but sometimes you get lucky. I just didn't feel like taking a chance on that luck.)
So we chose a slightly more western path, and are spending the
night in Madison, home of University of Wisconsin-Madison. I. Love. This. Town.
Had never been here before, but am sure I’ll have to come back
some day. It is a lovely and vibrant college town, seems very artsy.
And lucky us! We chose to have dinner at what is apparently one
of Madison’s casual dining hot spots: Dotty Dumpling’s Dowry. They don’t serve
dumplings here. They do serve highly tasty burgers and fries, and have raised
both to an art form. There was something on the menu called “Poutine Fries” and
I’ve been passing up on poutine all the way through Montana and Alberta and
Saskatchewan and – well, basically, all the way through the latter part of our
trip – all because it sounded like this killer (not in a good way) cholesterol
blow-out.
I was wrong. Or, maybe I was not wrong before, but it would have
been very wrong of me to pass it up at this place because fries with fried
cheese curds (gotta have cheese curds in Wisconsin!) topped with sausage gravy
was Ah-MAY-zing! We shared these, then each had a burger. And here again, What
Have I Been Missing My Whole Life, because the bun was this feather-light thing
with sesame seeds and HolyCow! it was toasted to perfection and the
feather-lightness did not detract from the burger (which, by the way, was
topped with “Maytag Blue” cheese – whatever that may be besides awesome, –
smoked bacon, and Louisiana hot sauce). Sue had a lamb burger and I noticed she
was awfully quiet across the table so it must’ve been really good also.
And beer. Besides cheese, Wisconsin’s also known for beer, and
my choice to go with an offering from Wisconsin’s Ale Asylum Brewery was
excellent.
More photos from the Forces of Nature Tour at Flickr.
Click here.
No comments:
Post a Comment