Para-Sailing

Absolutely perfect day for para-sailing, great group of 5 that we went out with, Gregg loved it and Sally is really glad she did it once...

First, our new refrigerator....much better than the red cooler in the bathtub. We are happy campers now.









Next, some wonderful images from Door County, WI. What a place this is. We're finding fun things to do every day:
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Fish Boil - delicious.
He's adding what he calls "a pinch of salt".

Then he adds 2 cups of fuel oil to the fire to create a blaze that makes the fish stew boil over and spill its fat on the ground. The resulting fresh Lake Michigan whitefish is wonderful!
See the boilover here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EHGyzuQZGU

A rule of mine...

Always Stop at

Lemonade Stands!!

Support the entrepreneurial, capitalistic dreams of the young! Notice the Free Ice.

(I found these 2 girls to be an interesting study in opposites - look closely at them...)

Cherry Fest -

Pennies are tossed into the sand for the little ones to find. Nice, nice beaches all around here.

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Today we go para-sailing, add more sitting in our lawn chairs along the harbor, more treasure hunting in the gift shops, maybe kayaking, then back home to the RV to pack up for another move tomorrow. Heading to SW Wisconsin to the Spring Green area to see Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin as well as doing some biking on a state trail.

Door County, Wisconsin

Off to a rocky start in Wisconsin - this ==>>
is our new refrigerator! Ours bit the dust and must be replaced so we are improvising while a new one is shipped to Green Bay for us. So we feel like we are really camping now! The nice RV park people where we are staying this week are keeping all our freezer stuff in their freezer for us.

We had a great day today exploring Door County, the "thumb" of Wisconsin, sticking out into Lake Michigan.



Goats atop the Swiss restaurant in Sister Bay, Door County













View of Nicolet Bay from the 9 mile bike trail through Peninsula State Park

Gregg wanted to ride right into Lake Michigan...

Eagle Harbor in Ephraim, Door County.

The building, a store, was built in 1858. This dock served as the transportation center for this area.

Off to Wisconsin...

Tomorrow morning we'll finally drag ourselves out of Minnesota and head into Wisconsin. We've had a grand time here, wonderful, cool weather, good biking, beautiful lake shores, fun with friends & family.

Today is our 100th day on the road and we haven't even begun to get tired of this. We've traveled only 5,507 miles so the pace is really nice, not too hard on the driver or the navigator. We've found lots of places we've enjoyed settling into for 4-7 days, then get our itch to move on again. Someone today called us "migratory" and I thought that a pretty good name for us. Not quite nomads or gypsies or just wanderers. Migratory...we'll definitely not be in MN this winter!

We keep finding fun things to do. Went on a factory tour at Cirrus today and saw how they build these beautiful little airplanes. Went back to a favorite restaurant - Hell's Kitchen. Climbed a 97 step tower on top of a ridge to look down on the marina where we've been staying on the amazing Lake Superior. This lake contains about 3 quadrillion gallons of water with an average water temperature of 40 degrees, as deep as 1,276 feet, average depth of 489 feet. It's about 1,300 miles to drive around the lake with a surface area of about 31,700 square miles. It is ENORMOUS, the largest freshwater lake in the world, and it freezes in the winter. This just amazes me, that it can freeze. Usually not the entire lake, but it has been recorded twice in written weather history that the entire lake has frozen. Imagine that! 31,700 square miles!

The Hell's Angels are due here in town tomorrow so we will be moving on... Not room enough for all of us migratory people in the same place!

By the shores of Gitchee Gumee, the shining big sea waters...Lake Superior

We are in heaven...Duluth, MN. We're parked in a marina with water and boats on all sides of us. Weather's perfect, biking is great, fabulous restaurants, lots of shops to explore, a live concert right across the bay from us that went on all evening. We're having trouble tearing ourselves away from this place!

Way Up North

I last updated this in Grand Marais, MN and can't resist adding a couple more pictures from this pretty little town on Lake Superior.

Then we headed further north where the highway caution signs changed...notice the red nose on the reindeer on the sign. (Click on the picture to enlarge it)

Mosquitoes grew bigger and a little thicker (though not too bad due to this very cool summer here). Here's how I like mosquitoes......smashed on the window.

This is the view we had from our campground in Grand Portage, just a few miles south of the Canadian border.

We climbed 175 of these steps to the top of Mount Rose to overlook Grand Portage Bay.

View from the top...

the building below is in the National Monument that depicts the life of the Voyageurs who hunted and trapped all over Canada to send furs to Europe. Grand Portage was the site of the 8 mile long portage used to get furs and supplies from Lake Superior into the mainland river system. That was necessary due to all the rivers here crashing into the lake from huge waterfalls.

John & Patti drove up from the Twin Cities to join us for 2 days in this area.

We all tried the beach chairs at the historic Naniboujou Lodge, once the playground of Babe Ruth and other notables.

But the really BIG attraction for all of us way up north was our day trip to Isle Royale National Park, one of the least visited national parks due to its remoteness. 3 hours each way on this boat to spend 2.5 hours on the island.

We braved clouds, mist, rain, cold and bugs and lived to tell our tale. It's a beautiful unspoiled place, lush like a rainforest, but I wouldn't want to live there! We took a hike of about 1.5 miles and were soaked through from the wet foliage along the 12 inch wide trails - not your typical national park! The bugs were so thick I hardly even stopped to take any pictures. We didn't see any of the many moose on the island but learned all about how they survive winters there with as many as 100,000 moose ticks on their bodies and their skin rubbed bare from the itching. Not a paradise here by any means!

Flower deep in the forest on Isle Royale. it was so shaded that flowers were few and ferns and leafy plants abundant.

Rock of Ages lighthouse at the western end of the immense Isle Royale. This is the largest island in Lake Superior which is the largest freshwater lake in the world.

Back to Grand Portage.

She politely waited for us to pass on a trail this morning before crossing to the other side... we are now in Duluth for a couple of days before we will head down through northern Wisconsin for the Door County area.

Grand Marais, MN

Just in case anyone may be wondering why we don't want to come home yet....