Post 3 Wisconsin State Fair, Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore

 Aug 7-14

Week 3 began with a visit to our friends, Daiva and Tracey.  We met them on our 2023 Alaska cruise and bumped into them everywhere we went in Anchorage, especially breweries! It was the beginning of a lasting friendship.

The impetus for this trip was them inviting us to the Wisconsin State Fair.  We agreed and decided to just keep going.

We arrived in Wauwatosa, just outside of Milwaukee, on Thursday afternoon.  Daiva is a doctor and was still at work at the hospital so Tracey took us on a short brewery tour.  We hung out at an Irish Fest that was at a local park where we met up with Daiva and then went out to dinner.

Daiva had to work on Friday so Tracey did a driving tour for us around the area stopping at the Public Market and some of her favorite brew pubs.  Dinner was Friday Fish Fry at a German restaurant which allowed us to try the local wall-eye.  Delicious!

Saturday…off to the fair!  It was hot, hot, hot, in the 90’s and HUMID.  We went early to avoid the heat but it got the best of us and by early afternoon, we called it a day.  We did manage to see all the highlights- cows, horses, sheep, chickens, cool things in the exhibit halls, fried everything, local bands and craft brew tents.  We ate huge ears of roasted corn dipped in a vat of butter and sprinkled with your choice of topping, Yum!  And you can’t say you’ve been to the Wisconsin State Fair without eating some fried cheese curds – MORE Yum!!!

We made it home just as the rain started.  We were expecting some thunder showers but nothing like the 9-11” we got that night!!  We woke to flooding all around the city and power outages on nearby streets.  We were lucky to avoid both.

We headed out to see the Thomas Dambo troll sculpture, Mama Rosa, in the new Firefly Grove Park in Wauwatosa. We were detoured numerous times due to water rushing down the streets!  We did get there to see this charming sculpture. She is 25 feet tall and weighs 4,000 pounds.  Dambo has troll sculptures all over the world, including over 119 in the US. Hmmmm, now we want to visit more trolls!

Sunday morning we said goodbye to our two great friends after a weekend of pub hopping and lots of laughter!

Heading to the Upper Peninsula (UP) of Michigan to visit Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, we stayed overnight at a sweet little campground on the shore of Green Bay in Peshtigo, WI.  We continued on Monday morning and camped about 10 miles from Pictured Rocks.

On Tuesday we decided to head to the southern side of the UP.  After seeing Tambo’s Mama Rosa in Wauwatosa, we heard there was another Dambo troll not far from us.  We paid a visit to Benny the Beardfisher at the Northland Outfitters campground.  He’s lying across the path with the tip of his beard in the river.  These trolls are really amazing structures and we’re hoping to see more as we cross the country.

Just down the road from Benny was the Seney National Wildlife Preserve.  Such a hidden gem!!  This preserve has a 7.5 mile gravel auto road that crosses through fields, marshland and open water.  It’s a habitat for trumpeter swans, spoonbill cranes, whooping cranes, loons and a host of other birds and wildlife.  It took us over an hour to travel the 7 miles as we stopped often to search with our binoculars.

We continued on to the southern coast town of Manistique, where we sampled a flight of beer and enjoyed some downtime on a very windy beach.

My (Anne) impressions of the UP…reminds me of Iceland in that 90% of the population is living on the coast and the whole middle section of the peninsula is a whole lot of nothing but trees.  Seriously, not just rural, we’re talking wilderness.  Beautiful.   But nothing… like wilderness with a straight ribbon of road going through.  The land of Bigfoot! Takes a long time to get anywhere.  I was expecting it to be more touristy, I’m glad it wasn’t.

Wednesday was spent on the north shore in Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.  We started at the Visitor Center, which we are pleased to report, was well staffed with rangers.  We’ve found this to be true at all of the National Parks we’ve visited. Pictured Rocks is 13 miles of colorful sandstone cliffs rising to 200 feet above the lake level. In 1966, PR was the first designated National Lakeshore in the US.

Lake Superior is on the north shore of the UP and very different from Lake Michigan, starting with the beautiful blue-green water and the amazing cliffs.  We began the day with a hike to Miners Falls, a 70 foot cascade of rushing water!  On to Miners Castle, an overlook that gave us the first glimpse of the pictured rocks and then to Miners Beach.  The sites were named back in 1771 by explorers looking for minerals in the area.

The best way to see the rocks is on the water, so we signed up for a boat tour for the afternoon.  It’s fascinating to see how the water has eroded the softer layers of limestone and have caused collapses and opened up caves.  The groundwater leaching through the rock leaves streaks of iron (red), manganese (black-white) and copper (green) that stain the rocks.  This is what makes them look painted. Some rock formation names are: Miners Castle, Lovers Leap, Rainbow Cave, Indian Drums, Chapel Rock and Grand Portal. The water was really that green-blue color.  It felt like we were in the tropics! It was a hazy day as the Canadian wildfires are still sending smoke this way, so our pictures don’t do them justice.

Our last day at Pictured Rocks ended with dinner out in Munising, torrential rain while eating and a beautiful double rainbow as we headed back to our campground.

Tomorrow we start week 4 of our adventure.