(Way) Up North

Enjoying our "Traveling Port-a-Potty", en route to "Up North".

We arrived on the shores of Lake Superior a week ago Monday and have divided our time between NPS training/orientation, getting ourselves organized for our three-week stay on Sand Island, sightseeing, doing some domestic chores and, of course, blogging.

OMG! That's Lake Superior!!

The lake view from our "picture window".

We’ve settled into a very nice, quiet, somewhat rustic campground in the town of Washburn with a great view out the back window of Lake Superior’s Chequamegon Bay (SHOE-wamee-gone). I say "rustic" because we do not have water or sewer hook-ups at the site. For a stay of 3-4 days this is no problem because the trailer has holding tanks. But when we go longer than that it's either tow the trailer to the water/dump or get a long hose to bring in water and a "tote" to remove the wastewater. Bottom line, we bought some more hose and our very first "tote".

Toting the new tote.

Please tell me that pulling the tote behind the truck to the dump station makes me look cool.

Back in the day what is now the Washburn Marina was a major shipping point for lumber and grain in a city that aspired to become the "next Chicago".

This is a common site all across northern Wisconsin where most towns have at least one artesian "town well". This one near our campsite in Washburn pumps out nearly 60 gallons of great-tasting water every minute.

Washburn is a town of about 2,200 on the eastern shore of the Bayfield Peninsula, which juts into Lake Superior in the far northwest corner of Wisconsin, about 70 miles northeast of Duluth, Minnesota. Washburn was created in the 1880s by a railroad company that planned to make it “the next Chicago”. Obviously that did not quite work out although Washburn was a major shipping center for wheat and lumber in the 19^th century with large docks, grain elevators and several sawmills. All of that (and most of the jobs/people) is gone now, replaced by a small city-owned marina, a few shops and a few restaurants strung out along the main drag. It's also home to the courthouse for a county with a population of less than 15,000.

The Apostles are a 22-island archipelago that splays out into the lake from the northeastern end of the Bayfield Peninsula. Twenty-one of the islands, and a 12-mile strip on the shore of the peninsula, are in the park.We work on 2,900-acre Sand Island, the westernmost island with a lighthouse. Our neighbor, Devil's Island is the northernmost point in Wisconsin.
 

One day we took our bikes on the ferry that runs from the town of Bayfield (12 miles north of Washburn and home of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore headquarters) to Madeline Island, the largest of the 22 islands and the only one that is not in the park. The small town of LaPointe on Madeline Island has a post office, a museum, a couple of churches, a few restaurants and a K-8 school. 

On the ferry leaving Bayfield.

Later in the day, leaving LaPointe.

Wake up LaPointe!

Famously, in the winter, the school bus (and other vehicles) drives the 2.5 miles across the frozen lake to take students to the high school in Bayfield. And when the ice is too thin for the bus they sometimes use a wind sled, which is sort of like a sailboat on skis. In addition to 300 or so hardy year-round residents there are numerous vacation homes and a large state park on the 12-mile-long, three-mile-wide island, along with many miles of paved and gravel roads. 

We rode our bikes out to the state park, about a 12-mile or so roundtrip, on a chilly, damp, overcast day.

Fish Art

LaPointe was established in 1865 by French fur traders and, until the railroads pushed north and west to Lake Superior (and the locks were built on the St. Mary’s River at the eastern end of the lake, which opened it to large-scale commercial shipping) in the mid-19^th century LaPointe was the largest white settlement on the western end of the lake. After the fur trade played out had became a major shipping point for fish, especially salted herring packed in wooden barrels.

French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel developed lenses like this one that was used in the Raspberry Island Lighthouse and is now on display at a museum in LaPointe. Fresnell invented a way to use thin cut layers of glass to magnify and project the light of a small flame many miles into the night. When the U.S. finally begain to use Fresnel lenses after the Civil War it transformed the U.S. Lighthouse Service. Every lighthouse in the Apostle Islands used a Fresnel lens and the original lens is still in the lighthouse tower on Devil's Island.

On another day we drove to some of the small towns on the western side of the peninsula and stopped at a ginormous fish hatchery where they raise lake trout. Built in the 1970s the hatchery has been so successful there is no longer a need to stock trout in Lake Superior and the fish raised in the hatchery are shipped out to be released in other Great Lakes.

We like to buy our fresh Whitefish from Halvorsen's in the village of Cornucopia, which is also the home of the northernmost post office in Wisconsin (and very little else).

Real Fish (lake trout)

Yard art at the Iron River, Wisconsin library.

Whittier, California is the hometown of Richard M. Nixon, but why is this sign in the front yard of a house in Iron River, Wisconsin?

The good news coming out of the NPS orientation day last week was that our island’s docks and campsites are getting some much-needed love. The bad news was that there will be no docks for us to use to unload our gear when we get dropped off tomorrow; meaning that we will once again have to make a D-Day-style landing. The other semi-bad news we got is that construction crews will still be working on some of the campsites while we are there. Another potential problem is a new on-line camping permit system that may cause us (and inexperienced kayakers/campers) some headaches, at least until the kinks are worked out. But by far the worst news coming out of orientation was that we are now required to assess a fee when we give tours of the lighthouse.

Betsy wouldn't let me practice with the tourniquet at first aid training.

Packing up for Sand Island...are we going to be out there for three weeks or three years?

 

Two newly-retired bureaucrats turned Apostle Islands NL volunteers (a former Ashland, WI city adminstrator and a Duluth, MN housing administrator) listen intently for (some/any) wisdom from a "veteran" retired bureaucrat/volunteer.

While we support the concept of the cash-strapped NPS charging fees  for services (given the reality of the priorities of the Congress we the people have elected) we don’t think it's going to work very well at our lighthouse on Sand Island because of the unstructured and haphazard way that people arrive on the island and at the lighthouse; often by personal kayak and, usually, wearing wet suits. The last thing these folks are prepared to do is fish five bucks out of a dry bag stuffed deep inside a kayak for a lighthouse tour. And the last thing we, as volunteers, want to do is assess and collect the damn fee. We have the flexibility to proceed on the honor system, letting them pay when they get back to the mainland or even when they get back home. But, suffice to say, we're not very happy about it and we anticipate some challenges and aggravations during our initial tour of duty on the island. Hopefully the kinks will get worked out by the time we return for TOD #2 in August.

Wish us luck, we may need it!

{Correction: In my previous post I suggested that the two counties on Lake Michigan between Milwaukee and Chicago were home to the cities of Beloit and Janesville and that these two cities are, essentially, suburbs of Chicago. They are not. The two cities that are in these counties that I should have mentioned are Racine and Kenosha. Beloit and Janesville are further west in (slightly) less populous counties and much too far from Chicago to be considered suburbs. The PazTrips Blog regrets the error (and is shocked! that none of its attentive readers caught this mistake).}