Out of Our Rut Blog Welcome Page

Welcome to the Out of Our Rut blog landing page.

Who we are:

We are a couple of former engineers that lived and worked in the Rochester New York area for over 30 years. When we were laid off from two different companies, one day apart, we took that as a sign to change things up. We had built a beautiful home on 50 acres and loved the place, but with plenty of time on our hands, we began to travel more and realized that when we were on the road for weeks on end, we didn't really miss all the “stuff” we had back home. Plus the work involved with maintaining our home and property seemed to be the only reason we would head back home. That prompted us to get out of our rut and sell 95% of our possessions and our home and move into our 38 foot motorhome and travel the country full time starting in June of 2016.

Chris and Jack Hiking in Washington State

At Pullout Along Rugged Oregon Coast

Our mission:

To explore the country with a strong bias towards outdoor activities. Our passions are hiking and geocaching with some mountain biking on the side. I am an avid photographer. I guess working at Eastman Kodak for 32 years had an influence in that. And while we live in a motorhome and stay in many campgrounds, we really are not campers. We seldom have campfires and don't have a corn hole game. We rarely stay at a campground for its amenities. We pick a place that is near where we want to explore. We think of it more like our home happens to have wheels and can move around. Our desire in these travels is to slow the pace. We didn't want to see if we could get to all the National Parks as quickly as possible. We like to keep a travel day to less than 200 miles and if the place warrants, stay for a week or more.

At Geocaching Headquarters in Seattle for #10,000

The blog:

For friends and family (as well as us) to keep track of what we have been up to, we have created this blog. It chronicles where we've been and what we've done as we wander around the country. Each stop along the way will, at minimum, get mentioned in the blog. Some longer stops in areas we enjoyed may get multiple blog posts in order to give that stop it's due. Generally the blog has lots of photographs as I find it difficult to eliminate photos I like. The blog will talk about the campground to some extent, but it shouldn't be considered a campground review. We seldom seem to exhaust the things we want to explore before we exhaust ourselves and need to move on. That means we may completely skip some activities or places in an area that others may consider essential. We look at that as a reason to come back in the future.

Pretty Sunset in Quartzite Arizona

At the Window in Big Bend National Park

This landing page:

The problem with just about any blog is that fact it is chronological. This is fine since that is how the events occurred in real life. But since our blog is so much about a given location, it can be difficult for somebody to find a specific blog post for a given location. I even find it a challenge to remember when we happened to be at a given location if I wanted to look something up. For instance, if someone asked about Twin Falls Idaho. I know we stayed there but it might take me awhile to figure out that we were there in June of 2017 to get them to the right post. If I could only look at a map of all the places we have stayed and have an easy way to get to the relevant blog post.

Since I already use Google My Maps to keep track of our locations, I have created a special map that has all of our stops since going full time. None of the routes are included in the map since that just seems to clutter it up and don't really add value. By clicking the link below the map, an interactive map with all of our stops will open in another window. It is then possible to move around the map and zoom in an area of interest. Clicking on any pin on the map will pop up the name of the location along with a link to the blog post(s) associated with that stop. Since I am nearly always 2 to 4 weeks behind in the blog, some of the most recent map points may not have a link to a blog, but they will in time. The GREEN pins are locations that happen to include one of our annual or yearly reviews.

So if you want to see what we found to explore in a given area, this should provide a much easier way to find the blog post.

Click HERE to open interactive Google map

2025 Year End Review

With 2025 coming to an end, we are celebrating nine and a half years of living on the road full time in our 38 foot motorhome. We began and finished the year at our RV lot in Titusville Florida at The Great Outdoors (TGO). We purchased the lot almost 2 years ago. It’s a fairly basic lot with a nice flat concrete driveway and the standard full hook up utilities but it does have a 10 foot by 12 foot shed which is very convenient for working on projects over the months we will be stationary here. The resort has a lot of nice amenities but we don’t take advantage of most of them. I must admit that I do miss the occasional winter spent out in southern California and Arizona where the hiking and views are a lot nicer.

We started out 2025 wrapping up some of our doctors appointments in an attempt to get our old bodies in shape for another six months of travel. Our plans for the year were to explore some of the upper Midwest. As we looked into what we wanted to see and do in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, we picked out a few events that were both location and date specific. These types of stops have a much firmer window that form the rough outline and timing of our journey.

The first event was to take part in a Habitat for Humanity build in Marquette Michigan in the Upper Peninsula. The two week window for the RV-Care-A-Vanner program was from mid to late June. The second planned event was to attend the Oshkosh Air Show in Wisconsin. This weeklong show runs in late July. With those two points on our map we have quite a bit of distance and time to fill in before, between and after these events.

It is definitely a time consuming task to map out a route, plan our camping stops and figure out how long we want to stay in areas along the way. We spent a few weeks over last winter researching things to see and do in various cities along the route. Where is the good hiking or points of interest?  I use a Google Map and a website called Furkot to piece together a plan. As we get a better handle on our route and timing, we can start to make reservations at various campgrounds and by the end of April we had a 70% of the nights reserved out through Labor Day. We have found that after then, we can be much more serendipitous about our planning for the route back to Florida.

Below is a map of our route for the year. By starting and returning to the same place, the map is a bit confusing. I have a link below the map that will open the actual Google Map which allows others to zoom and pan around to get a better view of the route. Clicking on any of the pins for a travel stop will pop up a window with the name of the stop as well as the blog post related to that stop.

Click HERE to open the Google Map

We left Titusville in late April with just over 7 weeks to make our way to Marquette. While getting the rig serviced in South Carolina, we needed to make a quick drive up to Ohio for a death in the family. It was nice to see so many relatives and friends even if it was at a sad time. We continued our journey with 2 weeks in a few state parks in the southern Appalachians.  In Cincinnati, we got a chance to get together with family and have some Skyline Chili and Graeters Ice Cream. We managed to sneak in a stop at a National Park and get our motorhome windshield replaced in northern Indiana. Then we worked our way up north through Michigan stopping at a few Elks Lodges before crossing over the Mackinac Bridge into the Upper Peninsula. The time spent working with the Habitat for Humanity affiliate in Marquette was quite rewarding and we learned a few construction tricks.

We had about 3 weeks before the Oshkosh Air Show and we got to explore the western side of the UP at a few different campgrounds before working our way south into Wisconsin. We really enjoyed the air show and you’ll read more about that later in this post. Then we continued west into Minnesota where we spent the next 37 nights at various county and state parks. I was able to talk my wife into a side trip into eastern North Dakota to experience what others have called the Disneyland of geocaching - more on that later as well.

It was about this time that we “called an audible”. We had previously planned to head back to Marquette and help out again on the Habitat build and see how it had progressed since our stop in June. But after we had talked with some fellow campers while in Minnesota, we decided to return to Minnesota to check out the north shore area along Lake Superior. This gave us the opportunity to even meet up with my nephew and his wife from Cincinnati while they were in town for her high school reunion. By then it was late September and we figured we better start making our way south to avoid the cold and snow that is inevitable for this area.

We stopped in the Apostle Islands in northern Wisconsin for several days where we got a chance to explore some of the unique landscape along the shoreline. As we headed south, we got to experience a cranberry harvest up close and personal and visit Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin both in Wisconsin. We continued through parts of Iowa, Illinois and Indiana with Chris making a return to her college town of Peoria after 40 years!

Coming through Tennessee, we got to spend a week back in the mountains to see the fall colors before timing our drive through Atlanta on a Sunday morning to minimize the traffic. A few days in a state park in Georgia and a couple of overnight stops at Elks Lodges and we made it back to Florida. It felt good when we returned to TGO after being gone for 190 nights. Things have definitely slowed down over the last two months as we get back to doing some work on the motorhome, our lot and getting in doctors appointments.

Here are a few more maps to help show where we spent our time. These “heat maps” are shaded to reflect the number of nights spent in each state - dark red is more nights, pale red is fewer nights. The first one is just for 2025. We camped in 13 different states this year with Florida, Minnesota and Michigan coming in the top 3 spots. The second map is similar but includes all 9.5 years we’ve been fulltime. The final map is the full 9.5 years but divided down to the county level to get a better understanding of where we were in each state.

Our 2025 Camping Map

Our 9.5 Year Camping Map

9.5 Years at County Level

Lots of people ask “how much does this lifestyle cost?”  Well the table below should help answer that. It doesn’t include items that would be spent if we were living in a sticks and bricks home like groceries, dining out, health care, clothing. But it does include camping costs as well as fuel for both the motorhome and the car as well as the miles driven. We did put on more miles on the rig this year but not significantly more.  Nothing else was all that surprising. Since the actual table has so many years now, I only include the past six years.  One other aspect is that the cost per night here at TGO is initially an educated estimate but I won’t have our last rental income check for the year until mid February at which point I will update the spreadsheet and this table.

Just the Stats for the Past 6 Years

The table does breakdown the type of places we have camped into four categories: boondocking, state parks, private campgrounds and Elks Lodges. While we tend to like state, county or city parks over private campgrounds, location is our most important consideration when picking a campground as well as availability and do we fit in the site. This year we did bump up our state park number a little bit compared the past couple of years. Our overall cost per night worked out to be just over $32 - a bit higher than many years but again not significantly higher.

Like we have done in past year end reviews, we have looked over the 49 stops from this year and tried to identify our favorites. After the votes were tallied, we came up with 8 clear winners. Don't look at this list as the best campgrounds we stayed at during the year. I will provide the name of the campground we stayed at but these winning stops are based purely on its location or what we found to see and do in the area. I will also warn readers that one place on the list might be a mediocre location if you’re not an avid geocacher but we found it to be quite entertaining.

For each winning stop, there is a short description of what we liked about it, a link to the first blog post for that location which will provide much more information about the stop and some of our favorite pictures from the stop. Since I am behind on my blog writing, there are some of the stops without the link to the post but this will be updated as they are written. In chronological order, here are the top 8 stops for 2025.

• Cloudland Canyon State Park, Trenton Georgia - We had done a day trip to this park back in 2021 and fell in love with the park and it’s wonderful hikes and views. We managed to get a spot for 5 nights and found it to be a rather roomy site. The final 8 miles into the parking lot is up a rather steep and curving road. It is doable in a rig our size but not necessarily fun. We repeated one of our favorite hikes the West Rim Loop. By staying in the park for multiple days, we were able to hike Sitton’s Gulch Trail which follows the base of the valley along a creek. This park is not too far from Chattanooga so we spent one day exploring some of the sights in that town including the Chattanooga Choo Choo. Cloudland Canyon is a nice relaxing place to visit in northern Georgia.

Cloudland Canyon Blog Post

Cloudland Canyon View

Large Overhanging Rock

• Union River Big Bear Campground, Silver City Michigan - Situated in the far western part of the Upper Peninsula, this private campground is pretty much surrounded by the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park. We stayed here for a week after completing our Habitat build in Marquette. It is a remote location that didn’t have any cell coverage for our devices but there was reasonable WiFi that worked in our rig. There are many hiking trails within the park and we take advantage of many of them. The main feature of this area are the numerous waterfalls - more of them than can be seen in the time we were here. We had found a decent guide that rated the falls on beauty and ease of getting to the viewing location and we managed to hit a great number of the better ones. The only real problem with this stop was coming in early July - the bugs were pretty bad at times. If you can time your visit for the fall colors, I bet the views would be spectacular and the bugs would be less of an issue.

First Porcupine Mountains Blog Post

Lake of the Clouds

Beautiful Bond Falls

• Hancock Recreation Area Campground, Hancock Michigan - This stop isn’t all that far from the Porcupine Mountains but there is so much to see and do in this area that it would be a challenge to attempt both areas from one campground. Situated on the Keweenaw Peninsula that juts out into Lake Superior, this part of the UP was formerly a big copper mining area. Several of the old mines and facilities have been taken over by the National Park Service and offer a wide range of interesting tours. We did head up to Copper Harbor to explore an old lighthouse and fort. This area is known for some excellent mountain biking be we didn’t get a chance to try any bike trails and only got In minimal hiking since there were so many other things to see and do and we only had 5 nights in Hancock.

First Keweenaw Peninsula Blog Post

Shaft-Rock House at Quincy Mine

Eagle Harbor Light House

Incredible Stone Building in Calumet

• Camp Scholler Air Show, Oshkosh Wisconsin - Usually I don’t try to rank our tops picks for any given year, but this stop was so much fun that it was easily our favorite place of 2025 and rates up with the Albuquerque Balloon Festival and the Lake Havasu Pyrotechnics Show as bucket list destinations. Similar to these other two, Oshkosh is only on the list because of the event that takes place every July - the EAA Airventure Show. There are around 12,000 mostly primitive camping sites in a 400 acre field so you’re not here for the camping experience. But for a full week, you can join in with roughly 100,000 other visitors each day and partake in everything aviation related. We are not at all into airplanes or flying but we still had a great time. There are 4 hour long airshows each afternoon and two nights during the week are nighttime airshows with planes, fireworks, laser lights and drones which were some of the most incredible events to behold. My blog post listed below will provide all the details about attending and what you’ll see while at Oshkosh. Add it to your bucket list!

Oshkosh Air Show Blog Post

Large Group of Warbirds During Air Show

Colorful Aerobatic Biplane

Nighttime Air Show Begins

• Bear Paw Campground Itasca State Park, Shelvin Minnesota - In mid August, we spent 9 nights camping inside Itasca State Park in northern Minnesota. The park’s claim to fame is being the headwaters of the Mississippi River. It’s one of the few places along this 2300 mile long river where visitors are encouraged to walk across from one side to the other. It’s only about 15 feet and ankle deep so it isn’t all that impressive of a feat. There are many miles of hiking trails to enjoy. The 11 mile paved bike path right out of the campground can be linked with a gravel one way wilderness drive for a great 17 mile loop around the lake.

Being there for an extended time, we were able to venture out of the park to see some other sights. The Heartland Trail a little southeast of camp was a wonderful bike ride out of the town of Walker. Possibly the highlight of the stop was a day trip to the town of Detroit Lakes to see the trolls. These 6 art installations are scattered all around the area and we found it is a full day to get them all in since most of them are not right at a parking area but require a bit of a walk. But the effort was worth it.

 First Itasca State Park Blog Post

Calm Waters of Lake Itasca Near Sunset

The First Few Feet of the Mighty Mississippi River

Chris Mimics Ronny Funny Face Troll

• Turtle River State Park, Arvilla North Dakota - Located 25 miles outside of Grand Forks is the small town of Gilby North Dakota. Small is an understatement - population ~240 people! The nearest campground was this state park about 10 miles away. Why did we want to go to this blip on the map in the middle of farm fields and not much else? That’s easy - geocaching. We had heard about Gilby on a geocaching podcast we routinely listen to and it sounded quite intriguing. When we put together our travel plans for Minnesota, I realized that we were only going to be 150 miles from Gilby and talked Chris into heading there. This place is known as the Disneyland of geocaching mainly because of one very creative cache hider named Trycacheus.

We spend 3 full days driving all over the backroads of Gilby in search of some of the most creative caches we’ve done over our 15+ years of geocaching. Most of the hides involved some sort of puzzle that must be solved in order to open the final cache container and each puzzle was very unique. Some were complicated and required a fair amount of thought while others were simply cute and fun to solve. Brainpower was used for most of them but a few required strength or throwing accuracy. In our 6 nights there, we found 71 caches with 50 of them having over 100 favorite points. We were there a couple weeks before some big geocaching event but that probably worked out in our favor so we could enjoy the time spent solving them in solitude. There were a few other things to see in the area but not many. So if you are a geocacher, this is a must do stop, otherwise you will likely skip this part of North Dakota.

 

 Blog Post from Gilby

Giant Anvil Weathervane is a Geocache

ET Phone Home Bike Cache

Geocaching Swiss Army Knife Cache

• Black Beach Campground, Silver Bay Minnesota - This stop wasn’t planned until a couple weeks before staying there. We only decided to consider checking out this part of Minnesota known as the “North Shore” after several people talked about how beautiful it is and a tour of the state should include seeing it. It’s an area that extends about 150 miles northeast of Duluth to the Canadian border near Grand Portage all along the northern shore of Lake Superior. We worked 4 nights into our schedule to check it out. There are a fair number of campgrounds along the route and some of the state parks looked nice but didn’t have availability during our timeframe. We picked Silver Bay because it was roughly halfway along the North Shore so we could easily explore in either direction.

There are numerous places to see with lots of waterfalls and other attractions. Gooseberry Falls and Split Rock Lighthouse were two of our favorites. One day was spent exploring all the way up to Grand Portage just before the border crossing. We did a beautiful hike there and found lots of places to stop at on our drive back. If you do make it to the area, you should really check out Betty’s Pies in Two Harbors. Had we only known to include the North Shore as we were planning our tour of Minnesota, we would have allotted more time to explore.

 Blog Post from Silver Bay

Split Rock Lighthouse Reflection

Gooseberry Falls State Park

Black Beach

Finally Saw the Northern Lights

• Top of the World Campground, Tellico Plains Tennessee - This was our last long stop before heading back to Florida for the winter. We really enjoy spending time in the Appalachian Mountains and doing so in the fall is even better. Having spent most of our time in these mountains on the North Carolina side near Asheville, we picked this out of the way campground to spend a week exploring. We found some quirky things to see in the area including tours of Mayfield Dairy and Sweetwater Valley farms where we saw robotic cow milking equipment in action.

There are many nice hikes to do in this area but it might be most famous for Cherohala Skyway - a 43 mile stretch of road from Tellico Plain TN to Robbinsville NC. It’s a very scenic drive through the mountains and we had (accidentally) timed our visit to be near peak autumn colors. This road ties into another drive called the Tail of the Dragon and many car enthusiasts come here from far away to drive these roads. The day we drove a section of it, there was an Aston Martin car club enjoying the drive - a total of 38 from vintage ones like James Bond drove to brand new models. They would have been much more fun to drive than the Jeep!

 Blog Post Not Written Yet

View from Our Campsite at Top of the World

River View Along Cherohala Skyway

Indian Boundary Lake TN

Below is a map showing all 435 places we have camped in the past eight and a half years. For additional information on any of them, click on the link below the map which will open the actual Google Map I use. Pan and zoom on the map and by clicking on any pin, a window will pop up with the name of the location and a link to the blog post(s) for that place. Those interested in hiking, mountain biking, geocaching or nature photography, may find some of the posts useful if you plan to visit an area we have explored. Our blog posts are more about the interesting locations we discovered during our stops and less about campground reviews so don't expect to find much information about what campground is the best in a specific area.

Click HERE to Open Interactive Google Map

We still haven’t made any plans for where 2026 will take us but I’m sure we will come up with something in the next couple months.

Apostle Islands

Map of this blog's locations click this link to open the map

Back in early September, when we roughly sketched out our travel plans from Minnesota to Florida, we had only reserved a few of the intended stops through that month.  Before we left Duluth, we made reservations for later in October for stops in three states - Indiana, Tennessee and Georgia. This would cover half the nights in October with plans to use numerous Elks Lodges and several other campgrounds that showed as having a lot of availability to fill in the gaps. Our next stop after Duluth is in northern Wisconsin near the Apostle Islands. Thompsons West End Park is a campground in Washburn that is a first come first serve city park. Since we are coming in on a Monday afternoon and only have a 78 mile drive, we were optimistic about getting a site. Sure enough, we pulled in and there were a couple dozen sites to pick from. We found one we liked and got setup for the five nights we planned on staying. It looks like a nice park. They do have a seasonal rate so some of the rigs have been here for several months but with the season winding down, it was rather quiet here. I suspect many of the seasonal renters are actually locals and use the campground as a weekend getaway.

We arrived early enough that we were able to head into downtown Washburn to complete an Adventure Lab that toured us all around the cute little town on the shore of Lake Superior. We saw a little bit of what the town has to offer in the 3 miles we walked.

Sailboats in Washburn WI

Washburn Marina from Above

Washburn Courthouse

Bank Turned Museum

The next day we head north ten miles or so towards the town of Bayfield. This place is the center of most of the activities associated with the Apostle Islands. There is a state fish hatchery just a couple miles south of town that we stop at first. The original building dates back to 1897 and is quite beautiful.

Fish Hatchery

There is a separate large building that is the main visitor center for the facility. There are lots of displays and several large fish tanks with various species of fish swimming around. The smaller inside tanks where the hatchlings would be was dark. I suspect that our timing was poor to see any real activity. We wander around some of the outdoor ponds but don’t see any obvious signs of fish. Maybe this place is more interesting in the spring but rather quiet in late September.

Hatchery Aquarium Fish

Indoor Tanks

Outdoor Pond at Hatchery

We head into Bayfield and stop at the visitor center in downtown. The woman working here is very helpful in giving us some ideas of what to see for the days we are in the area. She does warn us that being this late in the season, some of the activities are dying down but it sounds like we won’t have any trouble coming up with things to do. We walk a few blocks down to the waterfront and check out all the boats. Besides all the personal watercraft, there are several tour boats and a ferry boat.

Boat Dock in Bayfield

Research Vessel Kiyi

Madeline Island Ferry Arrives

We drive a few blocks to the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore headquarters. It a neat old building that was the original Bayfield courthouse. Of course this would be the first thing that we found to be closed already for the season. They do actually have the vestibule open and the prerequisite passport stamp station and brochures but we didn’t get to check out any of the displays inside or see the old architecture of the building.

Apostle Islands NL Headquarters

We picked out a short hike just north of town in Big Ravine Nature Preserve. There is a parking lot at the backside of the school next to the ball fields that provides access to the West Rim Trail. Beside the nice hike, there were 4 geocaches hidden along the trail that gave us another reason to explore here. While the trail generally follows along the top of the ravine, the tree cover is so great that there really aren’t good views of the creek below.

Mushrooms Along West Rim Trail

More Cool Mushrooms

The round trip hike was just under 2.5 miles but it was now lunchtime. There were some picnic tables near the parking lot so we took advantage of them to eat before driving to our next stop - the Iron Bridge. It’s not very far and in fact it could have been reached by just following the trails we were on in the opposite direction but it sounded like a rather steep trail so we took the easy approach and parked nearby the bridge. Built in 1912, we approached the bridge from the trail below. It stands about 50 feet above the creek and is impressive.

Beneath Iron Bridge

We really didn’t feel like continuing the trail along the creek but did want to see the bridge from above. We located a trail that got us up the steep ravine wall and onto the bridge. It is fairly wide and around 250 feet long. From the middle of the bridge there is a view out onto the lake.

Atop Iron Bridge

View from Bridge

We wandered around Bayfield some more before heading back south. We stopped at a trail that is just across the road from the hatchery to get a couple more geocaches. It was a nice walk with some wooded sections as well as a long boardwalk out to the water. The one cache we found right along the shore hadn’t been found in over 2 years.

Beautiful B&B in Bayfield

Salmo Lake Trail Boardwalk

It was still fairly early so we head 8 miles south of camp to a rest area and visitor center we had seen on our drive yesterday. The Northern Great Lakes Visitor Center is quite an impressive building that looks to be new. It isn’t open every day so we couldn’t stop before but it looked interesting enough to come back for.

Northern Great Lakes Visitor Center

There are lots of displays and information about this region. Maybe the neatest thing about this building is the upper level which has an outdoor walkway allowing a nice 360 degree view of the area.

Large Mural Inside Visitor Center

Panoramic View from Up High

We were close to the town of Ashland by this point and since it is located in a different county, we head into town to take a look and find a cache or two. We found an old locomotive sitting next to the old train depot building. We also made a short stop in Prentice Park. We were looking for a geocache hidden along a trail next to the small campground. As we were looking around, the camp host walked over to see what we were up to. We explained about the hidden container but he said that hasn’t been here in quite some time. We approached from a different direction and had no trouble making the find. I suspect he just wanted to shoe us away.

Old Locomotive on Display in Ashland

Historic Ashland Station

One of the hikes the woman at the visitor center suggested was the Lakeshore Trail starting at Meyers Beach. It sounds a lot like a hike we did in Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore a few hundred miles to the east in Michigan back in 2016. They both follow the edge of Lake Superior with views of all sorts of sea caves created by the constant wave action along the cliff. This trail is within a portion of the National Lakeshore but well northwest of camp - almost 25 miles away. She recommends going at least to the first sea cave viewing location 1.5 miles out but suggests it’s worth going to a spot just over 2 miles out. Beyond that, the trail continues to a primitive campsite about 5.5 miles out. Since we know we only need to hike 4 miles of this trail, we decide to pick a spot along the drive to check out and get a couple of geocaches since there are no physical containers along the trail we will be hiking.

We stop at Siskiwit Falls park near the town of Cornucopia. We had parked on the near side of the river only to realize our cache was on the opposite side. While the water wasn’t too deep, it was still better to walk back to the road, walk across the bridge and down the trail on the other side instead of getting wet boots before our long hike.

Falls on Siskiwit River

Mushrooms

Another Set of Falls

As we drove through the town of Cornucopia, we saw a small park with beach and stopped to check out the views and find another geocache. It was desolate when we stopped but pretty and probably gets busy in the summer months.

Cornucopia Beach

It was only a few more miles from here to the Meyers Beach parking area. It isn’t a huge parking lot with approximately 30 spots and it was fairly full for a Wednesday morning. There is a fee to park here but it’s only $5. The bigger issue is simply using the recreation.gov website to process the fee. This parking lot is also used for the people coming to check out the sea caves via kayak and apparently is even busy in the winter when the lake freezes along the shoreline and you can walk at water level instead of the ridge 20 feet up. That sounds neat but I’m not sure I want to be here in the February. The trail starts out with some boardwalks over seasonally wet areas and proceeds through the woods.

Foot Bridge Along Trail

It’s a pretty walk in the woods but it isn’t until we get to the first sea caves viewpoint that we see why the trail is so popular. Over the next half mile, there are multiple places to walk out near the edge of the cliff to get a better view of the caves below. One of the spots has a small natural bridge going over a cave that has been carved in a good 50 feet into the edge of the cliff. I suspect that years ago this bridge was actually used by visitors but now the park service has fenced off the area to keep all but the dumbest visitors out.

Natural Bridge Over Sea Cave

Opposite Side View

Small Tree Holds on to Cliff

At one of the viewpoints, we met three people sitting on a blanket with a bottle of wine, cheese and real wine glasses. We stopped to tell them how impressed we were with their hiking food and drink compared to our mushed PB&J sandwiches in our pack. We chatted for 20 minutes after we discovered they all used to live in Sheboygan which is where Chris has spent some of her childhood. One of them still lives there while the other two are from this area and were taking their friend out for a cultured hike. There was a lot of discussion about Sheboygan especially since we had just been there in mid July. It was a nice way to break up our hike today.

Sea Cave Pass Through

When we made it to the last documented sea caves viewpoint, we had our minimal lunch and enjoyed the view. There has been a fair number of other people out enjoying the trail but it didn’t look like anybody was going beyond this spot. It’s about 2 miles back to the car and the legs were feeling fresh enough to continue on. We knew the next denoted viewpoint was a place called Lunch Beach but it was a little over 2 miles away and likely won’t make it that far and back. The first thing we noticed is the trail is much less maintained and traveled. We start running into the constant feel of spider webs spanning the narrow trail - a sure fire way to know nobody has recently hiked this trail. It was pretty but it does run more inland so views of the lake are nonexistent but we did find some cool mushrooms along the way.

Large Mushroom Colony

We kept hoping that we would get to a point with a decent view of the lake but around the 3.75 mile point, we decide that we should really turn around since it was going to be nearly 6 o’clock by the time we make it back to the car and the sun sets around 7. This isn’t the type of trail that should be attempted in the dark or we might get an extra close view of a sea cave. We did spot an island off shore that I suspect is called Eagle Island which is the westernmost of the Apostle Islands but never saw additional sea caves.

Eagle Island Two Miles Offshore

We didn’t see any other hikers along this lonely section of the trail.  Once we got back to the sea cave viewpoints we did see a few kayakers out enjoying the reasonably calm waters and even saw some glide back into the caves.

Kayakers Paddle Calm Lake Superior Waters

We stopped to check out the various viewpoints on our way back. Our friends were no longer drinking wine at the one spot and when we finally made it back to the car, there were only a handful of cars in the lot. We ended up being out for nearly 5 hours hiking 7.6 miles in 4 hours. Definitely worth the effort but I don’t recommend going beyond the last viewpoint unless you’re simply seeking solitude.

Cool Carved Caves

Tree on the Edge

For the following day, we had a bit of an adventure planned. Madeline Island is the largest of the Apostle Islands but not part of the National Lakeshore. Only a few hundred people live there year round but a couple thousand are there over the summer. Since it’s in the shoulder season, it shouldn’t be too crowded and we want to explore the island on our bicycles. The ferry to the island runs hourly this time of year but more frequently during the busy summer months. We realized catching the two early departures was unlikely but we should be able to make it on time for the 9 AM. Round trip tickets for us and our bikes cost $62. Return trips leave the island on the half hour until 8:30 PM which will allow us way more time than we are planning for. The ferry boat is decent sized and our trip even included a normal semi truck with a flatbed trailer full of metal pipes. We walk on with about 10 other pedestrians and a full load of vehicles. It probably only took 20 minutes to go the 3 miles from the dock in Bayfield to the one in the town of La Point on the island.

Pilot House of Ferry

Underway

Approaching Madeline Island Dock

Madeline Island isn’t huge - about 12 miles long and 3 miles in wide. That also means there aren’t a whole lot of roads. We had roughly mapped out our intended route and planned on about 20 miles total. It would cover the bulk of the island while staying on paved roads. There were some gravel roads that would reach the northeastern tip of the island but that would have added another 8 miles of questionable roads. We start by going through the small town of La Pointe to Chebomnicon Bay Road and head due east. It was a pretty ride and we found the School of the Arts campus looked rather nice.

Welcome to Madeline Island

School of the Arts Campus

About 3 miles into the ride, we reached the bay and stopped to find a geocache and enjoy the views. There were only 2 caches along our planned route but if we went into Big Bay State Park, we would have more than a dozen more to look for. Of course the penalty was the added distance. There is only one road in and out of the park so all the miles we bike into the park, we will need to bike back. If we check out all the park that would add 7 or 8 miles. It was a beautiful day and it was only 10 AM so I didn’t have too hard of time to convince Chris to make the detour. When we got to the entrance station, nobody was there to collect an entrance fee and it wasn’t even clear if bikes would be charged so we head in to explore with our first stop being at some overlook.

Chebomnicon Bay

Overlook at Big Bay State Park

We continue on the park road past the campground. Yes, we could have brought the motorhome across the ferry and camped here! I’m not sure this island has that much going on for it to go to that trouble and expense. Our next stop is at the far end of the park at Big Bay Point. We lock up the bikes and go for a walk on some of the many trails in this part of the park. We also take advantage of a few of the geocaches hidden in this area. Back on the bikes, we head back out and stop at the picnic area near the campground. There was a great view of Big Bay and it was lunchtime so we could eat with a view.

At Big Bay Point

Lunch View

Coming out of the state park, we head north on Black Shanty Road for a mile before turning right onto Big Bay Road heading northeast. It was a bit of an uphill climb but we stopped after 2 miles to check out the town park. This was originally our planned lunch stop but was now only used for a breather and rest room stop.

Shelter at Big Bay Town Park

From the park, we continue northeast and find this section of the ride is very pretty. The road is about 60 feet above the surface of Lake Superior. There are some very nice homes along this road. Obviously most of the ones with lake frontage have some elaborate staircase down to a large dock. If you live here, you’ll likely need a boat more than a car. We had planned to turn around after a couple miles, but we were feeling good and had plenty of daylight left so we made it all the way to where the pavement ends and becomes gravel. From what we could see, this road was in decent enough shape to have been biked on, but we had probably already reached our halfway point in terms of energy so we turn back and follow Big Bay Road back into town by the dock.

View Along Big Bay Road

Beautiful Old Carriage

We made it back into town and probably could have caught the 3:30 ferry, but we felt we deserved ice cream so we head to the only ice cream shop in town. Of course, it was closed today. Had we been here over a weekend it may have been open. We were forced to get something from the small grocery store as a treat. This also meant we had nearly an hour to kill so we decided to to head for one last geocache on the south side of Madeline Island. It was only 2 miles each way but turned out to be the steepest hill we encountered all day. That’s not typically what you want at the end of a long bike ride. It also brought into question whether we would get there and back to the ferry on time for the next crossing. It was pretty along this section too and since it was a good downhill back into town, we made it in time to board the 4:30 boat.

Relaxing Swing Spot

View at Southwestern Corner of Island

What a day, we got in just a hair under 30 miles of biking and probably a mile or so of walking. While I was standing on the upper deck, I spotted some familiar faces in the small group of people below. It took me a minute to realize where I knew them from since I didn’t think we knew any locals. Then I remembered them as the group we talked to on our hike yesterday while they enjoyed their wine and cheese. I went over to surprise them and asked where they would be tomorrow so we could run into them for a third time. It’s a smaller world than you think. I’ve included an aerial view of the Apostle Islands with the blue line on the left being today’s bike ride. The red one will be tomorrow’s adventure.

Crossing Paths with Ferry Going to Island

Our Apostle Islands Adventures - Blue Line Bike Ride

The weather was to be sunny and in the mid sixties for the afternoon on our last full day in the Apostle Islands.  We likely could have found another hike in the area. In fact, there are several trails on Stockton Island - the second largest. It even has a visitor center but it was also closed for the season and getting a way out to it and back seemed like way too much effort. We had seen the Apostle Islands Cruise boat at the dock and thought it might be the best way for us to actually experience the islands even if just from the water. They offer a 2.5 hour cruise, 3 times a day - morning, mid afternoon and late afternoon. While the 4:30 departure would effectively be a sunset cruise at this time of year, we decided that being on Lake Superior at sunset might be fine in July but possibly too cold in late September. They had availability for the 1:15 cruise so we booked our tickets online - $116 for the two of us. There is not assigned seating and even though we thought we had arrived plenty early for boarding, there was a long line of people already queued up. They have two levels of seating. There’s roughly 80 seats on the upper deck that is wide open and maybe 120 or so on the lower deck enclosed with large windows. We were hoping to get on the open deck for better viewing and photography. We ended up on seats in the middle of the upper deck behind the pilot house facing the port side.

Long Line Waiting to Board Tour Boat

Great Lakes Research Vessel - Shenehon

On the Upper Deck

Known as the Grand Tour, this cruise was to cover around 55 miles and will pass by about half of the 22 Apostle Islands. Like many of these style of tours, there is a captain driving the boat; a docent describing the islands and their history as well as pointing out wildlife along the way; and a crew member working the concession stand.

Pair of Bald Eagles on Watch

When we first picked from the remaining seats, I was wishing we had arrived much earlier so I could have gotten a seat on either edge for best viewing. But after a half hour or so, it was clear that those people in the “good” seats were getting blasted by the wind since we were often traveling near 30 MPH between islands. Some of the people hadn’t read the instructions to prepares for temperatures 10 to 15 degrees lower than the mainland. I sort of had to laugh at the guy with shorts and a t-shirt.

Mini Island?

Other than Madeline Island, none of the others are inhabited but there are some back country campsites run by the National Park Service that can be reserved.

Camping Area on Manitou Island

Devils Island is the furthest one we go past about 19 crow miles north of the dock. There is a lighthouse on the northern tip. We were supposed to go completely around the island but the water must have been too rough on the eastern side so we did a detour to minimize the time spent with rough seas. I appreciate the effort by the captain and can say this it was an extremely smooth ride unlike the one we did in up in Maine a year ago where my stomach was unhappy with the wave action.

Kayakers Exploring Shoreline

Devils Island Lighthouse

Lightkeepers House on Devils Island

There were a few places where some pleasure boats and kayaks were exploring sea cave up close.

Arch

Very Interesting Sea Cave Section of Devils Island

Exploring Caves

We saw a huge freighter far out on the lake, likely heading to the port in Duluth. I didn’t have quite a long enough telephoto lens to make out its name.

Large Freighter Heading to Duluth

Goodbye Devils Island

Another lighthouse is on the western edge of Raspberry Island. This one appears to be in much nicer shape. It looks like smaller boats can be tied up at the dock to get a closer look.

Raspberry Island Light Station

Afternoon Sailing

Distant Apostle Islands

We made it back to the dock by 4 PM and according to my Garmin, we traveled just under 48 miles. It was a fun trip and worth the money. I was definitely glad we did this time slot since the people on the next trip are going to freeze!

Back at Bayfield

Pilot House of Tour Boat

Our Apostle Islands Adventures - Red Line Boat Trip

The Apostle Islands was a fun stop but likely would be better in the summer months. The caveat to that is we likely would not have found a first come first serve site in July so maybe our timing was okay? Next stop Chippewa Falls / Eau Claire closer to central Wisconsin.