Trip to Wisconsin

How would you like to take on the above gang of conquistadors? Kenny, Beth, and I donned some replica 16th-Century Spanish armor and weapons at Parkin Archeological State Park in central Arkansas at the very beginning of our recently completed trip to Wisconsin. We stopped here on our first day--this mound site is thought to be documented by the chroniclers of Hernando de Soto during their travels in 1541-1542 in Arkansas (and thus became the first Europeans to visit the area).

Just as the Spanish embarked on an epic journey, we too felt this was quite a trip--fun yet exhausting. We stopped for the night at a hotel in Illinois, and then departed for Kewaunee, Wisconsin on the next day. Kewaunee is a small town on the shores of Lake Michigan east of Green Bay where my brother Bob stores his cabin cruiser boat at a private marina. Bob talked us into visiting him there on our first weekend north, and this "mini-trip" turned into quite an adventure itself... Below, lil' Stephen gets his feet sandy near the large waters of Lake Michigan:

We splashed around a bit, but the threat of some stormy weather and murky, algae-filled waters kept us from too much swimming. We decided to take a chance on the weather that same evening and drive over an hour north of Kewaunee so the kids could enjoy a special treat--watching a movie at a drive-in movie theater! Below, Stephen and Beth snuggled in with their Uncle John (aka Jojo) before watching Toy Story III:

I had been to a few drive-in movies some years ago, but it turns out that a number of the other adults with us hadn't, including Jojo and my brother Bill. Needless to say, we got in really late at night, so when I arose early the next morning, I took a few pictures of our campsite at the marina:

The small orange and white tent behind John's maroon colored car is where Bill slept, while Bragg Family South stayed in our pop-up trailer in the background. Our dad stayed in a separate tent with Jojo, and Bob stayed on his boat. Below is a picture of the pretty little town of Kewaunee, as seen from the marina:

We started the next day (Sunday) with a drive up the Door Peninsula, which is a major tourist destination. Part way up, we stopped at a cherry orchard that also had a winery and a gift shop, and purchased some local wares. Below, Uncle Bob shows Beth what kind of cherries to pick:

We continued traveling further north, stopping in the little town of Fish Creek for lunch and Dad had an inspiration to buy a whirly-gig-type tractor for his sister Irma. Below is a picture of Dad setting off for the kite shop in which he found his objective:

We then drove into Peninsula State Park, which has a number of spectacular beaches and cliffs to survey the landscape. In the rogues gallery below, we have (from left to right): John, Bob, Bill, me (with Beth), Kenny, and Dad:

We decided to try to get to the beaches at Whitefish Dunes State Park, which was about 30 miles away, but a thunderstorm intervened, closing the beach. As we drove back towards Kewaunee, we took a detour through downtown Sturgeon Bay to check out the shipyards. In the process, we got a close-up view of a lift bridge opening to allow two large sailboats to pass underneath:

The red Jeep Cherokee in front of us is my brother Bob's car. We cooked dinner at the campsite that night, and enjoyed our meal, even though the rains had picked up. We turned in rather early that evening, and the next morning Dad and Bill packed up to return him to a bus stop near Wausau for his ride back to Minnesota (brother John had returned to Madison the night before). We packed our camper, and Hope and the kids drove straight to Rhinelander, while Bob and I went to Cathedral of the Pines in the Nicolet National Forest so I could measure some old-growth eastern white pines >150 feet tall:

This stand, which is well-marked and easy to get to, also has a great blue heron rookery in the tall pines, which makes for a very loud experience when the chicks are freshly hatched! We arrived in Rhinelander by Monday evening. The next day, my sister Lisa and her brood (plus her youngest step-son David) arrived. Below, Kenny, Beth, and Stephen joined cousins Michael and Emma in playing in the sand:

The first day of their arrival proved quite stormy, but the next was equally lovely and warm, so we went to a local beach (Buck Lake) for an afternoon of swimming and fun:

Our kids love their cousins, and even though they don't get to see much of their cousin David, they still had a lot of fun. Below, Stephen and David started digging a deep hole in the sand at the beach:

which proved to be deep enough to bury Emma up to her neck:

Beth and Stephen also had fun getting buried in the warm sand. Unlike last year's trip to Wisconsin, which was dominated by cool, rainy weather, we mostly had warm, sunny days. Recent rains helped relieve the drought that they've been having in northern Wisconsin, but it also brought out a bumper crop of mosquitoes! After a warm afternoon of swimming, lil' cousin Leila enjoyed an ice cream cone at a local ice cream parlor in downtown Rhinelander:

We had a couple enjoyable days with Lisa and her kids, with plenty of walks around the woods and a campfire on Thursday evening. Friday morning, Lisa and family headed back to their home, and we packed up for our second mini-trip--a weekend in the Keweenaw Peninsula of Michigan with our friends the Bennetts. Below is a picture of the windy day we had on the drive along Lake Superior to our campsite:

We stayed at Fort Wilkins State Park, from which we enjoyed a very scenic sunset along a cobble beach the first night:

The next day we took the Bennetts to some of our favorite haunts in the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula (both Hope and I attended Michigan Technological University in Houghton, which is about an hour southwest of here). This included Brockway Mountain Drive, from which Stephen had a good view of the landscapes:

After visiting a historic lighthouse and museum in Eagle Harbor, we ate lunch along another beautiful cobble beach near Copper Harbor:

We spent some time searching the beach for pretty rocks before we headed back to Fort Wilkins. We still had the rest of a lovely afternoon to enjoy, so we went to visit the historic buildings of the Fort. Fort Wilkins was built around 1844 to help protect the growing copper mining industry in this part of Michigan, and was manned by the US Army until the 1870s, when it was deemed no longer needed. They have done a wonderful job of preserving the old buildings:

and they have a number of interpreters in period costumes to help you appreciate life during this period. We spent a couple hours visiting the site before we returned for another dinner at our campsite:

In the picture above, I'm getting our kids to eat, while my buddy Brian and his son David (in blue shirt, facing away from the camera) eat their supper. Our kids had fun playing at the campsite, and in the frequent trips we made to the lake shore to find rocks. We packed up our camp Sunday morning and parted ways with the Bennetts--they were headed one way to meet up with some other friends of theirs at a campsite in a different part of the UP, and we were headed back through Houghton (past the Michigan Tech campus and Ford Forestry Center, for nostalgia's sake). On our way south, we stopped in Calumet to let Kenny and Beth complete the Junior Ranger program at the Keweenaw Historic National Park, which features exhibits on the copper mining industry of years gone by. Below, Hope and the kids pose by a large piece of "float" copper--a super-sized nugget of almost pure copper that was the primary target of the early miners (even going back thousands of years to prehistoric Indians):

Some of this native copper is thought to have been traded far south of Michigan--a small piece of flattened copper was uncovered in one of the trenches we were digging this summer at Toltec Mounds State Park here in Arkansas! After we returned to Rhinelander, I took Kenny and Stephen fishing at the nearby Shepard Lake. The picture below shows a happy Kenny, proud captor of his first largemouth bass:

Yes, that small fish dangling of the end of his pole is about an 8-inch long bass that we returned to the lake. The next day (Tuesday) I joined my buddy Kevin in fishing a lake near his parents' home. I did not manage to land any fish, but Kevin caught about a half-dozen bass, one or two that probably weighed about a couple pounds. On Wednesday, my brother Bob (he had rejoined us in Rhinelander, and worked on his car shed with Dad most of the time) and I took the afternoon off to canoe the Eagle River about a half-hour from Mom and Dad's home. Below is a picture of this tranquil stretch of the river:

Even though it is called "Eagle River" we really on saw one eagle, but several herons. After finishing our paddle, we drove to a part of the Nicolet National Forest that had an easy walking access to a reach of the Eagle River further upstream. We wanted to check it out for the possibility of future canoeing adventures. This section of the river turned out to be too shallow and rocky for canoeing, but it was a very pretty stream nevertheless:

That evening, we returned to an early birthday party for Bob and Stephen (who is born the day after Bob). Stephen worked hard to blow out his three candles:

and everybody enjoyed the cake Hope had made. Bob headed back to Madison early Thursday morning, and we spent most of this rainy day packing our truck and pop-up for the return trip home. Mom also spent some time with Hope and older kids playing "trionimos" (three sided dominos):

We left for Monticello Friday morning, arriving after a relatively uneventful drive by dinner time on Saturday. We got mostly unpacked yesterday, and spent some time getting our cats reacquainted with us. Today, we continued to adjust to the heat and humidity of the South (its been 95+ degrees here for a while) and are thinking about our next big trip which starts at the end of this week. I actually leave tomorrow afternoon for a quick overnight trip to Little Rock for business...Whew!!