The Upper Mid-West

It’s been a month since our last blog post. As our second year on the road slowly winds down, it’s interesting to reflect on our time on the road. During our first few months out it seemed like we posted a blog from each stop. Now, we group many stops into a single post. We were lucky enough to visit many National Parks this summer and that all ended with our last post on Theodore Roosevelt National Park. As a result, things have been quieter and more laid back this past month as we added several more states to our map.

Minnesota

We spent a week in Minnesota, split between a very nice private campground in the Detroit Lakes area and a Core of Engineers (COE) campground on Sandy Lake. The highlight of our stay in Country Campground was a day trip to Itasca State Park and the headwaters of the Mississippi River. We heard about this state park from our friends that we visited in Bismarck, ND. We took the bikes to the park and rode the wonderful paved trail that traverses the park. It was a gorgeous day and we can now say we walked across the Mississippi River on a log!

The Sandy Lake COE was a nice quiet campground but you need to make sure you know which entrance to take to get to your campsite. This advice is from experience. Luckily the boat ramp near the dead end we hit was large enough for us to back down and turn around. Our site was a couple hundred yards from the lake and we got the kayak out for a nice trip through the lily pads and out into the lake. The water wasn’t quite as clear as what we experienced in Montana, but we had a nice time paddling and floating around on Sandy Lake.

Wisconsin

Once we entered Wisconsin, we started to follow in the footsteps of our friends, John and Tina. They spent the 4th of July in a small municipal RV park in Ashland and told us how wonderful it was so we decided to do the same. This park is a first come-first serve park and we hoped that arriving on a Wednesday at mid-day would increase our odds of getting a site. Lucky for us, John and Tina became friends with the camp host and informed him of our pending arrival. Not only did we get a site, the host helped us upgrade to a large pull through along the shore of Lake Superior.

Ashland was a nice town and we enjoyed a relaxing week on the southern shore of the lake. We did a lot of bike riding and running while we were there along with a whole lot of nothing. We walked into town one afternoon for dinner at South Shore Brewery for our only meal out in the past month. Dan really needs to learn that as much as he likes fried food, it just doesn’t like him as much anymore.

After a week in the upper peninsula of Michigan (see below), we returned to Wisconsin to spend a weekend in The Dells and a visit with Dan’s brother, John. To break up the trip from Michigan to The Dells, we spent a night at an interesting Harvest Host winery & meadery in Rushford, WI. The owners purchased an abandoned elementary school along with several acres of land and have converted into their business. It was an eerie feeling walking into the place and heading down the hall to find out which “classroom” the tasting room was in.

The next day we pulled into the KOA around 1:00 PM and John arrived right behinds us. This gave him the opportunity to see the setup process as we unhooked and opened up the rig. After a brief visit and the requisite setup beer, the boys headed out to play a round of golf while Amy had a nice relaxing time alone watching the KOA fill up for the weekend. Dan hadn’t golfed in three years and John golfs several times a week so there was much sibling rivalry happening and they had a great time on the cloudless afternoon.

Michigan’s Upper Peninsula

Our original plans did not include a stop in Michigan but we decided to once again follow John and Tina’s lead and booked a week at municipal park in Iron River, MI. This park also had a bike trail that went right through the park so we had plenty of opportunity for exercise. A couple long bike rides and a few morning runs kept us in shape while we were there.

We made a couple of side trips while staying in Iron River. One afternoon, we drove to Bond Falls to take some pictures and enjoy the scenery. What was strange was we that drove northwest to get to the falls and in doing, so we crossed from central time into eastern time. We have since been told that the timezone for the upper peninsula is such that any county that touches Wisconsin is in central time and those that don’t are in eastern time.

Dan celebrated his birthday while we were in Iron River so we had to take a short drive to a small town called Alpha to visit the nearest craft brewery. The brewery claims that Alpha is the smallest town in the country that has a brewery. The beer was pretty good but you could only order it in a pitcher or 1/2 pitcher. No pints and no flights and seating was outside with lots of social distancing as tables were at least 10 feet apart or more. The 1/2 pitcher is 2 glasses and because it was Dan’s birthday, he got to pick the beer. He picked wisely as we both enjoyed what we had.

Illinois and The Mississippi River

We left The Dells in Wisconsin and moved to Thomson Causeway Recreation Area COE on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River. We were able to reserve ourselves a campsite for the week that backed right up to the river. We quickly noticed that the river is a bit wider here than it was in Itasca State Park in Minnesota. The first couple hundred yards of the river from our site was dense lily pads. Dan thought it would be cool to get some drone footage flying low near the lily pads but quickly learned that the dozens of birds nesting in there did not think it was cool.

We had our August mail sent to the Fulton, IL, about 8 miles to the south of the campground. The Great River Bike Trail runs through part of the park and goes into Fulton so, for the first time, we rode our bikes to get our mail. As we approached the town of Fulton, a section of the trail was blocked by fallen trees. We also met several dump trucks hauling away branches and logs from around town. Fulton was on the edges of the big windstorm that had devastated Iowa a week earlier.

After getting our mail, we rode around town a bit and continued on the bike trail south for a few miles. A few days later we took the bike trail north towards Savanna. That section of trail was mostly along roads and passed right next to a federal prison. The best section of the trail was definitely between the campground and Fulton to the south.

We did a lot of walking and a run or two in addition to the bike rides. It was a very relaxing time in the campground that was mostly empty except for Friday and Saturday, when every site was occupied. It is pretty interesting, as a full-time RVer, to observer the weekend warrior migration. The KOA at The Dells was extremely crowded and loud on Saturday and by the time we left on Monday, it was less than half full. Our loop at the COE on the Mississippi was completely full on Saturday and when we pulled out on Monday, only two sites remained occupied.

We are now back in Michigan just north of Indiana and have caught up with John and Tina. We will spend a week with them, including this weekend, before we part ways again. We will have service done on the RV at the Morryde factory and then head to Rochester. We plan to use Harvest Hosts to get us through the last weekend of the summer before landing in Holley on Labor Day. We hope to see as many of our friends as we can while in Rochester but the current conditions may limit that to some extent.