Fun on Madeline Island

Our Madeline Island trip is over. We were somewhat underwhelmed by our experience. The Island has one town on it, La Pointe, that has a few restaurants, a laundromat (which I availed myself of), and not much else. Big Bay Town Park, where we stayed, has a nice picturesque beach, which we visited a few times, and a boardwalk that connects to the Big Bay State Park, which we never actually visited. The state park is much bigger, but allows only tent camping. I'm told there are lots of trails for hiking, but we never got up the gumption to do anything that strenuous.

The highlight of our trip was that my brother and his wife, George and Bev, joined us for the greater part of our stay. They recently purchased a travel trailer and were able to reserve the site just across the path from us. The four of us went on the Apostle Island "Grand Tour" out of Bayfield on Friday. It's a nice tour, The air was chilly, but the scenery was pretty-- lots of tree clad islands surrounded by water. Somehow we got the impression that the tour would be two hours long. It was four and a half hours long, and dark by the time we returned to Bayfield. We were starved, but worried we wouldn't be able to get a meal ordered and eaten before the last ferry back to Madeline Island at 8:30. Fortunately we found a wonderful restaurant, the Bayfield Inn, that fed us a delicious meal and had us on our way back to the ferry with time to spare. If you're ever there, be sure to try their seafood chowder.

All in all it was a great family visit, sharing meals and conversation, and sitting around the campfire dodging smoke and drinking coffee.

George and Bev headed home on Sunday morning, and Mark and I got in the car and drove around the whole of the Island. We were surprised at the seeming lack of wildlife. We saw one deer along the side of the road once, but no squirrels, no rabbits, barely any birds, and absolutely no "roadkill." The camp sight had a "bear activity" warning posted on their office door, so we were on the lookout for bears all the while we were there. And it's a good thing too, because we did finally see one.

After spending a full week at a rustic camp on Madeline Island, we decided that, however lovely it is (and it was lovely), that kind of camping is not for us-- at least not often. Our next stop was to be another state camp at the north end of Door County, and we cancelled it in favor of an Encore/Thousand Trails resort in Sturgeon Bay with the enticing name, Tranquil Timbers. Mark made the reservation for a full week, and we headed across Wisconsin by way of Rice Lake.

Why Rice Lake, you ask? It is the home of one of our favorite meat vendors, Northstar Bison, owned by our friend and fellow "foodie" Mary Graese with her husband and family. She was running a great sale on pastured pork and grass-fed ground beef, so we filled up our little freezer with meat.

After lunch we started for Sturgeon Bay. At about 4 p.m. we stopped for gas and thought about dry-docking somewhere until the next day. We SHOULD have done it. But we had a reservation at Tranquil Timbers arriving that day, so we pushed through. That was the second mistake we made. The first was not clearly understanding the hookups on the site we reserved.

How can that happen? (If you read our last blog post, I know you must be asking this question, since that is exactly what happened at the last site.)

Assumptions, that's how.

Never assume! Anything.

The site was labeled as having water and electric, but the only thing we could find (in the dark) was water. Exhausted and cranky, we parked, put out the bedroom slide and crashed for the night.

This is typically when the doubts hit. Is this lifestyle for us? Really? There are times when I question it. This week is one of them. In the dark, after a tiring day, when all you can think about is, "What was I thinking when I decided to sell my house and be a nomad?!"

But the light of a new day generally brings with it a new perspective, and in the morning, we walked over to the office and requested a sight with full hookups.

No can do, in short, was the response. But we did get a site with water AND electric, dumped our waste water, parked and leveled our rig, and put out the slides. It will be adequate for a few days. (Will post a few pictures next time.)

Now we're off to explore the famous Door County and hunt for cherry pie.

Tomorrow we'll sit down and fine tune our next six weeks...over pie and ice cream.