Thursday, July 26, 2012

Days 61 & 62 - Hayward, Wisconsin and the U.P.


Small pothole (bowling ball size)
Deep pothole (around 60 ft.)















Day 61 (July 25) - Today we left St. Paul, MN and drove to Hayward, WI to visit my cousin Kelly and family.  On our way we stopped at Interstate State Park (Interstate between Wisconsin and Minnesota).  This was an interesting park
Large pothole (about 6 ft across)
because it is right on the St. Croix River and it should be called "Pothole State Park" because it is full of glacial potholes.  This is where when the glaciers melted in the last ice age they drug some rocks under them which became tumbled around in one spot for a long time, so they formed really round rocks which tumbled around in the rock and formed these potholes with the smooth sides.  Some are very small (like bowling ball size) and others are huge.  We walked all over the park and saw all sorts of these potholes.  Then we drove on through Spooner and up to Hayward.

Street sign in Barronette, WI








On our way up we passed through a town called Barronette, WI.  David pulled over so we could take a picture of one of the street signs.  All of the street names were crazy fractions like this one:


Top row left to right:  Daniel, David, Aunt Diane, Cousin Kelly, Kelly's husband Rob, Cousin Matt, Uncle Andy; Bottom row:  Erin, Heidi, Rylie, Chase
Heidi and Kelly

I haven't seen Kelly and family since her wedding 8 years ago.  I was very happy to see their new house and see her kids.  Rylie - almost 7 and Chase - almost 4 were extremely cute and had fun playing with our kids.  For dinner Aunt Diane, Uncle Andy, and cousin Matt came over.  We had a typical Wisconsin dinner - grilled brats, onions, fruit salad, and potato salad.  It was a really good dinner and everyone enjoyed it.  The kids slept in the basement and David and I got Rylie's room.  Aunt Diane was a bit frazzled because she is preparing to host the Lumberjack World Championship in Hayward this coming weekend.  But, she brought all of the kids lumberjack t-shirts, so they really liked it (Moritz even wore his all the next day).
Kelly and Rob's house






The following morning we drove across the upper peninsula of Michigan, called the U.P. and the people who live there are known as the Yoopers.  We even stopped at a place called The Yooper Tourist Trap.  They had all sorts of funny stories about the Yoopers.  It was great!

Da Yoopers Tourist Trap, U.P. Michigan

As we continued to drive across the state we saw signs for pasties and we didn't know what that was (we thought it might be pasta mispelled).  So, when I had cell signal, I looked it up.  Turns out it is like a meat pie and that the Cornish miners brought the recipe over with them.  It has meat, potatoes, carrots, onions, and rutabagas in them.  So, we stopped at Muldune's Pasties in Munising, Michigan.  We even got an interesting Yooper magnet at the restaurant.  The pasty was pretty good!


Tourist Trip - Yooper humor
 After dinner we drove up to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore to look around and we got a picture of Munising Falls, but didn't get too much further in the park because it was already going to be 10:30 by the time we got all the way across the U.P. to St. Ignace to spend the night.

Michigan Lake















It is interesting to be this far north and right on the edge of Eastern time because it is 9:30 pm as I write this and it is just now dusk.  I'm guessing it won't be totally dark until 10 pm.
Munising Falls, MI

Typical Wisconsin farm

No comments:

Post a Comment