Wednesday, August 25, 2010

June 15, 2010 - Lake Superior Circle Tour Part 3

I was printing some stuff off my netbook last night and realized I'd never printed off the word version of the circle tour that I missed on publishing (the night we didn't have wifi.) So printed it and here it is.

Today started out to be a bit cloudier than we had been led to believe. Oh well, whatcha gonna do? We knew before we left the Thunder Bay area, we wanted to go check out Kakabeka Falls, just north of the city. We were glad we went, the falls were great! When we arrived, we found a self-service permit kiosk. For a two hour stay in the park it was $5 Canadian. Luckily I had enough Canadian quarters to buy the permit. We could have probably gotten away without paying but why take the chance? Neglected to mention that my coin purse full of Canadian change that Steve had saved was our only Canadian money on the trip. Otherwise we just used our credit cards (we pay them off every month.) Weird not to have any Canadian currency this time around. Note on 8/25: we did end up having to pay foreign transaction fees so in retrospect it might have been a better idea to changed some money after all....

After Kakabeka Falls (where I completed an earthcache) we went on down Hwy 61 to the border. Pulled out our passports, gave them to the US Border Patrol agent, and he said he'd have to confiscate our bike. After a long pause, he added "to take it for a spin." Ha-ha. This crossing was a lot easier (and less time, too) than crossing into Canada at Sault Ste. Marie. Stopped in Grand Marais, Minnesota for lunch - found the Blue Water Cafe in this little tourist town and had a nice meal. There was a really neat painting of the entire Lake Superior region on the wall, tried to get a picture but it wasn't straight on as there were people eating in front of it.

Continued on and stopped for a cache in Luttsen - a travel bug hotel where I left three travelers and picked up the only one there. Continued on and made our next stop at Gooseberry Falls State Park, where I'd heard (via geocaching, of course) that there were three very nice falls. There certainly were - and the set up was such that you could get pretty close to them. Lots of people out there on the rocks taking pictures. I was able to pick up another earthcache as well as a virtual here. So four caches for the day, not bad when you're with a muggle.

Continued down Hwy 61 which followed the coastline of Lake Superior. It had become more drizzly by now, but still manageable. We headed for Duluth, knowing we'd have to pick up the interstate to get over to US 2 in Wisconsin. Well, we found it, and found massive slow downs because of construction AND rush hour traffic. Not good, but we survived. Headed across the bridge to Wisconsin, pretty foggy and couldn't even see the water. Finally on US 2, heading across most of Wisconsin, stopping for the night in Ashland.

Went to a Super 8 only to find out it cost too many of our "points" to get for free, and was out of Steve's price range for not free. So we ended up at a pretty small family motel at about $25 less than the Super 8. No wireless so I'm saving this to Word (see Mom, I listened. 8/25 note: but it didn't work out cutting and pasting, not sure why.) We ate dinner at Country Kitchen and I walked across the street from the motel to WalMart for travel snacks while Steve cleaned the bike. We're on the lake so saw somewhat of a sunset, the clouds prevented a more spectacular one. Right now Steve is just waking up so we'll get going. Weather doesn't look too promising today either but we'll see. It is what it is. Today we'll get back into Michigan and I can hopefully pick up some of my missing counties to complete the Michigan 83 county challenge.

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