Apostle Islands National Seashore

Monday June 30 and Tuesday July 1, 2014
Apostle Islands Area Campground
Bayfield, Wisconsin

 **This is the second post I’ve put up today in an effort to get closer to “real time”.  If you have not seen the blog about our last fine day in Copper Harbor Michigan, you can read it here.

 

MONDAY

This morning we pulled out of Copper Harbor, where we have a wonderful time, and started the 218 mile drive to Bayfield Wisconsin and the Apostle Islands National Seashore   Nina, of Wheeling It, recently gave me some good advice about holidays.  She said for holidays just book a private campground and leave the state and national parks to the masses.   It will be quieter in a private park.   I think it’s sound advice and am following it.

We made only one stop, for gas at the Bad River Indians Reservation.  Today regular gas was $3.679.  We find that we are still leaking coolant so that is a priority to figure out while we are in Bayfield. 

There are 4 campgrounds in the Bayfield area if you don’t include Big Bay State Park on Madeline Island.  We had been to Madeline before and found it to be just too touristy for our liking and the ferry is quite expensive so coming back and forth to the mainland to do other things would make no sense. 

In Bayfield, one of the 4 campgrounds was on the Red Cliff Ojibwe Indian reservation about 5 miles north of town.  $35 for full hook ups.  Unfortunately I didn’t know about this one until I got here.  I might well have chosen it.  Although I’ll have to reserve judgment until we see it.  They are having their annual Pow Wow this week-end so I’ll check it out then.  The Pow Wow is another reason I didn’t want to be on Madeline Island.

 

We are paying $34 a night for water, electric, and  a difficult dump station at Apostle Islands National Seashore.  It’s a mom and pop place with a lot of rules and rather condescending road signs.

It has reasonably level sites, pay showers $1.50 and wifi  IF your site is close enough to get it which ours is not but you pay the same rate whether you can use it or not.  We were told when we checked in we probably wouldn’t be able to use it.   No big deal since we’ve found that wifi in campgrounds is iffy at best.  Both our verizon hotspot and cell phone work well here.  I chose this campground site unseen because I wanted to be close to town.  We need to make a grocery run and have a number of projects that may require a hardware and/or auto parts store connection including the coolant problem.. I doubt I would choose it again even though it clearly has many sites filled.  The owner has a bit of an “attitude” IMO. 

 

 

There is  another park just outside of town, the town park Dalrymple.   It has electric only 20/30 volts, vault toilets, no showers, no dump station and no reservations.  Sites are $20.  They do have 4 potable water locations and are on the water. 
I didn’t want to have to deal with the where to dump question.

So far, the last possibility is the one I actually like the best, Little Sand Bay is 8 miles from town and on the water.  It is a sweet campground and a wonderful place to stay if you are just going to chill and don’t mind the 14 mile round trip to get pretty much anywhere or need wifi or cell phone.  Neither works there.  But in terms of ambiance, it is my kind of place for sure.

 

After we get Winnona down the steep hill around a curve on the campground’s gravel road and over the very deep speed bumps, we back her in, get set up and go into town to the Apostle Islands Visitor Center to get information in order to plan our time here. 

The visitor center is located in the old Court House a venerable looking building.  They have a nice introductory film which got cut off at the 2 minutes to the end point when the power went out.  Oh well…………

 

The National Seashore is the areas in dark blue. There is only one section on the mainland.  There are 22 Apostle Islands and all are only accessible by boat.  We have kayaks BUT our kayaks are not Great Lakes or Ocean kayaks which are a must in both places.  Ours are flat bottom lakes, rivers, streams, wetlands kayaks.   So if we want to do any hiking on the islands or see the sea caves, we will have to rent sea kayaks or take a tour.

We learn that Apostle Islands National Lakeshore contains more historic light stations than any other national park area.  Constructed between 1857 and 1891, they were tended by light keepers for over a century.  They are now automated of course.  There goes the career of Light Keeper.   These two are only visible from a boat since they are all on the islands.

 

 

 

Armed with our information we go down into the little town of Bayfield year round population 488.  The main street, Rittenhouse runs right down into the bay.  The town looks like they make all their income during the two months of summer from the tourists.  The town is cute although one of the major cross streets is all torn up with road work so it isn’t as cute as it might be just now.

 

 

 

We do find the necessary things though, the grocery which had a pretty sad looking produce section, the ice cream shop which had some great looking flavors and the bookstore which also looked like a place I want to check out.  

We met what I guess is the town bird in the park.  He just walked up and posed for quite some time.  He seemed to think we should take his picture so David did.  He was pecking around in the grass between posings though.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TUESDAY 

 

Today is one of those regular chores day.  It’s time to make some plans and go to the grocery.  For the latter we drive back south to Ashland in order to shop at their co-op to get organic produce, unsweetened almond milk and many foods we buy in bulk. They have a really nice mural in their window.

Ashland is a bigger town than Bayfield and thus has more services.  David also needed an auto parts store and at 23 miles away from the campground, Ashland had the closest one.   This is pretty seriously small town North Coast America.

 

 

When we return, David checks out all the hoses, works on the coolant leak problem and looks over the visitor center materials to see what we might want to include in our stay here.  

I work on the blog and since we no longer have any set plans or reservations we have no next stop planned.   I investigate the possibilities of going to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area and/or Voyageurs National Park.  Both park websites have high water and flooding alerts so I’m not sure that will happen.  We may just go straight on to Itasca and straddle the Mississippi River.

But today’s highlight was that my  camera came out of the rice bag and although a little bit cranky appears to be working fine.  What a relief.  Tomorrow I’m back to too many photographs.  We have a great hike planned.