Road Trip Two
Three Days and Two Nights in Summer of 2016
I wanted to see waterfalls. Why, I don’t know, since they sort of start to look the same in pictures, but Wisconsin is known for having many and it wasn’t too far away. Plus, we could visit Upper Peninsula Michigan while we were in the neighborhood!
Day One
I had planned to camp at Copper Falls State Park and we’d hunt waterfalls from there. Unfortunately, Mother Nature had other plans, as she often does. We were 100 miles into Minnesota when we got a call from my dad saying that where we were headed had received a LOT of rain overnight, and that our state park destination was now under water and closed! We pulled over to study the map and look for somewhere else to go. The thought had crossed my mind that perhaps we should just scrap the Wisconsin plan and head for the Black Hills instead, but we decided to make the best of it and continued on. I thought I wanted to add Michigan to my list of states and we could still go there.
I hadn’t visited Stillwater, MN in many years, so we stopped there to wander through their cute little shops downtown. It was pretty much how I remembered it and didn’t take us long to see everything we needed to see while stretching our legs.
Back on the road, we headed to Wasau, Wisconsin for the night. I had earned a free night with Americinn that I planned to use sometime during this trip. Since we didn’t have a campsite anymore, we used up the free hotel night instead. The next morning, we ate our hotel waffles, took along the goodie bag of treats they had given us, and we were on our way to go find…something.
Day Two
Since anything in the direction of Lake Superior was out, as far as camping and waterfall hunting went, we decided to go find a lighthouse. The closest one of those was in Menominee, Michigan, which was the opposite direction from the flooding. The drive started off with farmland and this yard full of garden art.
The farmland was short-lived and the scenery quickly turned into trees, trees, and more trees. My dad never took us to Wisconsin as kids because he said it has too many trees. I quickly understood my dad’s aversion to driving through trees. You don’t get to see anything else! I’m sure they are gorgeous when the leaves turn colors in the fall!
Thankfully, the tree-lined drive was short-lived and we made it to the lighthouse we came to see. The Menominee North Pier Lighthouse is one of many along the shores of Green Bay.
She SO wanted to walk out to the lighthouse at the end of that very long patch of concrete surrounded by water on both sides. I couldn’t do it. This was as far as I got and I could not go any further. The feeling of panic had set in several yards back and my imagination had taken over from there. None of us knew how to swim. What if we fell off of this thing somehow? What if the teens who were leaping off the end somehow bumped one of us into the water? How would we get out of there alive? It was a completely irrational fear, considering we were on solid concrete that was probably wide enough to drive a car on, with room to spare. I don’t know how wide it was, but clearly, not wide enough! The water was slapping against the concrete and I couldn’t move. Who knows how deep it was? I couldn’t let her go all the way out there on her own if I wasn’t going to be able to make it there myself. Thankfully, she stopped.
I had walked further than I wanted to already. We were out past this this tower, and what felt like a very long way from solid ground. The view of the lighthouse from there was stunning, though. Standing still felt okay to me, so I took a few photos before heading back to dry land. I will never forget the feeling of being surrounded by water…LOTS and LOTS of water.
I’m not normally a “selfie” person but I think this one shows the joy and relief I felt in getting back to land. Time to move on!
As we were leaving the area where the lighthouse was located, Joey spotted these ships in the river as we were going over a bridge. We couldn’t see much while moving, and with the bridge rails in the way, so I quickly found a spot across from them to get a closer look. I’m not sure what they were doing with the ships, but they were pretty neat to see! Now, it was really time to move on and we headed out of Menominee on the road along Green Bay, hoping to see more pretty views of the water, but we were quickly back into the trees.
Our next stop was Piers Gorge, near Norway, Michigan. There was a 1.5 mile trail along the Menominee River and we were ready for a hike! Upon arrival, we parked and walked over to pay the man in the booth. He seemed a little creepy, but there were other cars parked in the parking lot so we paid and put the permit in the window.
The whole area was gorgeous! We never saw anyone else on the trail, but we did see some folks who were whitewater rafting on the river. They were fun to watch. I wish I had photos of them, but at the time, I never photographed people I didn’t know.
When we arrived back at the parking lot, nobody else was around, not even the creepy man in the fee booth. I was thankful that it was not just us and him, but I remember feeling like we were not alone, even though we were the only ones there. It was just after 5pm, and still broad daylight, so I’m not sure why it felt that way, but it did. We stopped in Norway, Michigan for a restroom break and to see if we could find a little ice cream for an afternoon snack. Our weird experiences continued when the folks in the convenience store all stared at us while we were inside. I started to feel more than a little paranoid by the two strange experiences. First the creepy man at the gorge and now creepy people staring at us in a convenience store? We needed a place to camp for the night and it was not going to be in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan! I’ve traveled many miles since I was a kid and have never felt so out of place or unwelcome anywhere before. Maybe they just hadn’t seen a mom and a couple of teenagers from South Dakota before?
I had thought we could camp in Michigan, and I’m sure I had somewhere in mind at the time, but I don’t remember anymore where that was. We decided to head back to Wisconsin. I knew from researching the trip, that there was a state park called Council Grounds State Park a couple hours away. Since it was just after 5pm at that point, we had plenty of time to get there, so we stopped at two waterfalls along the way: Long Slide Falls and 18 Foot Falls.
The first was Long Slide Falls, which one might assume was named after the path to get down to the falls, since it looked like you might just slide right down. The short, steep trek was worth the effort to see this beautiful waterfall!
I am not one of those photographers who makes their waterfall photos look like a white blur. I love to see the water stopped in time, splashing over the edges of the rocks. I could’ve taken photos all evening. Joey sat mesmerized by the tumbling water, while Megan played daredevil, climbing up the rocks with her camera.
I don’t seem to have any photos of 18 Foot Falls, but I suspect that by the time we arrived there, it was not bright enough to get anything worth sharing. After that, we still needed to drive another two hours to get to our campground. We made it just before the ranger was ready to leave for the night and we set up our tent in the dark. Again. The ranger was very nice and the whole place felt safe, with other families camping nearby. Thankfully, we woke up to a very pretty park!
Day Three
After our busy day the day before, we decided it was time to go home. Our first stop of the day was a cheese factory. We were in Wisconsin, after all. Then we stopped at the Mall of America to visit The LEGO Store and look around at the other shops. It had been a while since we had visited the MOA, but nothing much had changed, other than the addition of an L. L. Bean store, which is where we found the giant boot.
Overall, it was a good trip. It’s not easy to change plans on the fly and make it all work out, at least not back then. If I had to do it over, I’m not sure that I would’ve switched to the Black Hills like I had considered doing when our plans went awry. I probably still would’ve went to Wisconsin, but I wish I had continued up the edge of Green Bay and visited Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. We were only two hours from there when we were in Menominee and we probably could’ve found somewhere to camp near there. I had considered it for the trip when I was initially planning it, so I’m not sure why I didn’t switch to there when Copper Falls was flooded out. As usual, hindsight is 20/20.
We spent time in Wisconsin and Michigan, which I doubt we’ll do again. We added another state where we’ve pitched our tent, and we can legitimately say we spent some time exploring a bit of both states. We saw a lighthouse, which was something Megan had never seen before. We checked waterfall hunting off our list. We made memories!