Day Twelve – Heading to the Northwoods

Crossing from Duluth, Minnesota, over into Superior, Wisconsin, not only brought us to another state, but to another set of experiences. We didn’t travel far to see some large historical homes facing the shore of Lake Superior.

How many of us have heard the famous lines from Henry Wadsworth’s poem “Song of Hiawatha”

By the shore of Gitchee Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water...

Although we had heard these lines many times, we did not know that it was the Ojibwe tribe name for Lake Superior. This was just the first bit of new information that we encountered during our brief travel through Wisconsin. Referring to the lake as a big sea, totally makes sense since it is gigantic.

We also learned that the northern portion of Wisconsin is called the “Northwoods”. Again, this is a totally logical name since there are miles and miles of forests comprised of oak, maple, and spruce. Another feature of this portion of Wisconsin are the thousands of lakes left behind by glaciers. Driving south there were often lakes of varying sizes to be seen on both sides of the highway. 


This is an outdoor enthusiast’s paradise. ATV crossings occur periodically, as depicted by a broad white band crossing the highway.




Further south we began to see low rolling fields with farmhouses dotting the landscape. It was interesting to see that most of the farms had multiple grain silos. What a picturesque drive southward.

The last oddity of Wisconsin, in our opinion, was that side roads and county roads weren’t numbered. Instead, they were named with letters. For example, there was an “F” road, a “WW” road that connected to a “WWW” road. It seems they ran through the alphabet and then started combining letters with things like county road “BE”. The truck’s poor GPS voice had a hard time when it came to saying these... for one turn she said, “In 1000 feet turn left onto road WWW”, but it sounded like (whhhh).


Driving into the town of Manitowoc, we traveled through residential neighborhoods with manicured lawns and large historic homes. We were looking for the ferry landing and wondered if we had made a wrong turn. Finally, around one corner we saw the fence surrounding the ferry landing! Since we arrived well before the boat was scheduled to leave, there was enough time to relax on the sandy beach of Lake Michigan. 

As we watched, a boat appeared seemingly out of the mists on the lake... but that is a story for another blog!

 

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