May 7&8 -- Beaver Bay MN to Sturgeon Bay WI (Days 82 & 83)

On Sunday, May 7th, we left Beaver Bay, MN, heading south along Lake Superior. As I mentioned, some of our travel will be an abbreviated portion of the Great Lakes Circle Tour, an auto route mapped along the five Great Lakes and the St Lawrence Seaway. We've previously driven the Canadian side of Lake Ontario (way back in the early 1980s before we had kids, on a return trip from Quebec City) so we're only going to drive along four of them, and then only partially.

After Beaver Bay came Duluth MN and Superior WI, sort of sister cities in a way, I guess since both are located at the southern tip of Lake Superior. We rolled around and drove up the southern shore of Lake Superior , briefly crossing into Michigan at Ironwood (a quick stop at a McDonald's), then south through central Wisconsin to Wausau, where we spent the night.

On Monday the 8th, we headed east to Green Bay and then up to Door County peninsula along Lake Michigan (suggested by our neighbors, John & Lois). Door County is referred to as the "Cape Cod of the Midwest".  We've never been to Cape Cod so we can't do an honest comparison but the peninsula is a collection of mainly small villages (Sturgeon Bay is the largest community on the peninsula). It's a vacationer/tourist haven - the county's population is about 28,000 but swells greatly between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Since we're still pre-season, it's pretty quiet here and a lot of places (hotels, motels, restaurants, etc) haven't yet opened for the season - petty much par for our travel.

We drove through their state park (jewel of the peninsula according to one local we spoke with) which is on the bay side of the peninsula and checked out the lighthouse there, Eagle Bluff Lighthouse.

Eagle Bluff Lighthouse,

Peninsula St Park

From there we drove across to the lakeside and got our first real look at Lake Michigan as the Cana Island Lighthouse. We toured this lighthouse which is still in operation. The peninsula had at least 10 operating lighthouses at one time in recognition of the shallow and rocky shoals surrounding it. It's got a history of shipwrecks along both the lake and bay shores.

Beware if you travel to the peninsula in early-to-mid May. This is apparently the time of year when the "may flies" hatch along the lakeshore and there were actually CLOUDS of the little black buggers swarming on both the bay and lake sides. These aren't anything like the mayflies we're accustomed to along the Susquehanna. "Ours" typically only come out at night while these were swarming in clouds in the middle of the afternoon. "Ours" are whitish, almost translucent while theirs were black through & through. The only similarity is that neither bit. Still, I think I'd take our to theirs any time.

Bay View, Peninsula St Park
(those black marks are the "mayflies"!!)

Tonight we're staying in Sturgeon Bay. In the morning, we're planning to pack up and head south along the lake ending up somewhere around Chicago.

That's all for now ..... Dan