Wisconsin - Day 1 - getting here

Council Grounds State Park, Merrill near Wausau
Thursday, 1 August 2019

When the dogs and I were out for our earliest morning walk, both yesterday and today, I could see so many stars that I had trouble figuring out the constellations - I'm so used to seeing only the brightest stars that all the others I could see here complicated what I thought I knew.  I even saw part of the Milky Way.  What I had trouble finding, though, were the dippers - they're low enough in the sky at this time of year for the trees to get in the way of my view.  Silly trees.

On the second early walk this morning, a heron flew directly overhead.  That was pretty neat.

today's route

I knew this might be a rough day, but I didn't anticipate just how rough it was.  I started out with only about 4 hours of sleep, after 6 the night before and 4 the night before that - a serious deficit for me.

Then when I stopped to empty the sewage tanks before we left the campground, I failed to attach the hose carefully enough and sewage from the blackwater tank drained on the ground before I stopped it - only a little, but even a little is too much.  So I had to add the cleanup process to what would ordinarily have taken me only 10 minutes.

On the road in Michigan
I hadn't gone far when I passed a sign for the Little Brothers - Friends of the Elderly.  I'd never heard of this group and thought it sounded a little fishy so I looked it up.  littlebrothers.org/  I'm still not sure it's not a scam, but if I lived where one of its chapters is, I think I'd check it out as a volunteer option.  Certainly a worthy cause if it's real.

I drove through some thick woods on my way out of the Upper Peninsula, which turned out to be the Ottawa National Forest.  This is really a lovely area here.

The far western tip of the UP - the part that attaches to Wisconsin - is on Central time, which gave me an extra hour in my day.

I remembered as I was driving that I'd forgotten to make an appointment to get Lily's claws clipped this month, something I'll have to take care of during the next few days.

Wisconsin - my 17th state

On the road in Wisconsin
The Wisconsin town of Land O'Lakes is pretty much on the Michigan/Wisconsin border, but that's not where the butter company is.  That's in Minnesota, and when I get up there I'll see if they offer tours.  This town probably got its name from the myriad of small lakes in the vicinity - I passed quite a few of them and saw more on the map.  One of them offered a ski show on the weekends, and I could see a ramp fixed in the lake for skiers to jump off of.

We stopped a little way down the road in a rest area for a walk and a look at the beginnings of the Wisconsin River.

an unusual take on a standard sentiment

explaining the WI River

Gracie, Dexter and the Wisconsin R. near its head

highway dedication

Driving down the road, we passed through the town of Eagle River, "snowmobiling capital of the world," they claim, and "hockey capital of Wisconsin."  Covering all the bases, it seems.

At this point, I've crossed the Wisconsin River several times, and each time it's bigger, wider, deeper than the last.

Wisconsin seems to call its roadside parks waysides.  And today I'm finding that it doesn't have enough of them.  I was having really serious trouble staying awake and would have been glad to stop almost anywhere as long as there would be room to walk the dogs also, but I wasn't even sure if the towns I was passing would have that - just couldn't tell.  But there were times when I'd suddenly jerk awake and be very scared of hurting someone.

I passed a lumber company with a large yard full of logs.

I passed a vet clinic with a sign that said, "Running late is exercise, right?"  Clever, but I'm not sure I'd want to be their client.

I passed a string of small lakes, one after another.

There were any number of these white arrow signs along the road.  I guess it's because, for much of its length, the road functioned as a Main Street in the rural areas and it wasn't possible to look through the thick trees and see what was up a particular driveway.  Businesses needed to alert drivers to which one was theirs.

Also along the road were large areas of thick trees, interspersed with clearings, each with a house and maybe a barn and what looked like crop fields, though sometimes there were crops in the fields and sometimes there weren't.  Easy to imagine what it might have been like for the early settlers, except I'm sure the entire state was logged out 100 years ago and what I'm seeing now is 2nd or 3rd growth.

all WI plates look like this; I've hardly seen any personalized plates

I passed a sign warning of cross traffic for the next 9 miles, a sign that always makes me think of my mom, because she'd read those signs and say "cross traffic" and she'd frown and say she hoped the traffic wouldn't be too cross with her.

And then I saw "Welcome to Merrill, City of Parks."  And I did see several parks.  Mostly what surprised me, though, were the old public buildings.

tower on the Lincoln County Courthouse

Merrill's City Hall, 1889-1977

For some reason, I didn't expect anything this elaborate in such a small town.  They seem to like clock towers here.

Just outside Merrill is tonight's campground, a state park.  It's a lovely place and I'm really sorry I didn't take a photo.  Each of the campsites is heavily wooded and the day instantly lost at least 10° of its warmth, which was considerable.  The only drawback to us was the heavy population of flies, which I think were deer flies.  Whatever they were, they were on to Dexter in a flash when we went for walks, and on to Gracie almost as fast.  It made walks much less pleasant than they should have been in those surroundings.