Twenty five years ago, when I drove through Northern Wisconsin, I was half asleep having driven all the way from Havre, Montana without any rest. However, I did notice how beautiful they “Dairyland” State was with it’s rolling hills, forests, streams, lakes and rivers and I always wanted to come back to explore it.


I never did make it back to explore and fish the area but today, I remembered why I wanted to. The first time I was ever here, it was the summer and there was quite a bit more green. But even in the late autumn, northern Wisconsin is still quite beautiful.

But we’re still looking for a good cup of coffee. After leaving Duluth, we stopped in the pretty town of Ashland, WI and had a meal at the “Country Kitchen.” The meal was good – and they were advertising their coffee – their “New Bolder Brew.” If this is bolder, I’d not like to taste what their less bold coffee brew was like. Actually, the brew is fine – I just think it’s not made strong enough.

If you’re a smoker and miss smoking in restaurants, you might want to plan a trip to Wisconsin. The State, at this point, has no law in effect against smoking in restaurants however once July 10th, 2010 rolls around, it will be banned. It seems that smoking is also allowed in restaurants in Michigan as well.

After leaving Ashland, the driving was slower than I expected and after driving through Marquette MI (which seems a lot bigger than I remember from 25 years ago), we ended up at Munising, a small town of about 2,300 people located on the shore of Lake Superior. According to the waitress at the restaurant we had dinner at, Minising depends on tourism mostly and this time of the year is very quiet. We even noticed that several motels, including the major chain “Days Inn,” were closed for the season.

As well as tourism, the local community depends on a mill and “the jail system” for work, our waitress told us.

Another small community that we drove through earlier in the day seemed to be almost a ghost town. Many of the properties were listed for sale and it seemed by the lack of lights on and no vehicles in the driveways, many of the homes are not occupied.

Just after we entered Michigan, we said “Good bye” to Hwy 2, for now. The route we took through Marquette and onto Munising is Hwy 28, but we’ll pick up Hwy 2 again when we take 117 down to Engadine.

During the trip so far, we’ve had fabulous weather! One of the neat things about driving in the evening along hwy 2 and now 28 for the entire time we’ve been heading east is looking out the driver’s side window and seeing the Big Dipper, almost watching over us throughout the journey. Tomorrow however, I expect we’ll be heading south along I-75 once we reach St. Ignace and will continue until we get to Flint, MI. Then we’ll resume heading east.

The other eventful occurrence is that we finally reached the Eastern Time Zone – that’s driving through two different time zones in two days, which in a way has put us back a couple of hours more than I thought of. Driving through the dark at this time of year when the deer are active is not the most inviting thing to think about.

So far, we’ve driven almost 3,000 km and another 7 or 800 to go.

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