Road Trip Re-Cap, Part I
Jul. 8th, 2019 12:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydamorehouse Normally, I try to keep up the journal while ON the road, but we had some very long driving days and spotty wifi. I will do my best to recount the days for you now.
Day ONE: A Slow Meander from Minnesota through Upper Wisconsin (with surprise parks!)
Shawn, our navigator, took us through a number of tiny Minnesota towns that seemed connected by "sister cities" in Sweden. I found this water tower rather charming and hopped out to take a picture. (Picture: a water tower in the shape of a old-fashioned coffee kettle that says 'Vitommen till Lindström" with rosemaling around the words.) If you're curious about this town, here's the wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindstrom,_Minnesota.
From there we ended up stopping in the boringingly named Interstate State Park, but which is AMAZING. The section we explored was a glacial lava flow that had a ton of natural potholes and such. Our state park pass, which we got on last year's trip to Itasca State Park, is still good for one more month, so we hopped out to explore.
Here's a shot from the interior of a feature they called "Little Oven" or some such.
Basically it was one of these potholes that had an area at the bottom of a ravine that had been broken out at some point, naturally, and the park built stairs and a platform under the stagnant water pool of the rest of the pot hole. It was a hot day, but the interior, just even a step inside, was cool and clammy. The whole place was full of these, but you could not get as good a sense of how deep they were, because they were filled with water. I'd say that this "chimney" section was twenty feet? It was impressively deep, at any rate.
The Interstate State Park is on both sides of the St. Croix river (which forms part of the border between Minnesota and Wisconsin.) There were several spots that you could look down over the river at the pine forests.
It's difficult to see in this picture, but the St. Croix is a swiftly moving river, so the foam you can see is actually churning water. (Picture: muddy brown river, looking across to lava rock cliffs covered in pine trees.)
We spent about an hour exploring this park and vowed to come back. It was extremely lovely and there was much more that we didn't do (apparently, there is a cliff hike!) because we hadn't even left Minnesota yet and we needed to arrive in Manitowac, Wisconsin that night to check into the hotel. We passed people doing rock climbing (with full gear) because some of these cliff faces were both sheer, but clearly had good hand holds. I imagine if you were the rock climbing sort, this would be a great park for you, as well.
We missed JFK's urinal in Spooner, Wisconsin--supposedly the young senator stopped to pee at the Big Dick's Buckhorn Inn--but we didn't miss the two-tailed walleye in Shell Lake, Wisconsin.
(Picture: a fish with two tails.) The weather was starting to get really steamy at this point, which was the only problem that dogged us on this road trip. Our a/c in the car is... semi-functional? It tries. But, it can't really keep up with high humidity and anything over 89 F / 31.7 C. Mason joked about all of us swimming in our own sweat, but it wasn't much of a joke. We had to crack the windows because it was kind of crazy-hot.
Along the roads, we saw several deer, including a mama and her fawn.
Besides, the general scenery, the star of our first day of road tripping was Wisconsin Concrete Park in Phillips, Wisconsin. This place defies description in many ways. It's a sort of, "you have to see it to believe it" roadside attraction.
(Picture: the spookiest concrete and broken beer bottle owl you have ever seen in your life.) This place was the brain child of Fred Smith, a guy with a lot of energy, a lot of concrete, and a lot of broken beer bottles. To be fair to Mr. Smith, he started working on these... er, folk art... pieces before the internet and, having driven through it, I can tell you, there's not much else happening in Phillips, Wisconsin.
There are over 400 statues in this park. Including a life-sized Budweiser beer wagon with horses. (Picture: two bucks locking horns while creepy-a$$ statue people look on.) Mason pointed out that the most alarming part of this park--and there were a lot of alarming parts--was that Mr. Smith did not paint all of his human figures looking straight on, so every once and a while you'd look up to realize that one of these terrifying bad boys was giving you the side-eye.
It was FANTASTIC. 10/10 would again.
Highly recommend, if you find yourself in Central Wisconsin with nothing better to do. Heck, I'd even say make a day trip of it. It's weird and wonderful and the gift shop is also a local craft shop, so what the heck, it's a twofer.
Then we drove and drove and drove--this is not that long of a trip, but we purposely chose all the backroads and whatnot to see all the small towns, etc., until we got to Manitowac, Wisconsin, where we spent the night. Basically, I posted a few pictures to Facebook and collapsed in a heap, because the next day, we'd be boarding the SS Badger to be ferried across Lake Michigan.
Day Two: The Sailing Badger
We booked passage on the historic SS Badger, a car ferry, that would sail us across a great lake from Manitowac, Wisconsin to Luddington, Michigan, but it didn't set sail until 1 pm CST. So, we got up early in the morning, crossed the street for a breakfast and coffee at Paneara and then went off, like the nerds we are, to find the spot where Sputnik IV crashed into the streets of Manitowac. It was an overcast day, but that did not dampen Shawn's enthusiasm posing at the plaque that marks the spot (sort of.)
(Picture: smiling Shawn sitting next to what looks like a grave marker. Not easily read are the words: "Sputnik IV: Satellite fragment recovered here September 6, 1962.") The plaque was put in so idiots like us wouldn't get killed standing in traffic taking a picture of the ring that marks the actual landing spot in the middle of the street.
Look, we're idiots, okay? Plus, the streets were very dead at 9 am on a Saturday morning. So, we got this nice shot of our feet touching the VERY spot.
(Picture: three sets of toes touching a ring in the middle of cracked asphalt. The stubby tennis shoes belong to me. Shawn is in the fancy brown sandals. Mason in flip flops.)
When we were leaving the Wisconsin side, there was a bit of drizzle, but no waves. Even so, we were glad that Shawn thought to book us a "state room" on the ship. Getting the car on and off was kind of trippy, though, really, all we did was let a drug sniffing dog snoot up our car for contraband, and then hand our keys over to a valet. We took our carry-ons and boarded the ship.
Our "state room" was not a lot more than a closet with a couple of beds in it, but there was a private bathroom and the two most important things above the sink:
(Picture: a bright blue barf bucket and a Bible.)
There were a lot of places to buy Dramimine (sp? the motion sickness pills) and signs reminding you sternly that "If you feel AT ALL sea sick, DO NOT buy food.) There were two restaurants on board, an observation deck (with deckchairs to rearrange), and an indoor dining hall where Bingo was played.
I will say that given all the hype about this being a historic steamship, I was expecting it to be a bit more upscale than it was. I didn't take a lot of pictures of the interior, but I can tell you there were no chandeliers. There were rows of seats that reminded me of a Greyhound Bus or maybe even an Amtrak Train. So, kind of... let's say, heavy-use, rather than high end. The other reason I was grateful for a private room? A door I could shut, a bed I could call my own, and a tiny barrier between me and the zillion and a half families and their screaming kids on the other side.
That being said, this was one of my favorite parts of the trip. It does not save time, going around Chicago. In fact, the ship travels all of 15 miles per hour and takes a good 4 hours on a clear sailing day. But, I didn't have to drive and I got to say that I've now traversed a great lake by ship, which is kind of cool, honestly. The other kind of cool fact? The route of the SS Badger is considered part of Hwy 10.The highway ends at the boat dock and picks up again on the other side. Despite part of the journey being over water, the highway is continuous.
Plus, we got spectacular views:
(Picture: okay, so really it looks like a blank canvass where someone drew a straight line and one half is grey-blue and the other half is a kind of muddy blue, but it was LAKE freaking Michigan, one of the five GREAT LAKES and I crossed it on a BOAT!!)
This is getting long, so I'll save the rest for part II. But, the way you picked up your car on the other end was kind of chaotic. Everyone filed off the boat and the valet-persons drove out cars. When you recognized yours, you claimed it. Seems like a great way to steal a car, honestly, since the keys are left in it and the drivers' side door is left open. But, Mason spotted ours and off we started for Lansing, Michigan at 7 pm (since we'd moved into EST, and lost an hour.)
Day ONE: A Slow Meander from Minnesota through Upper Wisconsin (with surprise parks!)
Shawn, our navigator, took us through a number of tiny Minnesota towns that seemed connected by "sister cities" in Sweden. I found this water tower rather charming and hopped out to take a picture. (Picture: a water tower in the shape of a old-fashioned coffee kettle that says 'Vitommen till Lindström" with rosemaling around the words.) If you're curious about this town, here's the wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindstrom,_Minnesota.
From there we ended up stopping in the boringingly named Interstate State Park, but which is AMAZING. The section we explored was a glacial lava flow that had a ton of natural potholes and such. Our state park pass, which we got on last year's trip to Itasca State Park, is still good for one more month, so we hopped out to explore.
Here's a shot from the interior of a feature they called "Little Oven" or some such.
Basically it was one of these potholes that had an area at the bottom of a ravine that had been broken out at some point, naturally, and the park built stairs and a platform under the stagnant water pool of the rest of the pot hole. It was a hot day, but the interior, just even a step inside, was cool and clammy. The whole place was full of these, but you could not get as good a sense of how deep they were, because they were filled with water. I'd say that this "chimney" section was twenty feet? It was impressively deep, at any rate.
The Interstate State Park is on both sides of the St. Croix river (which forms part of the border between Minnesota and Wisconsin.) There were several spots that you could look down over the river at the pine forests.
It's difficult to see in this picture, but the St. Croix is a swiftly moving river, so the foam you can see is actually churning water. (Picture: muddy brown river, looking across to lava rock cliffs covered in pine trees.)
We spent about an hour exploring this park and vowed to come back. It was extremely lovely and there was much more that we didn't do (apparently, there is a cliff hike!) because we hadn't even left Minnesota yet and we needed to arrive in Manitowac, Wisconsin that night to check into the hotel. We passed people doing rock climbing (with full gear) because some of these cliff faces were both sheer, but clearly had good hand holds. I imagine if you were the rock climbing sort, this would be a great park for you, as well.
We missed JFK's urinal in Spooner, Wisconsin--supposedly the young senator stopped to pee at the Big Dick's Buckhorn Inn--but we didn't miss the two-tailed walleye in Shell Lake, Wisconsin.
(Picture: a fish with two tails.) The weather was starting to get really steamy at this point, which was the only problem that dogged us on this road trip. Our a/c in the car is... semi-functional? It tries. But, it can't really keep up with high humidity and anything over 89 F / 31.7 C. Mason joked about all of us swimming in our own sweat, but it wasn't much of a joke. We had to crack the windows because it was kind of crazy-hot.
Along the roads, we saw several deer, including a mama and her fawn.
Besides, the general scenery, the star of our first day of road tripping was Wisconsin Concrete Park in Phillips, Wisconsin. This place defies description in many ways. It's a sort of, "you have to see it to believe it" roadside attraction.
(Picture: the spookiest concrete and broken beer bottle owl you have ever seen in your life.) This place was the brain child of Fred Smith, a guy with a lot of energy, a lot of concrete, and a lot of broken beer bottles. To be fair to Mr. Smith, he started working on these... er, folk art... pieces before the internet and, having driven through it, I can tell you, there's not much else happening in Phillips, Wisconsin.
There are over 400 statues in this park. Including a life-sized Budweiser beer wagon with horses. (Picture: two bucks locking horns while creepy-a$$ statue people look on.) Mason pointed out that the most alarming part of this park--and there were a lot of alarming parts--was that Mr. Smith did not paint all of his human figures looking straight on, so every once and a while you'd look up to realize that one of these terrifying bad boys was giving you the side-eye.
It was FANTASTIC. 10/10 would again.
Highly recommend, if you find yourself in Central Wisconsin with nothing better to do. Heck, I'd even say make a day trip of it. It's weird and wonderful and the gift shop is also a local craft shop, so what the heck, it's a twofer.
Then we drove and drove and drove--this is not that long of a trip, but we purposely chose all the backroads and whatnot to see all the small towns, etc., until we got to Manitowac, Wisconsin, where we spent the night. Basically, I posted a few pictures to Facebook and collapsed in a heap, because the next day, we'd be boarding the SS Badger to be ferried across Lake Michigan.
Day Two: The Sailing Badger
We booked passage on the historic SS Badger, a car ferry, that would sail us across a great lake from Manitowac, Wisconsin to Luddington, Michigan, but it didn't set sail until 1 pm CST. So, we got up early in the morning, crossed the street for a breakfast and coffee at Paneara and then went off, like the nerds we are, to find the spot where Sputnik IV crashed into the streets of Manitowac. It was an overcast day, but that did not dampen Shawn's enthusiasm posing at the plaque that marks the spot (sort of.)
(Picture: smiling Shawn sitting next to what looks like a grave marker. Not easily read are the words: "Sputnik IV: Satellite fragment recovered here September 6, 1962.") The plaque was put in so idiots like us wouldn't get killed standing in traffic taking a picture of the ring that marks the actual landing spot in the middle of the street.
Look, we're idiots, okay? Plus, the streets were very dead at 9 am on a Saturday morning. So, we got this nice shot of our feet touching the VERY spot.
(Picture: three sets of toes touching a ring in the middle of cracked asphalt. The stubby tennis shoes belong to me. Shawn is in the fancy brown sandals. Mason in flip flops.)
We then spent some time in the Manitowac Maritime Museum. Mason and I went on the tour of the submarine. Shawn, the claustrophobic, 6'1" woman, declined. As Shawn was later fond to recounting, it was maybe not the BEST use of our time to go to a museum mostly devoted to SHIPWRECKS ON LAKE MICHIGAN before boarding a ship crossing Lake Michigan.
The WWII submarine, on the other hand, gave us a strong counterpoint to the coal-powered steam ship, which has since had massive pollution mitigation done to it, but which used to dump tons of coal ash into the lake. Because, did you know, that when the submarines went under water they could not use their diesel fuel, of course, so RAN ON BATTERY????? I had no idea. I spent a lot of time thinking about "American exceptionalism" and wondered what the hell happened to the people who said, "mmm, let's battery power this two zillion ton warship!" since they now baulk at the idea of battery-powered cars.
But, thanks to a medical emergency--someone's knees locked up moving between the bulkheads, though not in our party--we were delayed and so we ended up having to rush back to check out of our hotel and to the SS Badger. 
When we were leaving the Wisconsin side, there was a bit of drizzle, but no waves. Even so, we were glad that Shawn thought to book us a "state room" on the ship. Getting the car on and off was kind of trippy, though, really, all we did was let a drug sniffing dog snoot up our car for contraband, and then hand our keys over to a valet. We took our carry-ons and boarded the ship.
Our "state room" was not a lot more than a closet with a couple of beds in it, but there was a private bathroom and the two most important things above the sink:
(Picture: a bright blue barf bucket and a Bible.)
There were a lot of places to buy Dramimine (sp? the motion sickness pills) and signs reminding you sternly that "If you feel AT ALL sea sick, DO NOT buy food.) There were two restaurants on board, an observation deck (with deckchairs to rearrange), and an indoor dining hall where Bingo was played.
I will say that given all the hype about this being a historic steamship, I was expecting it to be a bit more upscale than it was. I didn't take a lot of pictures of the interior, but I can tell you there were no chandeliers. There were rows of seats that reminded me of a Greyhound Bus or maybe even an Amtrak Train. So, kind of... let's say, heavy-use, rather than high end. The other reason I was grateful for a private room? A door I could shut, a bed I could call my own, and a tiny barrier between me and the zillion and a half families and their screaming kids on the other side.
That being said, this was one of my favorite parts of the trip. It does not save time, going around Chicago. In fact, the ship travels all of 15 miles per hour and takes a good 4 hours on a clear sailing day. But, I didn't have to drive and I got to say that I've now traversed a great lake by ship, which is kind of cool, honestly. The other kind of cool fact? The route of the SS Badger is considered part of Hwy 10.The highway ends at the boat dock and picks up again on the other side. Despite part of the journey being over water, the highway is continuous.
Plus, we got spectacular views:
(Picture: okay, so really it looks like a blank canvass where someone drew a straight line and one half is grey-blue and the other half is a kind of muddy blue, but it was LAKE freaking Michigan, one of the five GREAT LAKES and I crossed it on a BOAT!!)
This is getting long, so I'll save the rest for part II. But, the way you picked up your car on the other end was kind of chaotic. Everyone filed off the boat and the valet-persons drove out cars. When you recognized yours, you claimed it. Seems like a great way to steal a car, honestly, since the keys are left in it and the drivers' side door is left open. But, Mason spotted ours and off we started for Lansing, Michigan at 7 pm (since we'd moved into EST, and lost an hour.)