Last Day in Wisconsin

 6-10-2021  Thursday

Headed back into Iron Mountain for our town chores first thing.  We got a little lost getting out of the park (the GPS brought us in a different way last night, partly on a quad trail.  Good thing we weren't in the RV)  We had to put the last campground in the GPS so we knew which way to turn when we got to the highway.  Joe said it was a good thing we have clothes with us if we get lost.  But we made it, had breakfast in Iron Mountain and found a laundromat with a fast WiFi!  

We got our chores done in Iron Mountain (laundry, posted blog at laundromat, auto parts store), and headed out of town around 2:00.  OMG, we can’t even find our way back to the campground on the highway.  Somehow, we missed a jog on Hwy 141.  We were driving through these little towns, seeing things we don’t recognize – a big wooden bear (no way I would have missed that Tuesday), a Vulcan (I got a picture), and a big mountain guy in front of an iron ore mine, advertising tours. 

I checked the GPS and it said we were headed east, but I had noticed on the way in that we went west for a while, then north, so I wasn’t sure if east was good.  I started looking for highway signs, and finally found one (I hadn’t said anything to Joe about the highway for these miles).  By this time, he had started looking for the turn-off to our campground.   I asked him, if we were supposed to be on Hwy 141, why did the highway sign say Hwy 2.  Well, he laughed, and said 2 and 141 don’t ever run together, so do we need to turn around??? We didn’t even know what state we were lost in!  I put the campground in the GPS, and sure enough, we had driven about 12 miles too far east.  When we got back to Hwy 141, we were only 3.2 miles from the turnoff to our campground.   We may have to hire a pilot car to get us to Florida!

Finally, we got back to the RV, a little after 3:00.  We drove 76 miles on our trip to a town 17 miles away.  I was just glad we were in the jeep and not the RV.  So then we did our maintenance here.  Joe cleaned the batteries on the jeep, and I put away laundry, made the bed and vacuumed.  Then we took a nap.

But we just couldn’t do it.  We could not just sit in the RV and do nothing the rest of the day (remember, no TV, no internet, bad phone signal).  So about 6:00, I asked Joe if he wanted to go for a little drive in the park (I know I’m a glutton for punishment).  But since we kept getting lost in the park, I thought maybe we should go for an adventure right here for about an hour.  So we did. There were signs about 2 falls on our drive in, so I thought we should check them out.  Well, both were “rugged” trails, with steep overlooks.  And the bugs in the woods are really bad (not to mention, worrying about ticks).  So we didn’t do any hiking.   Of course, Joe couldn’t just stay in the park, so we drove across the road, down some other dirt roads, etc.  The woods here, especially in the park, are so thick it’s hard to imagine how animals get through them.

But they do.  We saw 9 deer on our little drive (one with a fawn), plus two fawns on our way back from town this afternoon.  Joe said the deer are hard to find because there is no place they can’t hide.  We also saw a little turtle.  Joe actually straddled it with the jeep tires, and he hadn’t even seen it.  But he missed it because we saw it continuing on across the road in the mirror.   We came upon a sign for “John’s Road,” so we drove back it, but it dead-ended pretty quickly.  Nice that John has a road here, though.

We were almost back to the campsite (we could see the pin on the GPS) when I spotted another deer down a dirt road – this was one with the fawn.  So, down that road we go. It was some dam road, but we never did get to the dam. We did see a few more deer on that road, but now we are out 2 hours.  Fortunately, our dirt road connected with a highway, that brought us back to another highway, that brought us back to the park (a different way, again).  Thank God for GPS!

While we were at the laundromat (with internet), Joe found us a spot in a campground in Garden, Michigan, on the south shore.  The campground we have been in the last two nights is nice, very secluded and quiet.  Some sites have water, but ours only has electricity.  The phone signal is very weak (too many trees), and internet non-existent.  And we couldn't get a TV signal.  But we are ready to leave Wisconsin, and see what trouble we can get into in Michigan.