Northeast 2024 – 05

After leaving the Munising area we headed to the Apostle Islands. Our tour of the Islands was complete but I failed to insert a storage card in my camera, so no pictures. I did manage to capture some pictures of Bayfield, where we spent several nights. This is a feeder street to the main avenue in “downtown” Bayfield.

We spent some time in the Bayfield Maritime Museum. There was a lot of history of the fishing industry in this building and a very personable docent that could talk about the history for hours! There were many of the original fishing boats and implements on display within the building and a captain’s perch from one of the large ore boats that plied these waters. He gave us a tour of the perch, which was very rudimentary compared to modern craft.

This fountain was directly across from the Maritime Museum. The docent told us that a very wealthy lady supplied the funding for this fountain, depicting several ship’s anchors.

This is the view of the small boat harbor across from the museum.

At one time, Bayfield was a destination for the wealthy, as seen by several of the larger homes still in use.

This is another home, up in the hillside.

This is one of the first homes you see as you are entering the downtown district.

We spent some time, spread over two days, in the Bayfield library. This building was built with Carnegie philanthropy in 1903. Between 1889 and 1909, Andrew Carnegie donated more than $40 million to libraries in more than 1,400 towns, including 60 in Wisconsin. Carnegie donated $10,000 to Bayfield to construct “a free public library”. The city only had to provide the site and promise to maintain the building.

Here is the view of Lake Superior (with Madeline Island across the water) taken from our campsite just north of the town.

We spent our time camping at the Ojibwe (Chippewa) Native American Casino just north of town, on the Ojibwe or Red Creek Band of Lake Superior Chippewa reservation.

We were fortunate to be on site during the time when the Inter-Tribal held their annual NATOW (Native American Tourism of Wisconsin) conference. While not allowed into their meetings, we did get to sample some indigenous food, art and entertainment, along with a car show and barbecue competition.

This was the church just outside the casino, surprisingly full during services.

The entertainment the last day of the conference included a country band featuring a lead singer who walked through the crowd while performing.

We visited the Copper Crow Distillery, which featured some Nordic-derived concoctions and picked up a bottle of Copper Crow Rye. Copper Crow has the distinction of being the first Native-owned distillery in the U.S.

Leaving Bayfield, we continued on the country roads, driving through very small towns and villages such as Cornucupia, Herbster, and Port Wing (and a lot of other, really famous villages) on our way to Duluth and on to Grand Portage on the Canadian border. This is the first postal vehicle I have seen on snow runners. “Nothing shall keep the postmen from their appointed rounds”!

This is the first taxpayer funded public school bus. The children huddled together on bench seats while the unit traversed the snow on its runners pulled by horses.