Apostle Islands

 Short trip of 120 miles and we are near Bayfield and the Apostle Islands. Found a nice, but rustic campground on the Indian casino reservation.  Red Cliff Band of the Cherokee tribe.  Randy wanted to know what kind of instruments they played.  Not that kind of "band".  So we found out that our kayaks should not really go on Lake Superior as they HIGHLY recommend Sea Kayaks.  They are much longer, narrower, and have a ruder.  So we decided to take the Grand boat tour of the Apostle Islands.  There are actually 22 islands and we saw 19 of them on our tour.  It was "a 3 hour tour" (Remember Gilligan's Island?)  well that stupid song sticks in your head when you sing it enough.  It was very informative and great views of the caves, lighthouses, fish camps, and wildlife.  It got a bit chilly by sunset.  Unfortunately, there were too many clouds to make for a perfect sunset.  The sun hid behind the clouds all the way down.  It was great having some light still at 9:30pm.  Must be that Northern exposure.  The ice caves this winter that people flocked too are on the western shore of the peninsula near Meyer's Beach.  People had to walk about 1 1/2 miles on the ice to get to them.  Many of the island also have caves but that would have been a very, very long walk to get to.  Snowmobiles were a better choice there.  I don't remember the exact year, but it hadn't been since the 70's that people were able to walk on the ice to the caves.  Lake Superior didn't totally thaw until the end of June this year.  That would have been great to see.  The water temp 42 degrees out and 60 degrees near shore.  They say without a life jacket you could only survive 10 minutes in the water and maybe an hour with a life jacket.   Too cold and bad odds if we took the chance and put our kayaks in.  We'll be happy with the nice boat ride.

 It is just amazing how beautiful the caves are.  The water sculptor is so creative and always changing.  They still log some of the islands and many you can primitive camp on.  There are bears and deer on all of the islands as we were told they both swim very well and are often seen swimming from one island to the next.  We did not see any swimming.  But it makes me wonder how we could not survive and yet they do it all the time.  I am sure they didn't have a life jacket on.
  On our way back to Bayfield, on the Grand Tour, we could see our motorhome at the campground from the boat.  Great view from the water and great view to wake up to every morning.  They told us 2 nights before we arrived that there was a thunder storm and that "fierce windstorm" came through the campground.  Knocked branches of trees down and tore a few camper awnings off.  Tree limb hit a few rigs also.  Glad we weren't early arriving!!  So we pull our awning in every time we leave camp, just incase.

 This is downtown Bayfield at dusk.  They have a great Maritime Museum.  Lots of fishing boats and places to by fresh Lake Superior fish.  Randy LOVES smoked fish and he is finding it right and left.  A lot of t-shirt shops too but a great quilt shop.  I did lots and lots of looking but was good and didn't buy.  I like getting ideas.  But I must finish my current projects first.  That's what I keep telling myself.  The campground maintenance man suggested going down the road to the Fish Hatchery and checking it out.  We got a private tour and lots of education.  They had Trout and Walleye and Alaskan Salmon that they were "fish sitting" for a company in Washington.  They do lots of research for the UW system and anyone that requests their help.  They don't grow fish for repopulating but for spawning and testing.  One experiment they were doing was with trout to see if the color of the tank made a difference in their growth (white, black, and blue tanks)  Just collected the data so the final results is still out.  They did do a test on the amount of silt in a tank.  Most of the fish died in the heaviest silt tank so I guess that was a no brainer that they don't like that.  I would have loved to reach right in those tanks and taken a few of each home for supper.  It was a beautiful drive up and around to the west side of the peninsula.  Stopped along the way to Little Sand Beach but it started to rain so continued to Cornicopia.  Nice, very small fishing village.  Bought some more smoked fish to put in the freezer for later - like maybe tomorrow when Randy eats again.  He just loves that fish.  General store was open so we wandered around for awhile.  $1.16 a pound for bananas (and I thought $0.59 was bad).  Only looked but didn't buy here.  Toured their local museum.  Learned about gill nets and net traps for fishing.  Onto the fruit farms another day.  Next week Duluth Minnesota.