Fall Vacation Part 3: Madeline Island (Sept 9)

[dreamshark]

Thursday turned out to be a beautiful, brisk fall day. Good timing because this was the day we'd planned to spend biking on Madeline Island, the centerpiece of the trip. Madeline Island looks like such an idyllic place to live, but I couldn't help thinking about the logistics as we rode across on the ferry. The friendly woman in the tiny Chamber of Commerce office answered some of my questions. Yes, the natives get a discount card for the ferry, but it is still expensive: several hundreds of dollars per year even if you leave your car behind and do all your mainland errands on foot. Apparently having friends on the mainland who you can carpool to the store with is a godsend, and almost a necessity once your kids outgrow the elementary school on the island and need places to stay overnight so they can participate in afterschool activities.

Besides chatting with the locals, we hung around town long enough to stock up on cheese and crackers for lunch, then hopped on our bikes and headed for beautiful Big Bay State Park on the other side of the island for a few hours, then back to the ferry, taking the longer route along the south shore to get us to 20 miles, our unofficial goal for the day. It was near sunset when we got back to the mainland, but we had time to pick up a couple of wearable souvenirs in the little tourist stores (earrings for me, a tie-dyed sweatshirt for Richard). Oh, and and a bottle of wine to drink by the fireplace back at the B&B.

Madeline Island Ferry (Thursday, Sept 10) Thursday brought us a beautiful, brisk fall day. We rode our bikes down the long hill to the docks and took the 10am ferry to the island.

	Big Bay State Park, Barrier Beach - the stairs. After stocking up on crackers and cheese in LaPointe, we biked along Middle Road to the big state park. It's quite lovely.
	Big Bay State Park, Barrier Beach - the beach A protected harbor on the southeast side of the island with a long sweep of soft sand and shallow waters. With a setup like this it really IS possible to swim in Lake Superior, something I would never have believed from just visiting the North Shore.
	Big Bay State Park, Barrier Beach - the boardwalk The interpretive signs are a little bit simplistic, but the mile-long boardwalk through the pines is really beautiful.
	Big Bay State Park, Barrier Beach - the boardwalk with view of the beach And here we have the best of both worlds - beach, boardwalk and bench.
	Big Bay State Park, The Point A more dramatic piece of the same park, with a cozy picnic area looking down a steep bluff onto the windiest corner of the island. Richard is sitting on a large bench made from native stones, chatting with a couple of bikers from St. Paul.
	Back to Bayfield One of many attempts to capture the magical dancing of the sunlight on the water as we ferried back to the mainland.
	Once you've discovered Maggie's there's no reason to eat anywhere else So, back to Maggie's for supper on Thursday night. Each table has its own local flamingo display. This flamingo family was perched on the windowsill by our table just begging to be played with while we waited for our food. Which was an incredibly delicious white pizza made with brie, pickled peppers and more of that heavenly smoked chicken. We order the whitefish liver appetizer again and it was just as good the second time 'round, even without beer this time.

Comments

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

I don't think this was quite what you intended to say: do all your mainland errors on foot.

That aside: Sounds like a wonderful place to live, once teleportation becomes easy enough and cheap enough.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Oops. Thanks for catching - at least I know somebody read my trip report. :-) Fixed.

Looks great

[(Anonymous)]

So glad you had a wonderful time. I just love the boardward at big bay state park. We've anchored our boat there many times. Great pictures by the way.

Cheers,

John Wagner