With a little luck

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If I had made our summer plans two weeks ago versus sixth months ago, I don't think I could have planned it any better. It's interesting how that worked out. Some might call it luck, others might assume there is some divine hand of providence guiding our moves. Who knows. What I do know is that while @mrsbozz and I were spending time in northern Wisconsin, we had absolutely beautiful weather. Although it didn't seem like it was going to be that way at first.

The drive from Van Riper State Park over to Bayfield Wisconsin is 175 miles and takes about three hours, which was a welcome change from our six or seven hour drive the day before. As you can see from the opening photo, it was kind of a gloomy day as we made our way to Wisconsin.

Still, we consider ourselves blessed that temperatures were pleasant in the mid 70's and 80's during the day, and the mid 50's at night. It wasn't until the last day or two that the heat dome started returning and northern Wisconsin was looking at temps in the 90's and 100's.

It also wasn't until we got home that the wind shifted and started covering the northern US with wildfire smoke from Canada. Last I heard people were cancelling their plans to go north because the smoke is so dense and the ash is coming down like snow up there.

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The drive itself was fairly easy though with most of the major two lane roads in the upper peninsula of Michigan being 65 miles per hour. I locked the cruise control on the truck at 68 MPH and we had a nice drive as we made our way further west than we ever have before with our trailer. My wife will be the first to admit she is horrible about taking photos while I am driving, but she did capture a few good ones.

What she didn't capture was the sign saying welcome to Wisconsin. It wasn't where she expected it to be, and by the time she saw it we were too far past it to take a photo. It was a major highway, so I couldn't just back up for her, plus we had the 26 foot trailer behind us, so that could have been very bad.

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Things took a distinct turn as we made our way into Wisconsin. First of all, the speed limit dropped down to 55 MPH, which isn't a big deal. That's pretty standard for most two lane country roads in the US. With a few exceptions like I mentioned above. In addition to that, a fog seemed to cover just about every area we drove through. It was like a light mist that gave a kind of erie feeling and made me pay extra close attention for forest animals looking to suddenly cross the road.

In case you haven't guessed, towing 7000 pounds or so doesn't make it very easy to stop quickly.

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We pulled into Ashland Wisconsin around 1:00 and as you can see, the fog was still quite dense, and this is where I made my first big mistake of the trip. I clearly wasn't thinking about it, so somehow I managed to forget that there was a time change going from the western part of Michigan's upper peninsula into Wisconsin. It actually happens about a half hour into the UP. If we were in the same time zone we would have been to Bayfield just in time for our 1:00 PM check in at the campground. Instead, we were an hour early and it was actually 12:00 PM.

Lucily, in the town of Ashland which sits on Chequamegon Bay and is the last major town before you head up towards the Apostle Islands, there is a Walmart. We parked our rig in the lot and spent a good forty five minutes walking around the store picking up different things we thought might come in handy.

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We spent another ten minutes sitting in the parking lot enjoying the boneless chicken wings I had just bought before we continued on our way to Bayfield.

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Just about a half hour later after passing through the small shoreline town of Washburn, we were pulling into our campground. I had booked us five nights at The Apostle Islands Area Campground and I have to admit, it was a really nice place. What I failed to realize is just how much of an elevation difference there is.

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Like I said, the online map doesn't really give you a good idea of the elevation changes that take place in the park. I thought it was going to be relatively flat, but I was completely wrong on that one too. It didn't make much of a difference, but usually my wife and I enjoy taking a walk around the campground each day. We only did that once or twice because the hills were just too brutal! Even the truck had a bit of trouble getting up and down some of them!

I'll save my full review of the campground for a future post, but after we got set up, the sun started to break through the clouds, the fog started to dissipate, and the humidity dropped quite a bit making way for the beautiful weather we were about to experience.

As I sit in my office now getting whiffs every now and then of the wildfire smoke outside, I can truly say I miss our time in Wisconsin.

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All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or @mrsbozz unless otherwise sourced