Copper Bay, WI to ?? Day 7 on vaca and day 3 in RV

 Hi All,

FYI-I added a day 0 as suggested to introduce us so check that out too.

Having a blast on our trip so far. Last night we stayed in a campground near Houghton Michigan in the Upper Pennisula. We stayed at a nice campground on the Keweenaw Waterway/Portage Lake. It rained pretty good all evening so we didn’t get to explore much other than a local grocery store. Grocery stores in Michigan have wines and liquor so that excited some folks! 

We cooked our fresh whitefish for dinner along with sides and pasties (a dough pocket filled with meat or veggies). Most of the crew here liked the meat pasty over the vegetable pasty. Everyone liked the local food choices.

We survived the rain overnight and left camp around 8:45am for a long day of travels, probably will have 2 days of 500+ miles to get to Mount Rushmore and the Badlands. 

On our way today in the 53 degree weather, we traveled through Ironwood, Michigan an old iron ore mining town where we saw the largest Native American statue in the world, so it says! It was a 52 foot statue of Hiawatha. Russ and Brenda live in Nokomis, Florida and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow mentions Nokomis in his famous poem called “The Song of Hiawatha”. Get your history read below. Ironwood is popular for its downhill and cross country ski resorts. So all you skiers should vacation to Ironwood, Michigan for some good skiing! 

We then traveled to Copper Falls State Park in Wisconsin where we took a 1.7 mile hike to check out the falls on the Bad River. It was a beautiful hike through the plush green forests along the river. The trail was built about 100 years ago and is still maintained well with about 100 granite steps to the falls. What a gorgeous place. 

Only mishap of the day was going over a huge bridge from Superior, Wisconsin to Duluth, Minnesota the privacy shade on the windshield malfunctioned and started going down over the windshield obstructing Russ’ view of the road. Good thing Dave was in the front and pulled up the shade just in time! We even have video footage as I was videoing us driving over the bridge. Stay tuned on a fix for that in the future. Might be bungee cord security!

Onward we went through Minnesota to North Dakota. We stepped on the grounds of Minnesota at a gas station and then made a pit stop in Akeley, Minnesota to take a photo with the giant Paul Bunyan that was spotted on our route! 

Traveled almost 500 miles today and stepped on the grounds of 4 states-Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and North Dakota! Hoping to land a prime spot in a Walmart parking lot in Fargo, North Dakota. 

Tanks full, fridge is stocked! See ya down the road!

Carol, Dave, Brenda and Russ