Them North Woods, pt. 1

I have just returned from a 5 day stay in Minocqua, Wisconsin. Minocqua is very close to Michigan's Upper Peninsula and less than an hour drive to Lake Superior. The town has a population less than 5,000, has a lot of lakes either in the town itself or the surrounding towns, and is extremely touristy. The following map is great because it highlights both Chicago and Minocqua, about a 7 hour drive apart.

My wonderful stepdad is a partial owner of a cabin in Minocqua and this is only the second time I have been up there during the summer. Usually we go up in the winter for skiing and snowboarding the bigger mountains in the U.P. as a cheaper and more convenient alternative to travelling to Colorado. The cabin is big, in the woods, and on a lake.

The Cabin

The Woods In Front Of The Cabin

Being in the north woods of Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula is very different from the Midwest of which I am familiar. From Chicago all the way south to Indianapolis in Indiana, the landscape is flat, corn country. Wisconsin is very different. The land is hilly, there are cow pastures and forests. At the high school in Minocqua, they offer lumberjack type classes because a post-high school career is often involved directly in the logging field. The newspapers and radio programs tend to be geared conservatively. The Wisconsin primary was September 14th, so the newspapers were filled with political spreads of the two Republican gubernatorial candidates, Mark Neumann and Scott Walker. The opinion page included a letter condemning Democratic support of the Mosque that is meant to be built near Ground Zero. At a coffee shop, I heard a man recounting war stories while praising Glen Beck. And on and on. The north woods political climate emphasized my position as a tourist, an outsider who could not comfortably live in such a small town year round. So, as a tourist, I had a lot of outdoor fun with my parents.

We went hiking in the Porcupine Mountains, "The Porkies", located on Lake Superior. Mom trailed behind taking photos of the Presque Isle Lake waterfalls and perching herself precariously on cliffs. The one on the left in the photo looks harmless enough, but recounted stories to me of people who became easily  lost for days in the woods for not staying on the trail and of bears who live and wonder the woods regularly. This sign we saw in the parking lot reinforced the warnings. "It could be you!" duh duh dunnnn.

The falls and Lake Superior were particular highlights for me, as I've never been that far north.

Porcupine Mountain Falls, Presque Isle River Trail

Traveler from Deston, FL on a cross country motorcycle trip. 

Lake Superior

Lake Superior

The Porcupine Mountains are vast. The state park extends across the northwestern Upper Peninsula of Michigan and includes 60,000 acres. The Porkies trip was only one day for us, but there are campsites and could be made into a week long trek if that were your thing.