Friday September 5 through September 7, 2025
To get to our next destination we backtrack through Duluth, go over a bridge to Superior Wisconsin (26,751 souls). The Garmin GPS worked perfectly until we got over the bridge and were on approach to a “T” intersection. Garmin went silent and the blue line that indicates the direction of travel disappeared. A coin flip had us turn right which led us onto the bridge we just got off of and heading back to Duluth. We turn around in Duluth and head back over the bridge for the third and last time………. This time the Garmin is yacking its head off and tells us to turn left at the T. Thank you very much! Superior is the seat of Douglas County.
Bayfield Wisconsin(592 souls) is a small town that is extremely popular as it is home to the Madeline Island ferries. Madeline Island is the largest of the Apostle Islands and a ferry service runs out of Bayfield to the island.
A big draw to the island is its beautiful scenery and its rocky shore. Tour boats will take you to the most unusual and beautiful rock formations along the Madeline coastline. Here is a link to the National Park Service website of the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore: https://www.nps.gov/apis/index.htm.
I was going to stay home with the matzos so Jil could go island exploring. I thought she just wanted to ride the ferry over to the island and snoop around a bit. What she really wanted to do was take a tour boat to all the wonderful places on the island. When she found out the tours were 4 hours long on a cramped boat in gloomy weather she begged out.
We stayed just out of Bayfield at the Apostle Islands Area Campground. It was nice but neighbors were fairly close by meaning Buster would have to be controlled more than if it had a more wide open campground. We had a large grassy area behind the coach so I could walk Buster there and keep an eye out for other dogs. I knew that the town of Washburn had two municipalities campgrounds. Both offered a lot of open space so Buster would have been better off at one of them and Washburn is only 10 miles south of Bayfield. I think we would have been better off as well.
Rittenhouse Inn
Us’ns enjoying Bayfield
So other than a few rides through the beautiful countryside, a visit to a fish hatchery where they raise fish indoor (no predators) and a couple of strolls downtown. They raise the usual lake fish- lake trout, crappy, white fish, walleye, pike and splake. Splake?
Yep. Splake are a hybrid fish, a cross from a female brook trout and a male lake trout. They are said to be reproductively viable yet don’t seem to reproduce much in the wild. Most are hatchery raised.
So that winds up our visit with the very beautiful little Superior Lake town of Bayfield. We’ll see y’all at our next location.
Travel With Jil and Mike 