A year ago I signed up for a swimming race called Point to La Point. It sold out in 8 hours! But I had a lot of swimming friends that would do it year after year and I was inspired to give it a shot. So having that to train for the past year the weekend had finally arrived. It's a 2 mile swim in Lake Superior from Bayfield, WI over to Madeline Island one of the Apostle Islands. We decided to make a weekend vacation out of the trip and the only vacay of the summer. We drove up on a Thursday - the race was Saturday. With plans for a boat tour of the apostle islands on Friday.
I got one last morning swim in, picked up donuts then we headed up north.
We stopped in Duluth for some lunch.
Then made our way over into Wisconsin up along the south shore of Lake Superior. We HAD to stop when I saw this sign because my mom is always telling me about Yooper Rocks (which are these rocks found on the upper peninsula of Michigan and they glow with a black light)
I picked out a rock.
And Thomas, Mary, and Emma also picked out a rock.
We continued on and stopped in Herbster, WI to dip our feet in the water and for me to fly my drone.
I was nervous about the temperature of the water for the swim. Lake Superior is notorious for being cold, I had my wet suit but was still a little worried. Friends had said to try and get in as much as I could leading up to that morning. This was our first dip. Yes it was cold, but wasn't horrible, still made me nervous :-)
Kids spent some time picking up rocks, throwing rocks, wading in the water. Lake Superior is our FAVORITE lake! No salt, no sharks :-) and beautiful clear.
We loaded back up and continued on our way over to Bayfield, Wisconsin. We checked into our airBnB... which was kind of a shit hole. There was active mold growing on a ceiling tile in this basement walk out, ugh. But it was really the only place since this is a sold out event. We had booked a bigger house about 20 minutes away with plans to bring the dog. Then last spring we decided it'd be a better trip for us if we weren't dealing with the dog, so we decided to board him and get a place closer.
The best thing about our place was there was this super fun trail that led right to the town. It's a town of maybe 500 people and they must have rules about restaurants and shops because everything was mom and pop. We were only about a half mile walk into the town and we took advantage of this many times. The first being a walk in to get dinner.
I took a picture of this informational sign on the trail because it talks about the sawmill and its name was "Little Daisy" started operation at this location in 1870. It ran everyday until the last log went through on September 9, 1924.
The rail led us right by this little swimming hold and the marina.
Live music at a pavilion and we had dinner on this rooftop patio.
Quick stop at the convent store for some cleaning supplies for the airBnB. :-/ That concludes day 1
