Boating on the Chippewa Flowage

I hope my readers had a good Labor Day weekend. Sorry that I haven’t blogged in several days. Thursday evening I was busy playing tennis with Travalon despite my bad knee, and it seemed to go okay. Friday I took off of work early and went on a boat ride with Travalon, then in the evening we parked by the Monona Terrace, had dinner at their outdoor café, and walked to Camp Randall to watch the Badgers play Utah State in their first football game of the season. We were hoping they wouldn’t completely demolish Utah State, but in the first quarter it looked like we had to fear the opposite problem because the Aggies scored 10 points and we didn’t get anything. By halftime we had tied it up, and then in the second half we were beating up on them so badly that we ended up winning by seven touchdowns. Travalon and I left before the end, when it was obvious that it was going to be a very lopsided game. It was fun anyway.

Saturday Travalon and I got on the road and drove to Rib Mountain, where we took a quick hike on the top. We stopped for lunch at a bar outside of Tomahawk owned by someone Travalon went to school with, but she wasn’t there. We drove to a very old tavern from the book that had north woods décor, a warm, happy vibe, and supposedly a ghost – the first owner! We stayed overnight in Park Falls, which is a shockingly quiet place on a Saturday evening – we were walking around at nine in the evening and saw almost nobody!

Sunday we went to Mass at St. Anthony of Padua in Park Falls, then we had breakfast at a diner there and drove to the next tavern in the book, a little bar in a resort on the Chippewa Flowage. They weren’t actually open because of a big cookout they were having that afternoon, but they did let us in and even sold us a drink. We really wanted to go for a boat ride on the Chippewa Flowage, which is a big area of water full of crazy little islands, so we found a resort that would rent us a boat. It was so much fun! N.b., Travalon and I are wanderers by nature and good navigators, so we had no problem finding our way back even though this was all trees and water, no manmade landmarks to follow or maps or even GPS on our phones because we got no signal up there. If you make the trip yourself, make sure to take a good look at your surroundings so you can find your way back to where you started. Our next stop was Amnicon Falls outside of Superior, a beautiful state park full of waterfalls. We went to Duluth and saw the sun setting over the harbor. That is a very pretty town! We took a walk along the waterfront and watched the lights come up, then we drove back to Superior and went to a third tavern from the book, Thirsty Pagan Brewing. We got a flight of sour beers and their amazing pizza, and for dessert their even more amazing beer brownie served warm with ice cream. Do NOT miss this place if you go to Superior! We drove down to Rice Lake to our hotel and ended the evening with a late-night swim in their lukewarm pool.

Yesterday we spent a lot of time driving along the Chippewa River and stopping at state parks: Brunet Island, Lake Wissota (we also had a wonderful lunch right near there at a restaurant with a patio overlooking the lake), Mill Bluff, Mirror Lake (where we got there just as they were closing the canoe rental place), and Governor Nelson just before we got home. That last one was just so we could say that we went to five in one day. And now we are down to just one tavern from the book! We did have one aggravating moment in New Auburn where a train was crossing the road, and it kept stopping and going back and forth, until we finally found a path around it. Otherwise it was a safe and wonderful trip!

Famous Hat