I lived in Ann Arbor from 1973 to 1976, but I never made it to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It’s a remote, quiet area. A paradise for hunters and fishers, I suppose, if you like that sort of thing. We just…
Bayfield, Wisconsin
This was a gem of a little place we stumbled upon. A small harbor town of just a few hundred, but a popular destination for Midwest tourists. It’s on the northern tip of Wisconsin, next to the Apostle Islands. We…
Herbster, Wisconsin
We crossed over into Wisconsin late in the day and found this little campground in a little town right on Lake Superior. We got there in time to see the sun set into the lake, and we sat for a…
Grand Marais, Minnesota
Our friend Kathleen’s grandniece was named Marais after this northern Minnesotan village, and Kathleen’s sister and her partner sang its praises. It sits way up near the Canadian border, on the shore of Lake Superior. If there was one other…
The Glensheen Mansion
Kate was driving us through Duluth, Minnesota when she spotted this mansion from the road and a sign that said tours were available. Kat e loves outlandish old houses, so she pulled right in to the parking lot, and we…
Minneapolis, Minnesota
It’s hard to leave friends behind for a year, and it’s great when you can connect up with people halfway across the country. When our neighbor Kathleen planned a trip to Minneapolis to visit her family, she asked if we…
Maplewood State Park, Minnesota
Maplewood State Park is a huge, beautiful park near Pelican Rapids. It’s a popular drive-through in the fall when its maple forests are in full color. The park includes several lakes and lots of campgrounds, but only one of campgrounds…
Pelican Rapids, Minnesota
We’d driven through this town on our way to Loon Lake and noticed that they were having their annual Pelican Festival that weekend. We also noticed that they had a small city park with campsites. So when we’d had our…
Loon Lake, Minnesota
After our overnight at Walmart in Fergus Falls, we needed to find a comfortable place to set up for a while so I could get some work done and Kate could do some quilting. We found a place in the…
South Dakota
I’d never been to either of the Dakotas, so we decided to dip into the eastern portion of the states on our way north, then maybe go up to Canada for a few days before we met our friends in…
Fort Dodge, Iowa
We left Grinnell on the 5th and headed northwest. We had a week before we’d meet our friends in Minnesota, and we thought we’d drive through North and South Dakota (two of the eight states I’ve never been to) and get up…
Grinnell, Iowa
Grinnell is a bucolic little college town nestled in a sea of cornfields in southwest Iowa. My family moved there when I was four and stayed until I was 12. Back then, its population was 7,000. It’s grown a little…