Road Trip 2: On to Ashland

Many parts of the so-called "driftless" area of western Wisconsin have a heavenly lilt, though the specific character of the landforms changes from place to place, and it seems to me that the hills are more appealing when you're driving up through them rather than merely looking down on them from some modest rise or peak.

(Minnesota has a "driftless" zone, too, of course, but that's a subject for another time.) 

We crossed the Mississippi and were soon heading north on Highway 86, weaving our way toward Eau Claire on a narrow asphalt road past woods, pastures, middling farms, and quaint or weather-beaten towns with names like Czechville, Cream, and Praag, sitting alongside sluggish streams with fields and wooded hills rising gently on either side.

The countryside leveled out a bit as we approached Eau Claire and the suburban/industrial clutter increased. This was the world we'd left behind, though there were still rolling hills here and there, and we took advantage of the freeway and the Highway 53 corridor as far north as Bloomer. A more intense cluster of smallish hills rises north and east of there—a tongue of the Chippewa Moraine—though you can't see it until you're driving into it. It's a glacial phenomena, whereas the driftless region was formed before the last set of glaciers arrived; geologists are still pondering how and why the glaciers missed it, but I'm glad they did.

We hiked a short loop through the dappled light of the hardwood forest that surrounds the Ice Age Visitor Center, and watched three red-headed woodpeckers—which are mostly white—dart dramatically through the shadows of the forest, intent on some nesting plan or community project. It was a thrilling sight. Equally thrilling was a perfect and extended sighting of a mature male bay-breasted warbler, which we hadn't seen in four or five years. The glacier museum at the visitors' center is well worth a stop, too. 

From there we zigged and zagged through unmemorable country past Island Lake and Bruce to Ladysmith.

I have always wanted to go to Ladysmith. Why? Because for many years Hilary and I often spent weekends at her family's cabin on a small lake near the Chippewa Flowage, to the north and west, and along a brief section of the route we would invariably pass a sign that said "Fifield" and "Ladysmith." I knew nothing about either town, not even vaguely where they were located.

Now I've been to Ladysmith. It's a nice, healthy looking place with a robust main street. We ate lunch in a park overlooking the reservoir. But before long we were on the road again, traversing countryside I'd seen many times before, due to its proximity to the family cabin. The towns of Radisson, Couderay, and Ojibwe may have fine qualities, but I've never noticed them. Winter used to have a splendid landscape center run by two couples from the Netherlands. Is it still there? We didn't stop to find out. We were hungry for new territory, and soon we were deep in the Chequamegon National Forest, north of Loretta on County GG. It was the flattest, straightest highway we'd been on all day. Also the narrowest. Also the emptiest. (Also the dullest.) But we were now truly in the pine woods, and whatever may be said in defense of the prairies, hills, bluffs, and farms, you're not really in the woods.

At one point I saw an intensely dark ridge ahead of us in the distance on the highway. Is that the remnants of the Penokee Range, I asked myself. No. It was a bank of clouds, and it was coming our way carrying buckets of rain. When the downpour arrived I would have pulled over but a) there was no shoulder to pull over onto, and b) there was no one else on the road, anyway. I finally found a wide spot at the stop sign in Clam Lake Junction, just as the pea-sized hail arrived.

Twenty minutes later the sky grew lighter, and we continued north on GG to Mellen, and on to Ashland.

ASHLAND

Ashland sits on the shores of Lake Superior, which sounds nice. Then again, so does the much larger city of Superior, little more than an hour to the west down Highway 2. Yet neither city has a great reputation as a holiday destination.

Approaching Ashland from the west, you find yourself on a causeway of sorts, crossing the mouth of an undistinguished body of water called Fish Creek, with a string of motels to your left obscuring the big lake and a vast swamp filled with muddy brown water to your right. Soon the antique power plant comes into view, towering over the bay. On a gray day it can be a dismal entry indeed, and it's hardly improved by the sight of a big white box of a multi-story hotel, recently restored, on the waterfront right in the center of town, dominated by its more than ample parking lot.

That had been our impression on previous visits. But on this trip we emerged from the south, dropping down out of the woods from the long ridge of the Penokee Hills. The sky was clearing and the air was cool and fresh. On the way into town we took a spin around the campus of Northland College—a small collection of mostly brick buildings, nice if not quite venerable. There weren't many students around, but a woman's soccer match was in progress out on the pitch, and for a split-second, it occurred to me that it might be fun to watch.  

Our cabin was a gem, situated in the woods a few miles east of town looking out across Chequamegon Bay toward the distant Bayfield Peninsula. The forest had been soaked by the rain, it smelled like a piece of the North Woods, which, of course, it was. Once we'd settled in we drove to a nearby public boat landing where we spotted some ducks out beyond the breakwater: redheads, golden eye, and at least six common mergansers. A Caspian tern (I think) flew by. The surface of the lake was calm and the sight of the ducks bobbing gently on the incoming swells in late afternoon light was like something out of a dream.

Then it was into town, where we picked up a pizza and a few other things for dinner at the supermarket. On a leisurely drive down main street we spotted several cafés, a bakery, a pasty shop, a few vintage clothing shops with names like Bargain Hut and Solstice Clothing, and two old fashioned furniture stores. That's rare. We'd passed a Walmart on the west side of town coming in, but these local businesses seemed to be holding their own!

We admired the numerous murals, each of which depicts actual citizens of Ashland in various occupational or service groupings, and Hilary read to me from a brochure about the women who painted them.

At the downtown boat landing we parked and took a walk along the pier, looking for shorebirds. A middle-aged couple were making a fuss at the ramp. He was in the cab of the pick-up truck with boat and trailer behind. She was holding a rope from the boat alongside the pier, yelling, "Stop! Stop! Stop!" I thought they were having trouble pulling the boat up out of the water, and almost volunteered to help. But a few minutes later, as we returned from the breakwater, the boat had vanished out to sea and the woman was driving away in the truck.

Our little cottage has been given the name Norrsken Scandinavian Cottage by the owners, and it was a perfect spot to relax at the end of a driving day, though a merlin seemed to be nesting in the pined behind the place, and it shrieked again and again during the evening, as merlins do.

After finishing off the slightly doughy, vegetable-topped pizza we'd bought, I put Gould's Goldberg Variations—the 1981 version—on the stereo, settled into the couch, and pulled a book by the Sung poet Su Tung-p'o out of the book bag.

Sixth month, twenty-seventh day. Drunk at Lake Watch Tower, wrote five poems.

 

Black clouds — spilled ink half blotting out the hills;

pale rain — bouncing beads that splatter in the boat.

Land-rolling wind comes, blasts and scatters them:

below Lake Watch Tower, water like sky.   

 

Looking out at the broad expanse of Chequamagon Bay, I noticed that the wind had changed—it was now coming in from the northeast—and the fog was lowering, obscuring the heights of the Bayfield Peninsula.

_____________________________

 It's nice to have a base for a day or two. We started our excursion the next morning in town at the Black Cat Coffeehouse, a narrow, wood-paneled joint with a small collection of used books for sale in the backroom, courtesy of the exemplary Chequamagon Bay Bookstore in nearby Washburn. The service was slow—someone must have called in sick—and the latte wasn't terribly hot, but the hazy morning sun was streaming in through the front windows and a low hum of animated conversation filled the room.

The Black Cat Coffeehouse, as seen from the bakery

We'd been to the Black Cat on several previous visits, but the Ashland Bakery, right across the street, came as a big surprise. The interior was warm and sparking, and it smelled pleasantly of butter and Parmesan cheese. The glass cases to the left as we entered were loaded with savory breads and pies rather than confections. The pert, middle-aged woman behind the counter cheerfully helped us with our croissants and pain-au-chocolate. You could see one or two bakers in the open room behind her preparing loaves for the ovens. It was like something out of a movie, almost too classy for a town like Ashland to support, and I thought, "I hope this place make it." I later read online that it's been going strong for twenty years and ships its products as far afield as Grand Marais and Virginia, MN.

Our morning walks were fruitful. At Maslowski Beach on the west side of town we came upon a solitary sandpiper, and at the Upper Great Lakes Visitor Center nearby we spotted four different sparrows almost on the same bush—white-crowned, Harris, clay-colored, and savannah. But the big thrill was watching a pair of snipe chasing each other around a field near the marsh.

In Prentice Park, where you can fill your water bottles at the artesian wells, we struck up a conversation with a man with a two-day stubble wearing a hunting jacket and a baseball cap with an American flag printed on the bill. He didn't look like a birder, but he had binoculars and a notebook. He told us he would be leading a walk at the upcoming bird festival. "We sometimes see a least bittern sitting right on this bridge," he said. (I haven't seen one in fifteen years.) "And over by that birch tree on the path looking out across the slough. That's where we sometimes see the Virginia rails." Wow.  He suggested that if we were looking for warblers, we might want to try to Bayfield fish hatchery, where they could often be seen snatching bugs above the ponds behind the barn.

A few gravel roads south into the hills  took us to the trailhead for St. Peter's Dome. A huge parking lot, nobody there. We hiked in to Morgan Falls on a spur trail, then continued on the main trail half-way to St. Peter's Dome. They say the views are spectacular from up top, but we had other fish to fry and decided to leave that for another trip.

The Bayfield fish hatchery ponds were a dud, bird-wise, but the small museum of Lake Superior aquatic life in the hatchery barn was fascinating.  I have never quite nailed down the proper succession of fish species from smelt to lamprey to Como salmon to herring as the big lake reeled from one population  crisis to the next, but I gave it another try.

We had a decent dinner at the Deep Water Grille, made more memorable by the pink neon lighting and the several multi-generational families sitting nearby, with kids shouting and crawling all over the chairs.

How peaceful it seemed a few minutes later down at the waterfront, where we watched a few of the locals wading out into the bay with long fishing poles in search of sport.

"And what about the Porcupine Mountains?" you may ask. Yes, we drove east the following afternoon through Hurley and on into Michigan. We explored the harbors of the Black and Presque Isle rivers, both of which were lovely, mostly deserted, and more than a little enchanting. A highlight was the hike we took upstream along the bank of the Black River through a mature hemlock forest from one impressive waterfall to the next, with the afternoon sun illuminating the sparse vegetation amid the shadows of the forest floor.

But a hemlock forest soon grows monotonous, and the interface between hills lake was abrupt: you were either on the coast or deep in the woods. Our rental cabin was clean, cozy, and cheap, but it was situated in the midst what seemed to be a backwoods community of charmless vacation cottages, perhaps occupied by people who dined on venison most of the year. Pickup trucks were parked in every driveway, and large silver propane tanks were scattered seemingly everywhere you looked.

We heated up the pasties we’d bought in Ashland, and spent a comfortable evening reading. 

But the double bed turned out to be less than firm and unusually short. In the morning I said, “Well, I guess it beats camping.”

Hilary said, “I was wondering how to bring that subject up.”

I said, “Well, we don’t have to stay two nights. We’ve seen what we came to see.” So we packed up and left, enjoyed another day exploring both urban and rural features of Chequamegon Bay, and camped in the Washburn Municipal Campground that night.