Trip back from Upper Peninsular, Michigan - August 11-12

August 11 – After spending the night in Houghton, Michigan, on the Upper Peninsula, we departed Sunday morning about 8:30 am in partly cloudy weather with temperatures in the 50s.  We headed south to US highway 45 into Wisconsin into the Land O’ Lakes area.  We drove through pine forests south through Eagle River and Rhinelander – hunting and fishing activities from the signs we saw.  This is Hiawatha country. 

We continued south through Tomahawk to Wausau where we headed east on Wisconsin highway 29, a fast moving four-lane highway.  In the little town of Abbotsford we stopped at The Medo’s restaurant for lunch.  It was nothing special but large portions of mid-west favorites like meatloaf, potatoes, steaks, potatoes, ham, potatoes and so forth.  Did I mention potatoes?  The food was good and their home-made pies added a little extra.  To our waistlines too.

The area from Wausau to Chippewa Falls transits the middle of Wisconsin and is very agricultural looking.  There are lots of dairy farms with Holstein cows, some corn fields, big barns with several silos, and a fair amount of Amish people.  We saw the Amish horse and buggies, young Amish boys and girls riding bicycles, the boys in black slacks, white shirts, and straw hats, the girls in long dresses.  One horse and buggy was on the shoulder of the highway while cars and trucks passed at 70 mph.  We also came across several cheese shops and had to visit one.  In fact we stopped at the first one we saw which was called Nasonville Dairy.  Two cute farmer’s daughters ran the shop and they had cheddar cheese aged from one year in increments up to 13 years old.  We bought four different kinds of cheese to take back with us on the airplane. 

Around 3:30 pm we pulled into Minnesota taking the ring road around St. Paul and Minneapolis to our hotel near the airport.  It was a long day’s drive and we were ready to crash.  One last task was to turn in the rental car at the airport and catch the shuttle bus back to the hotel where we kicked off our shoes and relaxed.  In fact we ordered Chinese food in and didn’t go out any more.

August 12 – After a good night’s sleep we had plenty of time to relax, eat breakfast and clean up before catching the hotel shuttle to the airport around noon.  We had a light lunch before boarding our flight that departed about 2:00 pm and arrived in Austin about 4:15 pm.  We took the shuttle bus to where our car was parked and it started up just fine.  But it sure seemed hot in Austin.  Hell, it was hot!  We had less traffic than expected and stopped at a Tex-Mex restaurant for dinner, then at the grocery store to pick up basic necessities of food.  We arrive home about 7:30 pm and all looked fine.  I filled up the hummingbird feeders and was immediately greeted by hungry hummers.  Same with the other bird feeder as well.  We were missed.