Our Trip to Iron Mountain

This is the week that I go up to Iron Mountain, Michigan with John.

John will be working, but I will be exploring and relaxing.

Since this is the last time I will get a vacation before I have to get myself in school mode, I am going to enjoy myself.

Courtney, Paul, and the girls will be coming up and staying from Wednesday to Friday.

They will be camping at Lake Antoine here in Iron Mountain.  I am looking forward to exploring this area with them, too.

Yesterday we left Watertown about 10:30 and decided that we would take a liesurely, drive up taking time to explore some of the many county parks along the way.

We had one stop to make in Oshkosh where we dropped off the hermit crabs.  It is finally time to say good bye to them and let them live in their permanent home.

We had lunch at Arby's in Oshkosh and then headed out on our adventure.

The first notable landmark was the marker that indicated that we were halfway between the North Pole and the Equator.

Who knew?  Well, actually, we knew, we have seen a marker of this sort along this same parallel (at least I think it is a parallel) in Door County.

John, being the geographer that he is, likes to take note of these kinds of things.

Our first stop was at Lake Noquebay County Park.

This park is located near Crivitz a few miles off of highway 141.

 There was a little swimming beach with some imported dark sand.

I am pretty picky when it comes to my beach sand after just returning from the best white sand in the world on St. George Island.

There were a few nice picnic spots and even with the cool temps, there were a good number of people enjoying the park.

There are wildflowers planted all along one area of the lake.

It was a nice stop for our first exploration.

We jumped back on the big highway which took us to our next stop:

This is another nice park near Middle Inlet which is not to be confused with Upper Inlet or Lower Inlet.

And we never did figure out why it was called Twin Bridge, we never saw two bridges, huh?

 This park is located on the Peshtigo River.

The River is wide and very scenic in this area.

There were lots of speed boats, tubers, and water skiers on the river near the park.

 There was again, a nice little beach where the sand seemed in a bit better shape, still not anywhere near St. George Island.

These were the steps leading down the the beach/picnic area.

It was another nice stop along the way.

Again, this park was not located too far off of the main highway.

The area is well marked and it is easy to find the park.

We had noticed the sign for Twelve Foot Falls on a previous trip to Iron Mountain and I was the most excited to stop at this park.  I really wanted to see those falls!

Well, the signage is excellent again except they do not tell you how far into the wilderness this park actually is.  To us, it felt like 100 miles, the last 50 on narrow, gravel roads.

In reality it was only a little more than 8 miles off Highway 141, but the going was so slow.  Our anticipation was big, too.

 Well, first, we had to walk to the falls.
I suppose this is to be expected, so no big surprise there.

The scenery was very pretty.
The smell of pines was wonderful.

 We got to this point and saw the falls.
See the white foam in the background, well, those are the 12 foot falls.
First off, they are not 12 feet and we have dams bigger than this in Watertown.

 No signal on my cell as I tried to text a picture.

This is the trail to the falls.

There were so many roots.

Of course, I did not have proper the proper footware which did not make the walk any easier.

John and I both decided that Twelve Foot Falls was not worth the drive, but we were again glad we went to see it so we won't have to wonder about it anymore as we pass the sign.

The falls are located way in the boonies, but the closest little town is Pembine.

At this point we were getting hungry and had almost had enough of our sight seeing tour.  Twelve Foot Falls just about did us in.

But, we pressed on and checked out Morgan County Park.

Easy to get to, just a few miles off the Highway.

More of the same as far as county parks go.

A little swimming beach, imported bad sand and a pretty picnic area.

There was a loud, obnoxious family swimming, sort of took any serenity out of the area.

The same family also had a dog named Zoey.  We know her name because the dad kept calling her when she tried to follow us.

Of course, as most dog owners, he thought we would fall all over that cute dog, but we did not.  We just kept walking.  We are not dog people.

Biggest thing is that there are signs posted all over that park, "No pet."  Why do obnoxious people always think they are above the law?

As we left Morgan Park, we saw a sign for Long Slide Falls, but we just could not do another falls so our next stop was:

We made it!

It was an adventure.

 

Later, that evening, I was checking online for the county parks we visited and there it said, "Long Slide Falls is by far the best and biggest falls in Northeaster Wisconsin."  So there you have it, we chose not to visit the best

Story of our lives...