This past weekend J and I celebrated our 5 year wedding anniversary! To celebrate we took a trip up to Bayfield Wisconsin/Madeline Island.
We left on Friday around 2:30pm after we dropped off Kirra and Tyler with the in-laws.
We stopped along the Namekagon river a few times to snap photos and check out canoe trips for the future. Around 6pm or so we finally pulled into our Cottage. Woodside Cottages. Coincidently and no prior planning these are the same cottages J’s co-workers stay in every winter. Soon we met our cabin hosts who might just be the sweetest people on earth. Gary – gave us the area run down and a few pointers…and even called us dinner reservations.
We got situated in the room and were off to downtown Bayfield to take a quick look at things before dinner and buy some wine.
Dinner was at Wild Rice Restaurant. My new favorite place ever! The food and atmosphere were simply to die for. Jason had Bison with prosciutto wrapped asparagus, and I had Whitefish and Trout.
Saturday we woke up and headed up to the Apostle Islands Golf Course. We decided to play just 9 holes since we still wanted to head over to Madeline Island via bicycle. We unfortunately got caught behind a group that took 3… yes THREE hours to play 9 holes. We couldn’t even believe it. When we got back to the club house we mentioned something to management so they bought us a free round at the clubhouse.
Finally – around 3pm we were off for Madeline Island. We got on the ferry and went exploring. Our first stop was Tom’s Burned down Cafe,however they had no bathrooms so we headed to Grandpa Tony’s instead. There we had some pizza and then headed off to Big Bay State Park looking for cliffs. We found no cliffs, but the beach was kind of pretty… but crowded,so we headed off into the woods for a little hike to the lagoon.
The hike would have been better… if we were wearing appropriate footwear, and had mosquito repellent on. The path wasn’t really a path…it was just a barely there path that you could kind of decipher. I put J in charge of deciphering where to go. Meanwhile I was getting eaten alive by mosquitos and deer flies. It was just awful. I just wanted to take a bath in Benadryl gel. We eventually found the lagoon, but still had about a mile to hike in, so we gave up after 35 minutes of hiking and headed back. On our way back we saw Darla the deer!
We biked back and went back to Toms Burned Down Cafe for a drink. They do not lack in alcohol or skimp at all on Madeline Island!!! We headed back towards the ferry, but it had just taken off so we went to the Beach Club for another cocktail where they again didn’t disappoint. Plus their views of Lake Superior was amazing!
Sadly it was time to get back to Bayfield but we decided to come back each year on our anniversary weekend. We got in and headed to some hotel bar that had a huge deck overlooking Lake Superior. We stayed there for several hours abandoning our cares of riding our bikes back to the cottage in the dark (I had a back light at least).
We were starting to get hungry but unfortunately we weren’t finding any food.
Finally we found Morts Pub a hole in the wall bar that had so-so food, but I wasn’t completely sober so it didn’t bother me too much. I even tried to play the piano at the bar,and did a so-so job…. but again… I wasn’t completely sober…. 🙂
Today we woke up late and packed up to drive the four hours back home. It was a wonderful trip and I can’t wait to go back again next year!!!!
Little Blessed Life 