Minnesota through Wisconsin to Michigan

September 7

We started this day with the crack of dawn. Everything was stowed in its proper place in the van, and Wendy's house was secured. We are very grateful to Wendy for her helpfulness in letting us stay here while she was elsewhere. Her generosity couldn't have come at a more crucial time in our trip. We backed out of her driveway and looked back one last time, then headed onto Minneapolis's freeways as rush-hour traffic began to back up – going into town as we were leaving in the opposite direction with open lanes and smooth sailing. Razelle remarked that we had certainly chosen the right direction to be going at this hour of the morning. We crossed the Mississippi River once more going east, knowing that this was not the last time we were due to see this river if our trip unfolds as planned.

Speaking of plans, I originally intended to head east from Minneapolis and drive all the way to Toronto. We discussed this over the past couple of days and finally, this morning, we decided that doing so might be too ambitious for the time we had left to complete all the other objectives we had planned. Reluctantly, Toronto was dropped today from the itinerary, and with it, so was any inclusion of the country of Canada in this round-the-world journey. This also meant that visiting Cleveland would not be very likely, now. I have relatives there it would have been nice to visit, but with our amended trajectory Cleveland was a bit too far off course. Detroit was never part of our original itinerary, but our new plans will take us there instead on our way to Toledo. I had intended to avoid Chicago all along and that hasn't changed.

We set a course for Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, as planned, and drove out of Minneapolis on I-35 to its intersection with US 8. We continued eastward on US 8 until we crossed into Wisconsin, our 16th state, at St. Croix Falls. Once in Wisconsin, we encountered a grand detour of US 8 that took us considerably off course before we were back on the highway of that designation. Driving through this part of Wisconsin lifted my spirits. I have always had a soft spot for this state. The deep forests and farmland we passed seemed so picturesque and ever-changing to me, but Razelle found it to be miles and miles of the same endless scenery. At some point, while Razelle dozed to avoid boredom, I noticed a collection of houses near the town of Glen Flora, WI with a collection of tables out in front of them, with a collection of interesting items arrayed upon them. A sign announced a yard sale. I turned the van around a half mile beyond this collection of curios, and returned out of curiosity for what might be on display here.

Two elderly sisters were in charge of this yard sale. We perused the contents of the tables, ostensibly to find Razelle more paperbacks to read, but soon found other things to buy. Razelle couldn't pass up a set of ceramic and cloth "Shirley Temple"-type dolls. I wandered over to a box of framed pictures and found a familiar one: a long panoramic photograph of the walled Old City of Jerusalem, as seen from the Mount of Olives. I took this framed photo over to the ladies and told them we lived an hour and a half away from where this photo was taken. A pair of angels descended from heaven would have elicited the same reaction. We were a pair of residents from the Holy Land, standing before them, interested in their "junk" as they called it. Razelle gave each of them one of our refrigerator magnets with symbols representing the same features that appeared in the framed photo. She told them to keep the photo and the magnets together from now on. We left these happy women, feeling that we had changed their day for the better.

We reached Rhinelander, WI, a place I was familiar with from my days as a staff member at Camp Ramah in Wisconsin. The closer to the summer camp we were, the more my morale picked up. I had come this way on purpose. Rhinelander is the home of a mythical woodland dragon called the "Hodag." Everything associated with this town bore the likeness of the Hodag upon it.

At the visitors' center was a large sculpture of this "fierce" creature. We posed with it. While we did, I saw a bald eagle glide overhead and I pointed it out to Razelle. I was thrilled to see this bird. I remember how rare such sightings were when I worked around here in the 1970s and 80s. This was indeed a welcome sign.

Eagle River, WI was our next destination. It looked the same as it had when I was last here in 1989. Every shop seemed to be where it had always been. It was like visiting a living time-capsule. From here I drove the familiar back roads I had walked the time I once walked all the way from camp into town, a total of 11 miles. Every turn in the road was familiar.

Finally, Camp Ramah came into view, nestled deep in the deepest North Woods of Wisconsin. This summer's session had ended several weeks ago, so driving through the gate in our van caused no disturbance. A maintenance crew was putting the finishing touches on the buildings after the kids had gone. I chatted with them a while about people and history we both knew. I was told that my nature hut and the radio shack had been moved and other buildings stood in their place. The senior maintenance man, whose name escapes me now, remembered the incident when a camper got lost in the woods and I organized a search party and we found her. We remembered Milo, the night watchman who never spoke to anyone.

I was given permission to drive around the camp in the van. I pointed out to Razelle many of the places that had had meaning to me when I worked here. We drove up the track into the forest that I used to take kids on for their nature activities. I stopped the van and walked down a familiar trail a short distance, but it had not been maintained these many years and I could only find traces of it. I found some blackberries to pick and offered them to Razelle. For a moment I was back there, in my past. I looked for the familiar clearing, but it was now a young re-growth forest. The boat landing where we had found carnivorous sundew plants was now forested too. These changes were to be expected. I was pleased that I could share this place with Razelle. She understood why.

We left Camp Ramah and headed for Conover, WI, a tiny community of only a few buildings. One of these had been a tavern run by an affable woman who used to serve us grilled cheese sandwiches. It was no longer here. We drove to within sight of the state line with Michigan. Here, just barely still within Wisconsin, we stopped for a meal at the Red Man Supper Club. The place was nearly empty when we were seated, but while we ate the place filled up with many elderly patrons, all old friends of each other. We were the youngest patrons in the place. For nostalgia's sake, I ordered a serving of walleye, a lake fish sportfishers aspire to catch in this angler's paradise. While we ate, a deer appeared in the clearing beyond the large display window. Someone with her back to the window gestured while she spoke and the deer was spooked back into the cover of the forest.

After this meal, Razelle and I entered Michigan, our 17th state. I showed her where I had solved the mystery of the "mystery light." Legend has it that a conductor was beheaded in a train accident around here and every night, during the darkest hours, his ghost can be seen carrying a lantern as he continues to search for his long-lost severed head. We passed this way in full daylight, however, so we missed seeing the ghost.

Shortly after entering Michigan, we also entered the Eastern Time Zone. This put us into the closest time zone yet to our home in Israel. Only our scheduled arrival in London will have us resetting our timepieces closer than this. Our long drive across America has finally gotten us here. We feel the circle of this round-the-world trip beginning to close upon itself. The fantasy of going around the world is one zone closer to fulfillment.

Our destination for this night was another Walmart. We found one in Marquette, MI with our GPS and drove half the length of the Upper Peninsula to get there. The Upper Peninsula is sparsely populated and the roads that traverse it are long and straight in many places. When this is so, it is obvious that the original road bed had been a railroad bed. Every so often a cluster of buildings came into view. I watched for a gas station at each of these isolated communities, worried about not finding one open this late in the evening. Finally, relieved to be able to get gas at one such community, I drove into Marquette in the dark and parked in the corner of the Walmart parking lot where a couple of other campers had stopped for the night. Labor Day has passed and the recreational vehicles are far fewer, now.

We went through the night-time routine without much ado now and settled in for another night at Walmart. The quilt Wendy had given me in Minneapolis was very nice to have this far north.