You never know who you'll meet

So finally three weeks after we crossed over the Michigan border from Indiana we finally made our way out the other side... though I’m not sure Michigan wanted us to go. Not even an hour before we crossed the Wisconsin border one of our outside rear tires shredded. Luckily we had a spare that was in decent shape and, more importantly, full of air, so before long we were back on the road and heading for the border whether Michigan liked it or not. We didn’t leave, though, before picking up a U.P. specialty, the one and only pasty (it’s PAH-STEE, not PAY-STREE, not PAY-STEE). A pasty is basically a dough pocket, similar to a small stromboli in appearance, but instead of a pizza dough it was wrapped in a pie crust, and filled with meat, potatoes, onions and carrot or rutabaga. We heard that rutabaga was better so rutabaga it was. I’m not sure when the pasty was invented (the place we got them from has been making the same recipe since 1946) but in the U.P. it was originally made for the miners to take into the shafts. Because they didn’t have any way to wash their hands they could hold the pasty by the thick end and eat down to their knuckles and then toss out the end they held with their sooty hands without getting their food dirty. Although I definitely did enjoy it and recommend it to anyone who happens upon pasty country, the hoopla behind its specificity to the U.P. and the stories behind its creation may exceed the product itself. But, as I said, it’s not to be missed if you’re traveling through.

So out of pasty country and into cheese country…Wisconsin. The only state that I know of that uses letters to represent local roads (take the double D to the intersection at double S, make a right and two miles down the road make a left onto Q). We picked up some local cheese, as well as beer (I heard that Wisconsin’s a good party state), and headed off to Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest to hang out beside Emily Lake.



Unfortunately we weren’t alone with the millions of mosquitos that insisted on joining us for the party. It’s something you expect in this area but as someone once told me “they will make a sane man mad.” As long as we were moving they were tolerable and being that we travel in a self-contained land yacht, well, idle times were spent very comfortably indoors.
The lake wasn’t very large but it was beautiful. Blue gills were the local catch and the water lilies littered the surface.




There were even two taunting common loons that would swim by the site as if to say “look at me” and just when you would grab the camera and focus in on the oil slick black birds they would dive under the water only to reappear 100 feet away, well out of the capacity of our entry level camera.

After a few days we proceeded to meander our way south toward the town of Eau Claire (pronounced O’Claire, of French descent. Eau meaning water, Claire meaning clear—translated as Clearwater) which was the ideal three hour drive that we’ve been trying to maintain. You have to go easy on the Ultrastar...she’s 21 years old, you know.
Going on the advice of a local woman we traveled southeast of Eau Claire and found Elmer’s



It was originally a soybean field that Elmer harvested but would also allow people to post camp on the property during the summertime. After years of prodding, in 1966 Elmer took the advice of his loyal camping followers, tilled under the soybeans and started Elmer’s Camping and Overnite Trailer Park. Campers caught on and soon thereafter suggested that Elmer should plant grass, so he planted grass. Then they suggested that he plant trees, so he planted trees. Then people rolled out their Astroturf which killed the grass and pulled their tall campers under the trees only to complain that the branches were too low and should be cut back. I guess you truly can’t please them all. We read that there was a downtown farmers market the next day and it just so happened to be my birthday so we thought that we might as well stay a couple of days and get comfortable.
The next morning we set out for the Eau Claire Wednesday morning market to stock up on supplies. It was a real nice market, fairly new, on the bank of the Chippewa River. Apparently it used to be a run-down warehouse district but was recently converted into Pheonix Park. The market supported probably 35 vendors, most of which had the same veggie selection (which makes sense) but it was busy the entire time and everyone seemed pretty excited with its presence in the community. An older man, his daughter-in-law and his grandson even sang “happy birthday” to me on our way out of the market. Slightly embarrassing but cool to reinforce the idea that it doesn’t matter if you don’t know anyone, no one’s ever really a stranger.