Apostle Islands Boat Tour and More!

 This year my husband and I celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary.  Because of a huge home improvement project and another undisclosed reason (see this post HERE if you missed it), we didn't take a huge vacation but we did go to both Wisconsin and Minnesota's North Shore for a few days.  

We have lived in our home for twenty five years, and have spent very little time visiting the North Shore, and I don't know why, because it is so close to home and the beauty is incredible.  I think we always feel we have to get in the car and drive for two days to see anything worthwhile, but that is so not the case as you will see today and in the next few weeks as I continue this travel series.

The North Shore is a huge area because it goes around Lake Superior and through three states.  You could never even cover all the ground in one vacation.  For our three day vacation we traveled to Bayfield, Wisconsin, where we took our boat tour, and then onto Duluth, Minnesota, and then to Sister Bay.

I've been to Bayfield several times before (see these posts HERE and HERE) but I have never taken one of their famous Apostle Islands Boat rides until now.  I always wanted to because I heard nothing but wonderful things, but for whatever reason I never made the time for it.  But because it was our 35th anniversary and we wanted to do something special, I made the time.

I wore my nautical tee "Always Go Overboard" just for the occasion.  It was a beautiful day with calm waters.  Everyone kept saying how rare it is to have such nice calm waters on Lake Superior.

We had a man sit in front of us who had on a sweatshirt of the Apostle Islands.  We took advantage of his map as the tour guide identified each island on the tour as we passed by. 😀

The Apostle Islands are a group of 22 small islands in Lake Superior near the city of Bayfield, Wisconsin. They are famous for their sandstone cliffs, sea caves and stacks, windows and arches, and lighthouses.

The boat tour is about 2 1/2 hours long and there is an upper and lower deck.  It was a beautiful, warm sunny day so we sat on the upper deck.

This is an example of "Windows and Arches".  Waves, freezing, and thawing undercut rock  and windows and arches form.  They will last until the rock framing them collapses.

Ice, wind, and the unrelenting lake waves create sea caves.

Here's a short video of the sea caves:

There are seven lighthouses in the Apostle Islands, but I only remember seeing two of them.  This one is Devil's Island Lighthouse.

There are other tours from Bayfield that you can take which stop on some of these islands and you can get out and tour the area.

This may not look like a lighthouse, but it is.  Notice the top of the white building?  That's the lighthouse.  This one is called Raspberry Island Lighthouse.

You don't go past all the islands on the tour, or you'd be out on the lake all day.  After two and a half hours, I had enough anyway.  I think we saw about six islands up close and viewed the others from quite a distance.

Below is the town of Bayfield.

The Bayfield Harbor.

After our boat tour, we were starving so we had lunch at a restaurant right in the town of Bayfield.  All the restaurants serve fish right out of Lake Superior, so that is what we both ordered for lunch.  The fish was so fresh and delicious!

After lunch we got back in the car and started heading to Duluth, Minnesota where we would spend the night.  On the way there we saw this cute little fishing town so we stopped to take a peek.

All these buildings were little gift shops but unfortunately they were already closed for the season.  I did enjoy walking around outside though and got lots of cute ideas.

I loved this little raised veggie garden.

Duluth Minnesota is only about three hours from my house, we have been there many times before but it's always a treat to go there.  They are famous for their lift bridge which is very unique because it doesn't open like most water bridges do but it lifts up.  I did this video of it years ago.

After we checked into our hotel, we walked across the lift bridge to walk around Canal Park and get some dinner.

Canal Park is a beautiful spot in Duluth with a lovely river walk and it has loads of nice restaurants and gift shops.

There's a popular spot on the shore line where teens like to swim out and dive off of called "The Cribs".  They swim out to this over-turned old dock, and into one of the openings, then they climb up to the top and dive off.  It looks so dangerous to me, and there have been deaths and it is "unapproved" to swim there, yet they do it anyway.  Every time we are in Duluth, we see teenagers diving off of "The Cribs".

After watching the teenagers risk their lives, we continued on our walk.

Of course we had to take a 35th wedding anniversary selfie.

 

We were both still stuffed from our late fish lunch, so we split a fajita dinner at a Mexican restaurant.  We ate outside, in the warm moonlight.  It was so romantic.

I will be continuing this travel series for the next three or four weeks as there was a lot more to see and do on Wisconsin and Minnesota's North Shore.

Have A Great Day!  Amy

Linking Up with these Fabulous Blogs HERE!

Bayfield, Wisconsin

This is a continuation of a travel series of a camping trip I took with my family back in July.  To start at the beginning, go HERE.  The rest of the posts, in chronological order, are HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE.

In last week's travel post I mentioned that on the final day of our camping trip we had grown a little tired of hiking in the woods and looking at waterfalls.  We then decided to have a "City Day" on our last day of vacation.  We spent the morning in Ashland and taking the Ashland Mural Walk, then we drove thirty minutes to Bayfield, Wisconsin.

Bayfield,  Wisconsin is a cute little port town located on Lake Superior.  Most people go to Bayfield to catch the ferry to Madeline Island or to take one of the many wonderful Apostle Islands Boat Tours.  Since we only had a few hours, we were there just to enjoy their pretty little town, museums, and lake views.

Like most tourist towns, Bayfield is filled with cute little gift shops and restaurants in historic, old buildings.

This beautiful old building is the Bayfield Library.

What makes Bayfield so beautiful and also unique, is that they not only have all the cute houses and historic buildings characteristic of most small towns, but they also have beautiful views of Lake Superior wherever you look.

See the blue water in the picture above and below?

I always like to have a little pick-me-up in the afternoon so I was thrilled to discover this quaint coffee shop.  I love the old refrigerator in the corner.

I love all these fun store fronts.

Many of the restaurants take advantage of the scenic views by having roof top dining, or dining outside.

The town is built into a hill, so as you walk away from the water and up into the residences, you get more spectacular views.

This is the back of a ferry heading out of port and towards Madeline Island.

Here I am standing on one of the piers overlooking the Madeline Island Ferry as it boards cars.

There's another large, wide, cement pier where a lot of boats dock and pedestrians love to stroll on.

There are so many pretty sailboats.  This is a great place to just go and watch the boats come and go.

This fun bicyclist was riding on the pier.

Bayfield  City Hall.

My favorite thing about Bayfield, other than the gorgeous lake views and cute town buildings, was that they had two museums, both FREE to the public.  I really appreciate free or reduced cost museums.  This museum is located near the lake shore for it's the Maritime Museum.  It contains all the 150 years of Bayfield's maritime history.  It features commercial fishing and boat building exhibits as well as exhibits on lighthouses, sailor crafts, shipwrecks, and much more.

The other free museum in town is located right across the street from the library.  It's called The Heritage Center.  They were pressure washing the exterior of the building when we were there so they could repaint it.

This museum shared all the history and culture of the Bayfield area.  Our favorite part was looking at all the pictures of a great flood that almost destroyed the entire town.

When visiting old towns, we love to walk the neighborhood streets and see all the old churches and magnificent old homes.

The church below is Christ Episcopal Church.  It was built in 1870 and was designed in the Victorian Gothic and Carpenter Gothic architectural styles.

This building is The Apostle Islands National Lake Shore Headquarters.  It  just closed for the day when we arrived so I can't tell you much about it.  The building is magnificent though isn't it?

This gorgeous historic home is called Le Chateau.    It is a bed and breakfast now, but it was originally built for a lumber baron.

And finally, this was another church building I thought was absolutely stunning.   I just love the brick work.  Unfortunately,  I couldn't find more information on this church.

And that concludes this travel series for our trip to Bayfield was the very last day of our July vacation.  I did plan on doing a special "Gardens of Bayfield "post on Sunday, because there were so many beautiful gardens in this town.  In fact, I've never seen a town filled with so many beautiful gardens!  I think everyone who lives here must be a master gardener!  I also wanted to talk about another little town called Hayward that we briefly stopped at on our journey home...so maybe I'm not quite done with this little travel series yet! :)

Have a Great Day!  Amy

Linking Up with these Fabulous Blogs HERE and Travel Tuesday!