Iron Mountain, Michigan

Choosing a place to stay often depends on whether it’s en route to another destination, if we need to catch up on domestic things or visit tourist attractions.  When an American Holiday is coming up such as Memorial Day, 4th July or Labor Day, we have to book well in advance because many places have been booked for a year and it’s hard to find somewhere at the last minute. That’s why we found Iron Mountain and “Summer Breeze Campground” in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. 

The owner, Carole, managed to find a site long enough for our vehicles, even though they were fully booked.  Once we arrived, her husband, Jerry, asked if we’d like to check out  the site in his golf-cart (that’s the usual mode of transport around campgrounds for the owners and workers).  There wasn’t much room for three of us and no room at the back, so he said I’d probably have to sit on Howard’s lap and added “I’ll bet this is the most fun Howard’s had in some time!”  Cheeky monkey - but it was funny. 

Trillium in the woods

We found a lovely wooded site but having  inclement weather stayed on for a fifth night to let the storm pass.  

We also took out three DVD’s from Family Video and couldn’t believe their special deal for being a new customer, only $1.00 for all three.  One of the DVDs was “Saving Private Ryan” - what a perfect film for Memorial Day - the ending made me weep.

At the Welcome Center in Iron Mountain, we met a charming young girl called Lea, who was very happy to help us and gave us two large bagfuls of brochures, each for the Upper and Lower Peninsula.  The two parts of the state are divided by the five mile long Mackinac Bridge dividing Lake Huron and Lake Michigan.  I’d heard that people from the UP were called “Yoopers” so I asked her if that was true and if so was there a name for people in the Lower Peninsula.  She said yes “they’re called Trolls because they live under the Bridge”.  This was just hilarious and we thought it incredibly funny, but she did add that some people were offended by this, especially if they lived south of the Bridge.  Really!  It’s good for people to laugh at themselves sometimes.  I usually laugh at my own jokes because no-one else does. 

Muldoons in Munising, MI

We ate lunch at a local restaurant called  “Family Kitchen” and their Wisconsin cheese and potato soup was so good that we went back another day. They also made their own garlic bread - mmmmm.  

We didn’t visit the Cornish Pump Museum or the Iron Mine but I now understand why the pasty (pronounced pastee) is so well known here because when the tin mines gave out in the west of England the miners from Cornwall arrived in the UP and made this particular hand-held meat and potato pie so popular that there are now specialized Pasty Shops.  This one was in Munising, our next stop.

Eau Galle Cheese Factory, Wisconsin

Howard and I really enjoy driving through rolling hills and wide open country and we especially liked the center part of Wisconsin with its many dairy farms on lush green acres of land dotted with black and white Holstein cows.  Maybe it reminds me of some parts of the English countryside.

We were very fortunate to have had a privileged private tour of the Eau Galle (pronounced O Galley) cheese factory with Bob, after I’d called a couple of days before to ask if we could take a tour. They no longer do tours but he kindly offered to show us around himself.  Bob is the Plant and Office Manager and he knew the factory inside out and we knew how proud he was of it as he explained the process of cheese making as we passed the enormous, shining, stainless steel tanks that hold thousands of gallons of milk and cream, saw tanks of curds being separated from the whey and gazed into the huge drying room of parmesan cheese wheels, each weighing about 22 lbs and watched the man whose job it was to turn each one and test them for moisture content. 

They use 500,000 pounds of fresh milk each day five days a week and must use the milk within three days of delivery although Bob told us that most of the milk is processed the same day and is constantly tested for quality assurance. Cheese is also sold according to age, texture and strength of flavor. They produce “over 9 million pounds of Parmesan, Asiago and Romano cheese each year, including some organic”. 

Eau Galle Cheese Factory, Durand, Wisconsin

The history of the factory and founding of it by Leo Buhlman, whose son now operates it, is well written on their web site where they also have a mail order catalog of an amazing array of cheeses and gifts boxes. We spent some time after our tour in the extraordinary gift shop where they sell cheeses from around the world and delightful craft and Christmas items which are also shown in their online brochure. By gosh it was hard to choose but we didn’t leave without purchasing some of their own parmesan and asiago cheeses.  

We also picked up a guide of the varieties of cheeses that are made in Wisconsin and we counted 33.  This very useful brochure shows glossy photos of each type of cheese with a description of the taste and how it can be used.

It was only after we left that I realized I hadn’t taken a single photo of our tour or of Bob or written down any of the exact details and amazing statistics that he had related to us of the whole process of cheese making.  What a shame.  No wonder that theirs is one of the finest, family owned and operated cheese factories in the state of Wisconsin.

Minnesota to Wisconsin

It seemed to us that whichever way we decided to travel north or east, bad weather was ahead of us for the next five days showing more rain and thunderstorms, so we stayed longer than we wanted to in Minnesota.  We found it quite difficult both in Minnesota and Wisconsin to find sites that were big enough for our rig and truck, especially if we only wished to stay for one night and not unhitch.  The roads were mostly well maintained  here and this is typical of one of the good roads in MN.  These northern states have heavy snowfall during winter and we saw snowmobile crossing signs for the first time.

Many of the huge casinos located mostly in Indian Nation Territory now have RV resorts along with Hotels and many self-contained RVers are allowed to park free in certain areas for some nights.  Although we are self-contained, we neither have a generator nor solar to power our electricity so we nearly always park with hook-ups at least for electric and water.  Not finding another campground available, we stayed at Grand Casino in Hinckley, near the border of Wisconsin for a few nights. 

Grand Casino and RV Park, Hinckley, MN

Often casino RV parks are cheaper to stay in than private ones. Although the larger casinos often have a variety of restaurants including huge buffets, we found a really pleasant restaurant just down the road, called Tobie’s, which was also a bakery (they’re just so hard to resist) and had a great breakfast before leaving the state and naturally had to buy some of their homemade wheat-raisin bread and a couple of donuts. 

Madison, South Dakota - our “home”

From Nebraska we drove north into South Dakota to visit our “home town” of Madison again and to pick up our mail. Terri has been mailing our letters, magazines and packages ever since we started full-timing and has been truly efficient.  We just email her to let her know to which address she needs to mail our stuff and we usually get a response the same day to say when it has been sent.  She now handles mail for 1,800 boxes.

The Post Office is very convenient because it’s right across the road and the mail is delivered to her in large, wheeled containers.  Also a block away is the County Court House, a large square building built in 1935 in the Art Deco style.

Lake County Courthouse, Madison, SD 

Sometimes we can pick up mail from an RV park if we stay there for some days and if not, we can pick it up at a post office when we go through one of the towns on our travels when it’s sent to our name c/o General Delivery. Our mail has been delivered this way for almost four years now and we’ve never had a problem with it.

 Old Railroad Depot, now the Tourist Information Center

At the 2nd Street diner later, where we had a superb lunch (all home-made food), we'd brought in our atlas and laptop deciding where to stay that night.  We mentioned to the waitress which road we were taking and she informed us that that particular highway was flooded and it would be best to go via the interstate, which we did.  So, the muskrats were right, eh?

Watery Homes

Sometimes we see things along the way that we just have to ask questions about and along the Nebraska and South Dakota highways, we saw a lot of standing water; some like small lakes and others long gullies alongside the roads but nearly always with corn stubble, reeds or rushes nearby.  In these waters we saw mounds that had obviously been built by some animal or other. 

muskrat mounds along the road in South Dakota

We found out what they were when we stayed at a near the small town of Salem. (There are many towns or cities called Salem in north America). The owner and her daughter were very knowledgeable about the little critters, called muskrats, sometimes known as marsh rats, and they’re very similar to beavers with their little flattened tails although a great deal smaller, about two feet in length including their tail, and their homes are also called lodges.

photo by D. Gordon E. Robertson, PhD 

of a muskrat swimming in the Rideau River, Canada

When the muskrats build their dens higher than usual in the Fall (Autumn), it’s a good indication that there will be more rain and snow than usual.  The amazing instincts of animals are usually right and northern America had huge amounts of rain and snowfall this year. 

Muskrats eat mainly water plants and small water creatures but also eat crops so farmers aren’t too keen on them and trapping is still legal. They also burrow into river banks eroding the edges or damage dikes and dams. But, they’re beneficial for other animals too because they leave open water for ducks or geese so that their abandoned dens are often used as homes for other animals. We read later that muskrats were introduced to Europe in the early 20th Century for their thick, glossy and warm pelts.