Apostle Islands - Day1

The Apostle Islands National Lakeshore is a US National Lakeshore consisting of 21 islands (Apostle Islands) and shoreline on the northern tip of Wisconsin on the shore of Lake Superior. It is known for its collection of historic lighthouses (called "the nation's finest"), sandstone sea caves, a few old growth remnant forests, and natural animal habitats among many other things.

After a grueling 2 months of working real long hours at work, Sushant wanted a nice break and wanted to spend some time away in a small town, without too many people around. Apostle Islands has been on my mind since some time. So after some research online, we just decided to leave for Wisconsin the next day early in the morning. We just booked a small cabin-like room and left for the long drive of 8 hours.

We started at around 5:00am in the morning. We were aiming to reach Bayfield (the place we were staying - that's the northern most tip of Wisconsin) around lunch time.
After a couple of breaks and a nice refreshing drive, listening to songs on the ipod (this is the first time I realized that a fully charged ipod can play songs for 8 hours straight). The town before Bayfield was Ashland, which we crossed and saw the population of that town was 2000 and laughed about it. Then, we reached Bayfield - the population there was 612 :)

We reached the room, it was a pokey little thing - a cabin like room - on the shore of the Lake Superior and the view from the deck was nothing less than spectacular.


We decided to walk to the town and explore the small place and also get some lunch. We had a nice lunch at a place which was decorated with flamingos all over the place. Then we decided to just walk around and decide what we wanted to do the next day. We ran into a bike shop where you could rent the bikes to get around and which could be taken to the islands on the ferry. We got into speaking with him, he was a french guy, very helpful and friendly. So we told him that I did not know how to ride a bike and all that - and he graciously just asked us to pick up any bike and try it out and learn on it for some time. So I picked up a bike, and under Sushant's tutelage in half an hour I could ride the bike :) Yippee!!


So after some time we returned the bike and went to inquire about the sea kayaking trips, which Lake Superior is very popular for. We went in and luckily there was a whole day sea kayaking trip the next day and we signed up for it.

We went back to the room and rested for some time and then after some time we got ready and started on a trail along the lake shore right outside our cabin which went directly into the town. We went in for a nice dinner, got back to the cabin and went to sleep, excited about the kayaking trip the next day.