North Woods

They call north Wisconsin the North Woods and they are being slightly coy as they stretch for many miles, primeval forests....And apparently parked school buses used as advertising billboards.  We paused here to consult our oracle: the book of paper charts. 

Rusty likes to jump out of the van every time the engine is turned off. He actually scrabbles at the side door to be let out. It gives the impression he is not so keen on van travel but I think the rewards are starting to pay off for this stay at home stray dog.

One of our traveling pleasures that has been denied us on this coronavirus journey is the slow exploration of local groceries which frequently reveal much about local culture. These massive jars of spices held some attraction for my wife who doesn't jar or can as a rule but is getting into pickling vegetables.

I don't  think cheese curds agreed with us as a short while after having a slice of curd with bacon we were fighting each other to get to the porta-potty. They really do squeak when you bite them which is disconcerting and as much as I try to  like them they still don't do much for me. I had them on poutine in Canada with not much more success I fear. I love cheese but not curds.

Mask wearing was iffy and distancing was not much good either so we were glad to get in and out before crowds built. 

Pondering choices and how to store them...van life with a small fridge. Actually it is really quite fun being able to buy foods for a fridge and freezer while on the road.

We did see a Harley distribution center or something on the edge of town, a place they call Tomahawk very pretty and neat and among it all I really quite liked the billboard:

Wisconsin seems to have a very refined civic sense in most small towns, and summer brings out beauty and no roadside trash. I rather envy them their style.

Curds no but cheese yes. She wore a mask though other customers didn't so we tried to avoid them as we picked up several smelly cheeses including brick cheeses which used to be formed with bricks. Makes sense. That and a bottle of red wine and a garlic laced summer sausage and dinner was set.

In summer pretty, in winter I'm told it can be harsh. Won't be here to find out!

Sorting out lunch in the van.

We spotted a side road leading nowhere so I backed up off the main road and we parked amidst the bucolic sounds of the woods on a hot sticky thundery afternoon.

From Wisconsin we moved on the Michigan and as much as I liked Wisconsin I found Michigan much more so, for reasons I shall try to explain as we go along.

Boondocking

Travel without Google Maps would not be the same and driving your own home across the US without mapping and an instant encyclopedia and guidebook in your hand would be different too. As you can imagine there are a million apps for every aspect of van travel offering free campsites, state arks and all the needs you can envision or imagine.

We found this spot by chance, driving the back roads of Wisconsin meandering across the state vaguely toward the North Woods. It was seven in the evening and we were thinking about stopping for dinner before adding. few more miles before sleeping. In the event we stopped, ate and slept in this handy little pull out.

If you want to find it look for Bowler, Wisconsin on Google Satellite view and take the road south out of the village. On the east side of the road a small crescent will appear. We drove by, I spotted the space, pulled a U- turn (love the Promaster's turning radius!) and stopped.

RV travelers call it boon docking, which means parking for free in a space not equipped to offer any facilities: no trash no water no electricity. which are all craved by certain RV travelers. For us we have plenty of battery power not to need plugging in and we have a large water tank for fresh water. Our sink drains to a tank so we leave no trace after we pull out of our boon docking spot.

Rusty likes boon docking as he can get out and mooch around in the woods unfettered and while we eat he will happily sit outside alongside the van and watch the world go by. In an official campground with neighbors dogs are welcome but always tied up for obvious reasons.

There are disadvantages to traveling by van, even for us as experienced as we are in small boat living. The space is SMALL.  We are not thin so moving around inside is a ballet. Everything has to be pit away. Every door must be locked and checked before driving. Ventilation is critical especially as Custom Coach adds superb levels of insulation inside their builds. Using the toilet, even though it is in its own chamber is a more or less public event. Dust and dirt migrate inside the van all the time. We vacuum and brush all the time and Rusty contributes his own flame colored fur to the mix.

We have learned a lot about small space living in our two weeks on the road and there are certain features we will change. I'm getting taller sitting head room by going back to the factory at the end of the trip and having them insert a taller cupboard above my couch. $700 maybe but it will be so worth while. Layne pulls out all her cooking requirements. She cooks. We eat. We wash up. We dry everything. We put it away. If we skip a step chaos ensues. Every single living function has to be thought out and planned. Improvisation leads to uncomfortable living. Developing the routines is exhausting on the road.

Anyone who has lived in a vehicle knows these realities and we have learned nothing we were not aware of, its just a slight shock to face the complexities once again. Coronavirus has made things harder. For instance our plan to buy day passes at gyms to exercise and use their showers has gone by the board. Rather than showering in the van which is complex and messy we try to find outside showers. For instance truck stops are popular expensive ($12) and clean. At our Harvest Host stop they offered showers for free and we grabbed the opportunity. 

Harvest Host is one of those apps that for $80 a year lists farms, wineries, distilleries, breweries and other attractions that offer a free space to park with no amenities but they expect you to do a tasting and a purchase to support their small business. It is a fantastic deal and is turning into great fun.

I am a worrier by nature and I worry for my dog and my wife in this life. Rusty is adapting as we go getting more comfortable and creating his own routines while my wife has a very clear understanding of what works and what needs to to change. She gets fierce when I ask her if she is okay with this lifestyle and she forces me to stick to sensible routines so we don't slip into the ever present possibility of chaos. 

I would never recommend you do what we have done. If you think this might be for you let the idea mature in your mind and if you can't stop yourself go ahead and contemplate living in a van, or a small RV, or a trailer, or a big RV or a gnarly overland four wheel drive SUV with a tent on the roof.  If you do move forward give yourself lots of time to adapt. Don't expect to move out of house be it ever so small and love living in a. narrow short corridor space. Plan to do as we do, take weekends, vacations and short trips to get used  to the life. In two years we'll have the kinks worked out, our routines will be set and when we take to the road full time we will be as ready as we can be.

The thing of it is we love to travel. I have ridden motorcycles across Africa, I took the Great Siberian Railway across the USSR. My wife who has seen all of South America and Europe dragged me on a. three week car tour of Eastern Europe in 1995. A few years ago we took. chance and drove through Montenegro, Bosnia and Albania shortly after the Civil War ended and before modern democratic Europe had extended their influence. We sailed at the turn of the century from San Francisco to Key West with two large dogs. All this to say we find adapting to van life not to be a breeze. We can see the future and we know it will be good. 

An infestation of mosquitoes last night set my wife to grunting and scratching. Our first portages potty was horrible leaky failure and though I don't mind cleaning toilets having it drip down my leg as I took the tank away to empty it marked a low point in van life for me. I cleaned like I was inventing sanitation for the first time. Waking to the patter of rain and a stuffy cabin with a dog anxious to go for a walk leaves one wishing one were at home with door I could close. Those feelings pass and success comes in the form of finding. wayside toilet where I can empty the new potty cleanly and efficiently. Watching my wife humming to herself (off key) and listening to the radio while she prepares dinner in some unlikely wilderness is almost as good as watching Rusty go nuts on a. trail new to him.

I don't miss riding my motorcycle. Odd but true. I like rolling down the road with my family and my things and knowing I can sleep anywhere I can park. We can mooch dock in friends' driveways  or we can check freecampsites.net or we can boondock in the woods (iOverlander) or we can stay at businesses that let you park in exchange for a meal (there's an app for that!) and if it rains I turn on the windshield wipers.

I miss Key West some days but I am learning to enjoy cooler temperatures and summer greenery and meandering with no fixed destination. I met a guy (six feet away) riding to Montana on his BM motorcycle and it turns out he has a winter home in Key West near the cemetery. I wanted to invite him back to the van until the pandemic intervened. That will be a new reality which I hope will come as soon as scientists can offer it to us. Until then we all do what we can and being able to travel by van seems like a big sometimes messy stroke of good fortune to me.Your mileage may vary considerably.

Bayshore Bluffs

Door County is a peninsula that juts up into Lake Michigan from the city of Green Bay at its base. We proved you can drive in and out in a day especially as Highway 57 into the county is a four lane expressway. That road is in some ways symbolic of how Door County struck me, you can make a fast dive in and out  with no requirement to meander and view the beauty.  This place is where everyone will direct you if you ask: "What should I see in Wisconsin?" I knew a blogger a decade ago who worked as a landscaper in Door County until gentrification and bitter isolated winters sent her to the city and off her blog. So I can say I had heard of Door County but beyond that...And you know what? There are people - and I'm not joking here - who have never heard of the Keys. 

Door County is a wild amalgam of gentrified coastline with expensive homes right down to the water but inside that ring of summer home money lies a gentle peaceful rural swath of farmland that looks and feels no different from mainland Wisconsin. I was quite surprised to see agriculture in full bloom, proper well kept farms,  right alongside the self absorbed holiday maker's paradise. It was as though there were still a working dairy farm in Key West somewhere between Flagler Avenue and North Roosevelt. Sears put paid to that but Door County has preserved farmland. And it turns out a small strip or two of parkland. We found this one:

I left my wife to her watercolors and set off on an 85 degree day to check out this piece of wilderness with -who else?- Himself.  I have no idea what these plants are called and there was no Verizon cell service (hence the prolonged radio silence on this page) to look up a Field Guide to the Flowers of Door County, if one exists. Anyway I took some pictures as souvenirs, not as explanations of where we found ourselves.

This place is weird I tell you. I saw flies acting like honeybees looking for pollen in the flowers. 

I saw no alligators but I did have a large beetle fall out of a tree right in front of me, buzzing angrily as it lay on it's back as though drunk. Finally it righted itself exposing a crazy silver back and flew off angrily.

The whole place felt like Alice Through The Looking Glass.

I confess I thoroughly enjoyed the deciduous forest, with all those bright green leaves, shifting shadows and sparkling sunlight. Mangroves were far from my mind. I am so fickle.

Herself was enjoying the van on her own meditating with watercolors, and though the Internet was a remote memory Verzon still worked well enough to send texts so I knew Rusty and I were off the leash as we started to climb the actual bluffs.

I got quite caught up in photographing miniature purple foxgloves. Another Wisconsin oddity.

The posted a useful map and I determined we should follow the longest yellow line up the hill and onto the plateau above where there is apparently another parking lot.

Three nice people from Chicago passed me by as I waved my camera about and they dutifully put on masks even as we distanced ourselves. Luckily they were gone as they were elderly nice people who might not have enjoyed seeing a sweet friendly dog turn into an alligator after they disappeared.

I only started to sweat when we climbed the hill as my cardio exercise is mostly of the flatland type but Rusty thought it was warm enough to indulge in his favorite transgression: getting covered in rich black mud.

It wasn't exactly Everest but I plodded manfully up like the Flatland Floridian I am and he left me far behind hopping like a rabbit with no effort at all.

I found a spider doing its job so in honor of all the box spiders I left behind at home tangling up my mangrove trails I recorded this fiend settling in to an early lunch:

I reached the top of the hill and walked the flat part of the trail catching my breath, my broken pelvis gives me no trouble at all these days. But Rusty denied he didn't care for whatever view there might be, enticingly close but too far away to interest him. He did that stubborn thing he does so well and sat on the trail staring at my back until I turned around and yielded with as much good grace as I could muster which was not much.  The trail still looked lovely on the way back.  

This time two more people who had parked at the top lot came by, distanced as well as masked as we passed like a trio of bandits meeting in the woods. They asked me for directions to the bluffs which was a bit of a laugh but apparently they wanted to walk all the way from lot to lot first for we saw them later across the meadow.

There they were, no camera or dog to impede their progress, crossing the lovely meadow towards Layne in the van.

I had to stop for this, especially as the butterfly cooperated by sitting still in a rather unimaginative pose, but very decently opened its wings for me. All orange butterflies are monarchs to me unless proved otherwise...

A tree in wildflowers:

Queen Anne's lace maybe?

Ding Door County the right way:

The artist in her lair:

Van life as she is actually lived:

Then we drove back to Sturgeon Bay and took off for the other side of Door County.

Sturgeon Bay is in the middle of the peninsula where it is cut in two by two fiords that meet at the bridge in the middle of town. There is another road bridge but much less picturesque:

They sail sailboats around here even though the water is fresh and has no swells and no tides. The Great Lakes are actually fearsome places to sail if you do it wrong as weather changes rapidly and short sharp wind waves make life difficult I have been told. Lakes are not the ocean but they have their issues.

Many states and two countries share the coastlines here so it should not be surprising that the US Coastguard is well regarded by the locals.

Classic downtown small town mid western town Sturgeon Bay, lovely under bright sunshine. We noticed many local businesses in places like this, flanked of course by some notable chain stores but local business seems to be thriving here in a way Key West can only envy.

They even have a Tropic Cinema equivalent which they claim is the Wisconsin crown jewel of theaters. I hope t thrives after coronavirus.

There's not much more to say about this fascinating peninsula except to hope that after the virus they pick up as before. For us, no masks no social distancing and no care at all about coronavirus precautions meant we couldn't enjoy any of the many attractions. The irony of course is there are many things to see and they were out of our reach. I'd like to think they will get away with it but I fear there is an awful reckoning to come as coronavirus is bound to spread out of control here as it did in Florida when the Sunshine State ignored the implications.