Monday, July 15, 2013 – Travel Day to Smith Rapids in the Chequamegon-Nicolet NF

Finally dragged ourselves out of bed on the fourth or fifth snooze alarm, after neither one of us had much sleep last night, probably because for the first time, it was too hot and took too long for the RV to cool down inside, so we ended up only getting a few hours sleep. Nonetheless, we were on the road by 8:00, taking a longer route than necessary out of the forest because my phone GPS took us the wrong way, likely because the signal was so intermittent. We finally got back to Route 2, the main road here in the Upper Peninsula, heading west. We stopped at Rays Mill and Feed in Bark River to pick up some Purina Enrich 32 that we had confirmed they had in stock, as well as a bag of their oats and a few other things. I got into a conversation with a woman while I was there, asking her if she knew a good place to get a yooper pasty (“yooper is from ‘U.P.er’, a resident of the UP, and pasty (pronounced pass-tee) is a local cuisine item brought over from the Cornish miners in the 19th century like a calzone with mincemeat inside, and which I wanted to try before we left the area) but she didn’t know anyplace going west, only back east, unfortunately. I pulled out a few minutes later, and didn’t see Hubby behind me, and when I called back to him, he said a young man who worked at the mill had overheard our conversation and had run inside and brought out two frozen, apparently home-made pasties from a freezer inside and gave them to Hubby! Hubby offered to pay him, but he insisted on making it a gift! How nice! I stopped at a corner so I could put the pasties in the freezer so we can have them later, but our plan had been to have a hot one for brunch, so now we would have to go to a Plan B (which I hadn’t thought of yet). Our next stop was for fuel, then, just as we were leaving a small town shortly before the Wisconsin border, I found a place called the Pasty Oven (Plan B!), so we pulled in and purchased two small classic pasties with the traditional rutabaga and beef pork filling, which we promptly and quickly ate on the road. They were very nice, and, according to Hubby, very true to the original British style pasty. Two more stops, one for propane and water in the RV and rain barrel that we picked up at the Ace Hardware, the other for shopping at Walmart about 30 miles east of Smith Rapids for groceries and other essentials, then a straight shot out to the forest, with just 2 miles of a gravel road to traverse to the campground. Just before reaching the campground on the right, there is a covered bridge on the road, apparently one of the few left in Wisconsin, and we’ll have to cross it with the horses to take the linear trail west. Found a site, #10, where Hubby thought we could get a satellite signal (I thought 9 would be better for that, but it didn’t have as much shade and was smaller), and it didn’t take long to settle in. I put the horses on their anchors for a while, as the area has lots of unmowed grass, put up a highline for later, got the satellite up and running with some effort, all while smacking at lots of mosquitos and some huge and nasty horseflies that were bringing up welts and blood on the horses, and trying to do the same to us. We sprayed them with more fly spray. We had bought some Dumor from Tractor Supply that didn’t work worth a darn, then when I was cleaning out the horse trailer yesterday I found half a bottle of Bronco, which has historically worked better, though these critters are stubborn! Settled in for the evening at last, with all the fans running, as the heat and humidity are really bad here, at least ten degrees warmer than what we left in the UP! Hubby’s already making plans to get out the second generator so we can run the AC tomorrow, and I’m in full agreement