I had no idea...

... that Wisconsin harbored so much adventure. Pretty much the entire rest of the United States is selling themselves short if they consider Wisconsin to be just a frigid land inhabited by cheese heads. I present a case study to illustrate my point.

This last weekend I went on one of those famed "power vacations." This 3 day trip took me up to the Apostle Islands on the shores of Lake Superior. Our objective: visit Copper Falls Stake Park and go kayaking to see the sea caves.

Copper Falls Stake Park is home to some geographic features I thought were absent to Wisconsin: cascading waterfalls and gorges. Obviously I thought wrong. The Bad River (yes, that's its name) flows along a fault line before joining with the Tyler Forks. At its confluence a tortuous gorge has been formed. Here's a photo of me with the falls trying to vie for attention.


I've also included a better photo of the confluence. Just out of the picture on the top left is a ledge beyond a fence that I foolishly jumped. I thought better of it soon enough and scrambled back to safety. Only later did I see that I was only 1 or 2 feet away from having a close encounter with that log jammed in between the rocks 40 feet below. Fences are there for a reason!


We drove on to the Apostle Islands, set up camp in Washburn, and then took the ferry out to Madeline Island. While on the island, the weather turned sour, making for an incredibly exciting trip back to the mainland. I had no ideas that ferries could rock like that!

Saturday afternoon we went paddling in kayaks to explore the rock formations along the shores of Lake Superior. The freeze-thaw action of the ice combines with the wave action has carved intricate caves into the sandstone cliffs. As we were not trained for using sea kayaks in the open ocean we paddled around the proverbial "kiddie pool." It was still quite fun as evidenced by the photo below.

The trip whetted my appetite for exploring the real "sea caves" which are dozens of times more magnificent, as seen below. Yes, it is not the Pasayten Wilderness, Zions National Park, or Yosemite but it is better than I expected. Ladies and gentleman, I give you WISCONSIN!

(courtesy of http://cornucopiawisconsin.net/?202002009129)