Rhinelander, WI

Tuesday, July 8

We left the beautiful upper peninsula of Michigan and headed Southwest towards The Great North Woods of Wisconsin. Many times our choice of where to go next is because it is a desired destination, and sometimes it is only a way-point to that desired destination.

We have a tire monitoring system that monitors the tires on the coach and on the Jeep.  About an hour after we left, an alarm on the tire monitoring system went off telling us that the front curbside tire on the Jeep we tow, was going flat.  We were truly blessed in that the system worked and we had a place to safely pull over. Turns out the tire was a total loss, not because of the failure of the tire monitoring system, but rather something that tore a large hole out of the center of the tread.

Here we are crossing into Wisconsin.  We are soooo glad to be back in the central time zone.

Upon arrival at the campground, as we were checking in we could hear the call of the Loon. Reminded Tic of the movie “On Golden Pond”. This is our campsite at West Bay Campground which is on Lake Thompson in Rhinelander, WI.  It is part of Coast to Coast. 

This is a second view.  As you can see the sites & roads are very tight.  See the big rocks close to the front passenger wheel of the coach?  As we opened the door, we had to step on the rocks to get in and out.  There was barely enough room to walk on either side of the coach.  We will not go back to this campground.

The 2 pictures above are of Lake Thompson.

On a good note, Rhinelander was a serendipity.  We arrived at our campsite and the campground host recommended a tire shop in downtown Rhinelander. They were great and took good care of us. If we had not gone “downtown”, we would have missed three things: 1) everyone we have met here were warm, welcoming and friendly; 2) we might not have learned about the “hodag”; and 3) we would have missed a community that takes pride in their town. Look for the many floral displays in the photos below.   Many lakes and rivers surround this town.

This is part of the Wisconsin River near the Visitors Center.

These lilly pads were growing at the shore side where Tic stood to take the previous picture.

Wednesday, July 9

We started our day visiting the logging museum.  I've got lots of pictures to post.

This is the first building.  It is full of old sawmill equipment.

There are several old chainsaws. Can you tell the 3rd chainsaw (middle of picture) is a 2-man chainsaw?  Also there is a large vertical blade with a big log behind it.  This machine cut the logs into planks.

This is a sleigh that was used to haul lumber to the mill. It is sitting on a board so ignore that.

The next building housed some of the old fire equipment.  This fire wagon was pulled by horses.

This sign describes the fire engine shown below.

The 2 pictures below are murals below are on the sides of the building housing the fire trucks.  The murals were painted by the local middle school kids.  Amazing.

This old truck was used in one of the CCC camps as a maintenance truck.  CCC stands for Conservation Corp Camp, started during the Roosevelt administration.

The next building was the Blacksmith Shop.  As soon as you walked into the building there was a display wall with lots of different types of wood.  

This is one side of the blacksmith shop.  See the 2 large bellows?

The antique outboard motor & boating museum building was next.  

First thing we saw was this mini wooden boat.  Someone did a great job while having fun.

This is one of two walls of old outboard motors.  Yes, Darrell, there is an Oliver at the far end of the bottom row.  Hee Hee

The 2 pictures above are of this beautifully crafted wooden row boat.  Excellent workmanship.

This is another older wooden boat that caught my eye.

This building was an example of a mess hall.  This was a cook stove used in a CCC camp.

This is one of several walls of cooking utensils.  Look at the size of the potato mashers!

Here is an old clothes washer from the CCC camp.

The sign said this was Paul Bunyon's jack knife.

The 2 pictures above show a steam sled that was used to pull timbers to the mill.  They had water wagons on sled that would ice the roads for other sleds.

Sorry if this got too long.  There was so much to see here.  Next post is about the train museum and Hodags.