Fall 2017 Lake Superior Loop

Lake Superior sunset/Herbster Wi.

It's the beginning of September, and we're both ready to hit the road after spending most of the summer in Tucson. In July, we did take a run up to Show Low, east of Flagstaff, in the very pretty White Mountains. Until you start to dig in, the famous travel destinations in Arizona, like Sedona or The Grand Canyon, are just the tip of the iceberg. The state is filled with more hidden gems than one could imagine. Show Low, after trekking less than two hundred miles north from Tucson, through the amazing Salt River Canyon and Apache Indian territory, is a more off the map, year round outdoor venue for those who know.
In summer it's a cool place to beat the heat of Southern Arizona, and in winter it's a fun ski destination. There are plenty of good local eating places and lots to see and do. One surprise is the number of upper-end and gated neighborhoods of second homes belonging to people from Phoenix and Tucson.

Salt River Canyon, north of Globe, Az.

  Anyway, after that summer break, in September we headed to Santa Fe for a week of checking out what's new. Our home away from home had a couple of surprise changes. The best one is that Clafoutis, the bakery restaurant, moved to a larger, much cooler location.

Clafoutis

The very French baked goods and the food are still the same great quality, but the new place is much nicer with great indoor/outdoor seating spaces. We were happy that nothing much changed at our favorite kitchen away from home in Santa Fe, Counter Culture. In a weeks time, we must have gone back three or four times! Boring!...but the food's sooo good!

Counter Culture's homemade cakes

  From Santa Fe, we traveled a familiar route up to far Northern Iowa to the Winnebago mother ship in Forest City, for a little routine maintenance. After that short stop, we rolled up to Northern Minnesota, to Duluth, for the beginning of Fall color. Duluth's an interesting place. Located at the far western end of Lake Superior, it has a long history as the hub for ships transporting ore from the nearby mines through The Great Lakes. One of those nearby mining towns is Hibbing, Mn., where Bob Dylan grew up. He was born and spent his first few years in Duluth though, and there are lots of references to him around town.

A local hotel's Dylan display

Because of the very short warm season around here, decent RV parks are pretty scarce, so as we've done lots of times before in these climes, we parked the coach on the edge of town at a pretty nice casino and spent almost a week in the area. One day we headed farther up The North Shore (as the locals call it) all the way through The Canadian border and spent the night in Thunder Bay, Ontario, also on the big lake.

Downtown Duluth

Historic retractable bridge for long ore ships, Duluth

From Duluth we headed east along the south shore of Superior into Wisconsin. A couple of nights in a tiny village area called Herbster gave us an overview of this part of Far Northern Wisconsin. The highlight was the apple growing region, centered in Bayfield. This little port town is all things...Apple. We drove around through the orchards nearby and sampled everything from apple donuts to pies and ciders. I've been working on a jar of apple butter from there that is very applishious!

South shore of  turbulent Lake Superior/ Herbster Wi.

Our return leg took us down to Omaha for a little extended stop since the heavy rain that hit us on the way in to Nebraska didn't want to quit. We hunkered down at Cabelas and made the best of it by exploring some parts of town we weren't as familiar with. We have been to The Old Town part of downtown several times, but this time we headed for a new place we'd heard about. The Jun Kaneko Studio (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-giant-fanciful-art-of-jun-kaneko/) is his base of operations, and this world renowned artist lives and works in Omaha of all places. Unfortunately, the studio was closed for a private exhibition the day we went, but we did manage to see some of his art  around town.

Kaneko's 80' glass sculpture, Buffett Cancer Center

The rains finally moved off after three days, and we resumed on the road back through Wichita and down to Amarillo for the final leg through New Mexico to Base Camp Tucson. In all, about a 3800 mile loop to parts of the U.S. we hadn't yet explored. Our next trip is to another Arizona place we'd heard of but knew little about...