The Events of Saturday, September 4, 2010

          In contrast to yesterday, today was rather dull. Everything was OK, though. The grass was green and the sky was - mostly – blue, and the clouds were usually white, except for the occasional raincloud. The problem was that we didn’t do any of the amazing things we did yesterday. Our day began with breakfast in the Walmart parking lot. After breakfast we went into Walmart to brush our teeth and shop for a few necessities. Our original plan had been to go to a Wisconsin lumber industry museum and have a chance to go on a surrey ride, pontoon boat trip, hayride, and train ride. However we found out this attraction closed August 28th. So, after finding out that we couldn’t see what we had planned to see in Wisconsin, we made plans to travel the “Waterfall Trail of Marinette County” and see waterfalls in Wisconsin and then go north to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Only it didn’t go exactly as planned as we only ended up finding two of the seven waterfalls we had hoped to see.

          The two waterfalls we did see were called Bull’s Falls and Smalley Falls. These, in our opinion, were rather small compared to the waterfalls we’ve seen in Yosemite and in the Columbia River Gorge. The first part of Bull’s Falls fell about one or two feet and the second part fell a little longer, but it wasn’t 50 feet or anything. Smalley Falls was more interesting. At Smalley Falls, we hiked down a 0.25 mile trail down to an overlook to the falls. From the overlook, you could see a series of falls tumbling beautifully down the stream. Wanting to check them out from a different vantage point, we climbed down to the falls. Soon we were climbing all over the rocks and taking pictures. We found a tree that had another tree wrapped around it, and it looked really cool. Caitlin also discovered a tree that you could climb onto a branch and practically be hanging over a cliff. So we all climbed into the tree with her and took pictures. Caitlin then climbed across the river by jumping from rock to rock. Ben enjoyed climbing a cliff, and we stayed down there for a while, climbing and exploring.

          After seeing enough of these falls, we drove to Iron Mountain, Michigan. There we found a Goodwill store and went in to see if Dad could find some swim trunks to replace the ones he left at our last campsite. In addition to finding a swimsuit for Dad, we also bought sunglasses for me, sweaters for Lindsey and Caitlin, scrub outfits for Mom and shorts, CD’s and a polo shirt for Dad. Then we drove the 12 miles to our campground. Caitlin had, proudly, found us this amazing campground, called Summer Breeze RV Park. It has a pool, nice showers, and an ice cream social that costs only one dollar. We happened to get there on the last day the ice cream social was happening and we decided to attend it, even though it was freezing cold. Dad said that he would pay for our ice cream if we met one person and told him about the person that we met. A lot of people came and got their ice cream but then left to have their ice cream in the warmth of their RV’s or trailers. We got our ice cream, but there was no one left to socialize with except for the servers. So we talked with them and Dad said that we had done the job as well as we could. We finished our ice cream and went back to the RV. Ben, Lindsey and I grabbed the volleyball and played flow volleyball, a game we had learned in Hoffman Estates, until 8:30. We came back to the RV and got ready for bed, layering blankets and preparing for a cold night.