Northern Wisconsin

(from June 2009)


While visiting the US in June, my mom, sister and I took a driving tour through northern Wisconsin. Stops along the way were Minocqua, Ashland, Bayfield, and Cornucopia. The boys (dad and Kasey's husband Kelly) got to stay home and babysit Lincoln...Chuck got to stay in Denmark to work (and fund my travel addiction)....Jesse was in Chi-town working.

I had a list of things to do and see, based upon recommendations, TripAdvisor, and travel guides. Some of these folks should be out of business!!!

The Gourmet Garage was highly recommended on TripAdvisor. What a bust. I would skip it and advise that you skip it too. The Gourmet Garage is a small bakery in a transformed garage of a three-bedroom ranch single family home. The 'gourmet' part is truly a misnomer. As you walk through the door you are greeted by a wall of stainless steel sinks and racks...turn to the right and there is a small bakery display case. Behind the display case are racks and racks of 'stuff'. The place has so much potential and could be a cute little bakery, but instead it comes off as a garage that has barely passed the health inspector's review. Yuck! Oh, and once you walk in, you are under the watchful eye of a staff member, so the pressure is on to buy something, anything. We had Kasey's husband be the taste-tester of the apple turnover....verdict...no need to buy that again!

We rented a condo in Bayfield called the Ada O'Day condos through the Winfield Inn. We stayed in Unit 1, which was a huge 2 bedroom condo that was decorated very nicely and in a great location! I can only assume the other units looked just as nice and they were lucky enough to get a fabulous view of Lake Superior. Our unit, even though it was advertised as having a view, didn't.

We shopped quite a bit on the trip as there really wasn't much else to do. There was one cute little general store that had big barrels of salt water taffy. In a matter of 3 days, I think we visited the store no less than 5 times!

Some pictures from our trip.

I love the last part of the sign!

Bayfield Pier

Ashland coastline

Bayfield coastline

Bayfield