27th Stop - Apostle Islands and Slot Car Racing (WI)
Blog Post #36 - Written Oct 22, 2025
Stay: July 10-12, 2025
From the Upper Peninsula of Michgan, we drove west to Ashland, Wisconsin. It felt like we were re-entering the real world. We stayed at Kreher Park Campground, which is right on Lake Superior, next to the Ashland Oredock.
Our first full day here we drove up to Bayfield, WI for a boat tour of the Apostle Islands. The Apostle Islands National Lakeshore is a beautiful group of 21 islands in Lake Superior with lots of cool geological rock formations and sea caves. They also allow kayaking, hiking, and camping on most of the islands, but that didn't quite work for us or fit in our schedule. So we just did a sight-seeing cruise around and through the islands. And since we were there in the summer, we missed what we're told are spectacular ice caves (brrr, I can't imagine how frigid that boat ride would be!).
And apparently they have black bears that frequent the islands. One black bear kept getting into the camping area on one of the islands and they kept capturing and relocating him, but he'd end up right back, until eventually they had to put him in a zoo. We weren't lucky enough to see a bear swimming out to the islands, but we were fortunate to see a juvenile bald eagle exercising his wings in the nest. That was pretty sweet!
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If you have superhuman eyesight, you might be able to see one of the parents (bald eagle) in the big tree in the middle, about 2/3 of the way up. If you have normal human vision, then you can simply enjoy the pretty colors :)
Video: You can barely see the juvenile bald eagle flapping his wings in the nest here, in the tree just right of the middle of the frame, about 3/4 to the top of the tree. Don't look for a white head, the juveniles are are all brown, it takes them 5 years to fully develop their distinctive white head feathers. [If you're wondering why I foolishly swept the camera to the left halfway through the video, it's because one of the parents (who did have a bright white head) was in a nearby tree over there]
The NPS has a volunteer stay on this island (left pic) to give people tours of this island and the historical buildings on it. I can't remember what they were though, so that's all you get. Sorry, I guess that's what happens when I don't write the blog about it until 3.5 months later... The right pic was of another island that must've had a quarry on it at some point, because they left a bunch of huge quarried blocks.
The cruise tour was fun and pretty, but since we had just done the Pictured Rocks boat tour in the UP, it probably wasn't as magical for us as it otherwise would've been, because we like Pictured Rocks a little more. Still neat though!
Afterwards, we figured we should try a fresh fish meal at least once while we were here, so we want to Hoop's Fish Market, which was recommended to us by a couple friendly locals we met at our campground the night before. Hoop's goes out early each morning and catches a bunch of white fish. They then prepare and cook them and serve them until they're all gone. We're not huge fish people, but it was yummy! And a fun atmosphere.
On the walk over to the restaurant, we stopped a cool little Maritime Museum. And afterwards we played at a fun playground
This campground had some of the prettiest sunsets!
The next day, we just hung out around the trailer/campground, did some school, built some LEGOs, and went fishing. Then our campsite neighbors (the friendly locals) mentioned they were going to see their grandson race a slot car that evening and invited us to come watch. So we decided to go! It was a blast and so LOUD! Super fun and cool to see all the cars, plus the kids got to race their bikes on the track during intermission. And even though Z's bike had broke down earlier that day, he used Q's tiny little bike haha 😂 He was dead last, but grateful he could even race. And everyone got a Dilly Bar for racing!
Video: Boys discovered they could do somersaults off their top bunk onto D's mattress. Megan decided we should share this video with you, because it's more pleasant to watch than the other 2 videos (which are more representatively accurate, in my opinion, of our daily life) with the boys loudly chattering away with non-stop nonsense. You know what, I'm just going to put them here too. They (mostly Z) just never shuts up haha! And his younger brother loves to copy him haha, so cute.
The boys always want us to take pictures of their "creations", so I figured I should put at least a couple up on the blog haha
One of the fish we caught off the oredock.
Now for the slot car race pictures! Btw, this was at the ABC Raceway and it was pretty family friendly from our experience. I think it was $20 for our whole family.
Videos of a couple of the races:
We are naive and didn't think about how loud the race cars would be...so we improvised, as always :)
Z racing on Q's tiny little bike
Video: Grand finale - the Cars version of fireworks haha. Looked like Mater with a couple of flame throwers! After going around the track and meeting in the middle, they had a little showdown!
We had a great time in Wisconsin! I'm a little bummed that this was our only stay there :(
Showing off their medals (i think we still have a couple 3.5 months later). Not pictured are the delicious Dilly Bars they also got.
So I guess that means we'll have to visit again sometime!
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