July 31, 2008 - Northern Wisconsin

Note: Wisconsin photos are not completely loaded yet.

I was not terribly sure of what was available in northern Wisconsin. The travel brochures at the hotel did not seem to offer anything promising without a lot of driving in a direction away from my destination for the evening. But, I decided I needed to see something rather than just begin the drive down to La Crosse, WI. Finally, I chose to visit the Lac du Flambeau Native American reservation.

GPS systems are great - when they work. I needed to buy more stamps at a post office. The directions given by two different people did not seem to work. The GPS has a special "points of interest" option. It could not find the Rhinelander post office. It did find one about 20 miles north. That was on my way so no problem there...at least that's what I thought. This particular post office takes a two hour lunch break. I happened to arrive at the beginning of the break. The next two post offices found by the GPS did not actually exist. Finally, at the Lac du Flambeau reservation, someone pointed me to a post office right on the reservation.

The Lac du Flambeau reservation seems like any other small town. There is a small sign indicating the beginning of the reservation. Otherwise, there were shops and other things consistent with a small town. There are signs indicating tribal government areas but that's it. Of course, there is a casino.

I visited the Ojibwe Museum. It had a number of interesting artifacts. I later visited a recreated Ojibwe Indian Village. The guides were Ojibwe. The guide for my tour was informative yet also entertaining. He threw in a lot of funny jokes which livened up the presentation. For example: "Why did we use poles with flames when we went out on the canoes? 1. It lighted the way. 2. We could see the eyes of the fish. 3. The State of Wisconsin requires running lights. No, scratch that last one!" Earlier he held up a fish basket and pointed out that only the dumb fish can't find their way out. He compared that to people going to the casino. Near the end, many of the people left as they had come in the middle of a previous tour. It was down to just myself and two others. Because of the small group, the guide was able to spend more time with us, giving a more detailed description of the exhibits. I liked this format much better.

I made some new friends with the others in my group. They're very nice people and have taken a leap similar to mine. The encouragement they provided was absolutely wonderful. I'm going to stay in touch with them.

I would be spending the night in Onalaska, WI, which is just outside of La Crosse, WI. This was a long drive down I-39 and ultimately to I-90. As many of you know, I collect postcards from the states I visit. It was VERY difficult finding postcards in Wisconsin. I stopped at several travel plazas and most didn't have anything. One plaza had postcards with a theme of "animals from the North Country." These would have been perfectly fine for my collection if only they slapped the state's name on the card. As they did not, the search continued.

The hotel in Onalaska was one of the few where I would be staying two nights in a row. But, I created quite a mess with my reservation. I paid for one night and used points for the second night. I wanted to keep the same room for both. This sounds simple but for a computer system, it's a nightmare. It's considered two separate reservations. The clerk assured me it would work (and it did), but I had to speak with the assistant manager in the morning before I left.