Appleton and Big Mileage Days

Notes from Margo:

In Appleton, Wisconsin, we sat down for dinner with our old friend and colleague from the newspapers, Judy Canter, who retired back to her hometown about about four years ago. She had suggested that we go to Fratello’s, an old paper mill that has been remodeled into a restaurant with huge windows overlooking the Fox River. The river was so close it felt we could touch it. During dinner, a huge heron floated right past us and landed about 25 feet away on a stone wall. I think it was a tri-colored heron, even though my birdbook says that it shouldn’t be here this time of year. (The same could be said about us. We have no snow tires. We have no idea how to drive in a bad storm. If the weather gets nasty, we’ll just have to wait it out.)

Anyway, the heron took no note of us, just stood regally for a while outside the window and then flew away as we talked for several hours about our lives at the newspapers and old friends. Judy later posted on Facebook a note about our visit: “If you worked at the old Ex, we talked about you.” And that’s about right. Delicious. The restaurant, the visit, the talk.

The old paper mill was a stone and brick building on the picturesque river in the middle of Appleton. The newer paper mills, which we passed on the freeway, are not particularly picturesque, although they’re pretty impressive. They are huge gray structures, with huge gray smokestacks. I can’t really condemn them, since Lynn and I both made such a good living for so long working on the dead-tree version of newspapers. And we still love newspapers so much that we buy the local papers wherever we go (two the next day – the Mining Journal of Ishpeming and the Iron Mountain Daily News.) The paper mill was and is a necessary part of that, and the trees that are chewed up in the mills are farmed trees, for the most part, not trees plucked from pristine wilderness.

We’re zigzagging up and down the Midwest the past week or so, because there was no logical path connecting the people and places we wanted to see. We jogged east to Boone, Iowa, and then drove nearly 11 hours north to see Lynn’s cousin, and then about 10 hours south and east to see Judy. Then we rolled about five hours north to Ishpeming, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where Lynn’s great-grandfather landed when he immigrated from Norway. (Lynn will write about this later.) Now, a bit spooked by a spot of snowy weather, we are high-tailing our pansy Left Coast selves south and east as fast as we can.

In the Upper Peninsula today, we drove through two completely different forest systems, both in the midst of dramatic fall foliage color shows. On the way north in the morning, gentle hills (very gentle, not so much different from flat) were covered with mixed deciduous forests – oaks, maple, sycamore, you name it – and showed the color changes you’d expect: browns, reds, oranges, yellows, pale greens, and all shades between. It was what you’d expect in the Northeast, but we enjoyed it in southern Iowa, and now we’re being treated to it again in Upper Michigan.

In the afternoon, coming east along the shore of Lake Superior and then inland in the peninsula, the mixed conifer forests appeared to contain a good portion of what I’m guessing are larch trees. They are clearly conifers, but they are turning all shades of brilliant gold and yellow.With the other conifers providing a rich background of dark forest green, the bright goldish-yellow of the larch was stark and surprising. The effect was basically a two-toned forest, dark green and bright yellow, going on and on for miles.

What a show!

Notable: Mute swans by the dozen floated on the edge of the lake as we crossed the Mackinac Bridge from the Upper Peninsula to Michigan proper. And I spotted my first cardinal, a bright red bird flitting around in bright red foliage, as we took a short walk along the shore of Lake Michigan.

Extra notable: Today we continue our big mileage days, launching ourselves toward the supreme highlight of the whole Victory Lap: visiting Kenny at Oberlin.

Mileage from Ishpeming, Michigan, to St. Ignace: 176

Total mileage so far: 5,687