It was hard to say good bye to the Mall of America but I tore myself away! We set off north through Minneapolis until we reached our first stop, Franconia Sculpture Park. This amazing site is home to a vast expanse of sculptures, the work of local sculptors and interns that come here to contribute to the project. We spent a while walking through and enjoying the artworks.
this one was a tower of boom boxes! 
mirrors
Only a little way up the road we stopped at Interstate State Park , located on the St Croix River on the border of Minnesota and Wisconsin. This is promoted as the end of the “Ice Age Trail” and the park has many glacial potholes with smooth boulders carved by glacial ice. We enjoyed the walk along the river.
Across the river we we in Wisconsin again and stopped briefly to see the St Croix man-made falls that power the hydro-electricity statiobn here replacing the original falls. The park was pretty with a lovely statue representing the River Spirit.
A little way down the road we stopped at Comstock Creamery a working Dairy producing, Wisconsin cheese. We bought some Cheese Curds, which are a huge favourite here in Wisconsin. The Curds are the first cheese that appears after the whey is seperated from the milk. usually the curds are packed together to make the usual wheel of cheese, but here in the north of the USA they are kept as a delicacy.
At Shell Lake we stopped to sample the Cheese curds along with our other lunchtime picnic items. The wind was blowing in pretty cool here so we didn’t linger too long. It’s amazing how qickly the weather changes this far north.
We had another hour or so drive further north before we caught sight of Lake Superior again at Ashland. We stopped to take a look at Ashland Mural Walk, 8 block of Ashland’s main street are listed on the National Register of Historic Places and at each block local artist have painted lovely murals recording aspects of Ashland histoy. We walked a little of it but the wind was chilly so we drove the rest!
About 30 minutes north of Ashland we pulled n Bayfield where I’d booked our hotel for the night right in the shores of the bay. Originally we had planned to take a boat trip out to the Apostle Islands from here but the weather was very cool and we’d realised it would largely be a repeat of what we’d seen at the Pictured Rocks so we’d already decided to give it a miss before arriving in town. We watched the boats leaving the docks and we’ve seen that our intended cruise was cancelled anyway so it looks like our decision was a good one!
We decided the have a lazy dinner of locally bought nibbles on our bayfront verandah tonight. We sat on our verandah enjoying a glass of wine and watching the ferry go across to Madeleine Island across the bay.
