Ending a Superior Day

After we finished kayaking the lake caves at Devil's Island, we had the one-hour boat ride back to Bayfield, Wisconsin for lunch. We could have added our afternoon activities to the last blog, but it was already stuffed with too many lake cave pictures. So we'll start in the middle of the day with ice cream for dessert. Our grandchildren were really enjoying time spent with Aunt Jamie and Uncle Blake.

We were all a little surprised at how warm it was in Wisconsin this afternoon. We were walking beside Lake Superior in Bayfield, which wasn't an area good for swimming. Maybe we should find us a beach?!?

A simple google search found a public beach just a few miles from town. Again, Carter and Eli were soaking up all the time they could with Uncle Blake and Aunt Jamie.

Most of us had changed out of our swim suits after kayaking. But that didn't stop the kids from going swimming in their clothes.

The adults were trying to stay dry, but the kids sure wanted them to go swimming too.

Okay, if we're going to get wet, we're going to do this together. Are you ready?!? One . . . Two . . .

Three! Gram certainly wasn't planning on getting her clothes this wet this afternoon.

Carter liked that splash down so much that she kept doing it over and over.

This was a great beach with clear water, a very long shallow shelf, and soft sand that felt good to bare feet. We could walk a long ways into Lake Superior and still be in waist-deep water.

We had heard on the news that lake temperatures were especially chilly right now. The lake had just "turned over" causing the very cold water on the bottom to come to the top. Buoys in the middle of the lake had water temperature readings in the 40s this week. But in this super shallow section, the sun had warmed the water to a temperature that felt good on a warm day.

The lake sand wasn't great for making sand castles, so we tried for a sand pyramid.

This beach didn't have shells, so Denisa couldn't spell out things on the beach like she usually does. But the bordering trees provided us with pinecones so we could make a heart.

We didn't have this beach time planned, but it was a superior way to spend the rest of our day around Bayfield. That first group splash down was so much fun, they decided to do it again. It was a little different group this time. They started counting-- One . . . Two . . .

Three! Obviously Luke and Eli are not very good at playing splash down!

It was a delightful swim but we had to get dry so we could drive back to our cabin in the woods. Once we had changed clothes (again), we decided to do some exploring in the woods around the cabin.

Our favorite finds were some wild raspberry bushes that were just ripe for the picking.

After our camping stay with a monarch butterfly nursery, Denisa was in tune with finding caterpillars in the wild. We found just one milkweed plant, and it had been claimed by a very hungry caterpillar that we officially named Bart--the almost butterfly.

We also found twelve different wildflowers that made a beautiful bouquet for our table and our snack of wild berries.

With our lake cave kayaking, ice cream, swimming in a Great Lake, and going berry and flower picking--it was a great ending to a Superior family day near Lake Superior!