Highpoint #29: Timms Hill, WI (1951')

From L'Anse I headed south to the MI/WI border, then on down US-45 towards the Wisconsin high point. Along the way, I realized that the Great North Woods are basically Finland. They've got the same climate, same low hills, same boreal wildlife, and the same endless forest. The immigrants who settled here must have thought the same: I passed a Korpi Rd. (Finnish for "forest") and a handful of Finnish flags hanging from houses and mailboxes. A broader Scandinavian influence was visible all the way down in the names on billboards and businesses and the old Lutheran churches in every town.

Like this one in Ogema, the town where I spent the night.

The roads to Wisconsin’s high point, like the ones I’d driven the previous day, passed straight through essentially nothing, just acres and acres of forest broken by the occasional farmhouse or tiny junction-town. I can see why the Packers wear green and gold: all they've got up here is trees and cheese. Further north those trees grew wild, but as I neared the high point park they separated into rectangular patches in various stages of growth--timberlands, I assume.

Around mid-afternoon, I pulled off WI-86 onto [RR], or “Rustic Road,” a twisty parkway that surrounded Timms Hill County Park. From that road I turned onto a narrow, one-way asphalt track that led me up through a grim gauntlet of trees. The thick forest closed around the road like Mirkwood come to life--passing through them, I understood how the ancients came to fear certain forests as evil, haunted places. But soon enough I pulled out of that gloomy patch of pines and into the parking lot. Just behind it, a cross-country ski trail crossed the road--maintained, a sign informed me, by the local high school's cross-country (running) team. It seems they practice here, no doubt so they can run hill repeats up their state's high point(!!!).

Highpoint #28: Mount Arvon, MI (1979')

Leaving behind the Land of Lincoln, I drove out from the canyon and over the border into the legendary dairy-land of Wisconsin. Seriously, the first town I hit after crossing the border had a monument to the Swiss settler who first made cheese there:

Good ol' Nicky Gerber.

Other than that, the roadside terrain was much the same farms-and-fields deal as yesterday. I sped over the Sugar River (are all the local rivers named after pie ingredients? If so, I totally approve) and through Madison, then stopped for lunch in Fond du Lac at the foot of Lake Winnebago (another large Midwestern lake just short of greatness). Seagulls circled above the parking lot, hinting at waters beyond the horizon.

From there it was a relatively (and, at times, absolutely) straight shot up I-41 to the Upper Peninsula. Never had I seen an interstate highway so hypnotically flat and level--certainly none with four lanes of traffic on each side. Without curves or hills or any meaningful change in scenery, there was nothing to hold my attention to the road--even at 80 mph it felt like I was barely moving. I had to sing to keep my mind from straying. Up I shot through Oshkosh, Appleton, Green Bay...

Low Point: Great Lakes Region (600-246')

...But first, a quick spin around the Great Lakes. There are five of them, as I'm sure you recall from grade-school geography:

Formed by glacial activity at the close of the last ice age, these lakes cover 94,250 square miles of land and contain 21% of the world's surface freshwater by volume. This water flows first into storm-driven Lake Superior,