On the last full day of our trip in Wisconsin, @mrsbozz and I decided to drive back down to Ashland to check out this mural walk that she had read about online. Basically, in the downtown area, there are something like 25 different murals that have been painted on the side of buildings. You can find a map online and take a nice stroll through the downtown area looking at the artwork.
In our case, it was Sunday, so the downtown area was pretty dead, which actually was nicer than having to fight to find a parking spot and navigate crowds of people. It turned out for the better part of the morning we were some of the only people strolling the streets.
This is going to be a pretty image intense post. Which honestly, no one is probably going to complain about...
We parked at the Northeast end of Main Street and worked our way down to the Southwest looking at the murals. There were actually a couple we missed at first, but we ended up picking them up after the fact as we were looking for somewhere to have lunch.
Like I said, Main Street was pretty dead on this warm Sunday morning that we decided to visit.
I actually don't think this was one of the murals, but I still thought it was cool. It's interesting how back in the day you used to see businesses advertise on the side of other buildings and barns. I know if I owned a shop and my buddy owned a different shop, I would be more than happy to advertise his business on the side of mine.
This was probably one of the largest and most impressive murals. It took up the whole side of the building and depicted the old ore dock that still extends out into the bay in Ashland.
This also wasn't a mural, but I thought the name of the tattoo place was pretty cool. It's called "You made me ink".
It's honestly pretty crazy just how big some of these murals are. They still seem to have held up really well over the years too.
I like these photos because the cars next to the buildings give you an idea of the scale of these pieces of art.
There was also some cool sidewalk art that you can see in the photo below.
Finally, we visited the last of the pieces.
By now, it was getting time for lunch, so we headed to a local Mexican restaurant that had gotten some good reviews on Google Maps.
@mrsbozz was kind of grossed out by the mayflies hanging around on the window outside the restaurant. They are a pretty common visitor around the Great Lakes area though. You get used to them. There were birds hanging around down on the ground and every now and then one of them would fly up into the window trying to snatch one of the mayflies. Despite all of that, it was still a pretty nice view of the bay.
While it doesn't look like much from the outside, the food at El Tarasco is top notch. My wife got a meal with two bean burritos, and I got the carnitas. I am not kidding when I say it was enough food to last us for several meals. We ate a small portion, then took the rest to go. I ended up stretching my lunch out across three meals.
On our way back to the campground, we stopped in the small town of Washburn, Wisconsin to visit a bookstore and local bakery that had been highly regarded. This was probably one of the best bookstores we have been to in a while. It was huge and it felt like it kept going and going and going. They had a nice selection of everything. It's definitely worth a stop if you are on your way through Washburn. The cupcake I picked up at the bakery was lemon blueberry, and it was fantastic. I saved it for later since I was still so full from the Mexican food!
The next morning we packed up and said goodbye to Wisconsin. We stopped at a little campground just outside of Munising, MI. I thought about reaching out to @vgholdingsllc, but it was blazing hot, we we just huddled up in our travel trailer for the evening. We did grab a few shots of the sunset before we started the last leg of our trip the next day and headed home.
1356.3 miles later (2182.75 KM) we pulled into our driveway with all the great memories of the longest and farthest camping trip we have ever taken as a couple. Believe it or not, I am already starting to plan the next one for Summer 2027!
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All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or @mrsbozz unless otherwise sourced