Friday, September 1, 2017

Sep 1 – Around Ashland, Wisconsin

As I said earlier I had tried to stay an extra day near the Apostle Islands but they were booked up. Our next reservation starts tomorrow so today we started our migration back east and stopped to explore the town of Ashland, before spending the night at a Walmart in Ironwood to shorten our journey tomorrow.

This morning it seemed that a lot of people couldn’t stay any longer because the line up at the dump station before leaving the campground got rather long.

We dropped the RV off at the nice big parking lot of the Walmart in Ashland and then disconnected the car to explore.

Our first stop was the Great Northern Lakes Visitor’s Center just outside of town.

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Inside they have a bunch of displays on fishing, mining, logging, etc. You can then climb the 5 story tower for a view of the surrounding area, except that there is not much to see.

One of Ashland’s claims to fame is its collection of wall sized murals on some downtown buildings. There are all done by two local women. They also did two on the walls of the tower.

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All of the faces must be those of local people because plaques below each one gave everybody’s name.

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Some of the portraits were quite good, as with this Native American couple.

This guy’s head, however, just didn’t seem quite right for the body.

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After a quick stop at the town visitor’s center to get a brochure with location and description of each mural, we parked the car and went for a walk.

The downtown buildings are also quite old and interesting but unfortunately a lot of them were empty.

This could get boring but I am going to show all the murals that we visited.

The Lighthouse Keepers.

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The Apostle Islands

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Dhoge’s Store.

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1950’s Snapshots.

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Veteran’s

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As in all of them, the faces looked like they must be locals. Each was very unique.

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Some of the downtown buildings.

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The candy store.

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Storefront Mural

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Railroad tribute.

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Some of the faces look almost pasted on.

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The building across the street must have been a railroad station, just from the look of it. There is a hair stylist there now.

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The National Bank Mural

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Historic Ellis Ave.

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Every town needs an old theater.

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An interesting storefront.

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Ashland Iron Ore Docks Mural. The dock was massive.

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Lumberjack Mural.

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And the city hall and police station.

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I am glad we stopped here. It is a very pretty area.

We moved on to spend the night at the Walmart in Ironwood. This is one of the better ones to stay at. They have a huge parking lot off the side of the building by the auto center that no one seems to use and as a bonus the in-store free WIFI is strong enough that we can use it in the RV.

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