Tag Archives: Lake Superior

Running on an Ice Road

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This past weekend we visited the Apostle Island Ice Caves and spend the night on Madeline Island.  Yes the Ice Caves are stunning and I’d recommend checking them out if you can sneak away before the ice melts!

Normally there is a ferry that runs between Bayfield, WI and La Pointe, WI which the town on Madeline Island.  However during the winter there is an approximately 2 mile road that gets plowed between the two towns.  This is a fairly wide road and gets closed due to high wind and snow as the crews work to plow it out.  When we left Saturday morning both the Ice Caves and Ice Road were closed, fortunately they were both open and ready for us when we got to them!

I was hoping to run on the Ice Road, but the place we were staying was a little too far and I didn’t have enough time for a longer run.  I do recommend that if you are looking for a place to stay on Madeline Island that you check out Paul on AirBnB.com


Every year there is a big race across the Ice Road.  The race is a 4.2 mile out and back on the Ice Road.  The 20th Annual Run on Water will be held March 2, 2014 and by all appearances looks like a fun event.

From their website:

The 20th annual “Run on Water” is a family fun event open to people of all ages and skill levels. Participants can choose to run, walk, ski, snowshoe, bike, skate or even skijor the 4.2-mile course on the famous “ice road” across frozen Lake Superior from Bayfield to Madeline Island and back.  The race will start on the Bayfield side.  Participants must go around a stake on the Madeline Island side about 2.1 miles away, then return to the start.  Participants can choose their own course to turn the stake – on the ice road, off the ice road, straight or curving.  All entrants will be started and timed together.  Awards will be given to the top runners in age/gender group categories, and the fastest finishers in non-running modes.

One of these years we’ll go up for the Bayfield Winter Festival and I’ll get a run across the Ice Road. The festival looks to be a lot of winter crazy fun.  Have you ever been to the Festival or run across the Ice Road? Or any ice races?

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Week in Review

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Lake Superior - Landsat image

Image via Wikipedia

Happy Monday! As I write this I’m relaxing at home after a fun-filled weekend of camping along Wisconsin’s “North Coast”.  That’s Lake Superior for most of us.  We wanted to get a last fall camping trip in before the really cold weather hit.  It got cold but our campsite was right on the lake which was perfect!  The campground we stayed at was primitive and Lake Superior was cold back in the summer time… so I didn’t run at all over the weekend but we did bike 17 miles and hike around a little bit.

On the running side, I doubled my mileage from last week… all the way up to 7 whole miles!

On Wednesday I did an easy 3.5 miles around Powderhorn Park.  The weather was pretty near perfect, just at 40 degrees.  It was a nice relaxing run.  On Thursday morning before we left I ran just over 4 miles while I ran some errands downtown.  I had left my YWCA membership card at the downtown desk, so I ran there and picked it up.  Then I ran to the AAA office to see if they had any information about Bayfield, Wisconsin or the area in general.  I then had the interesting task of running home while carrying a Tourbook.  It was another beautiful morning and a nice run.  I probably got some weird looks while running home and I know the lady at AAA was wondering why I was sweating.

Weekly Mileage:

Running – 7.5 miles

Biking – 24 miles

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