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A Wisconsin Adventure
Day Six
According to our highway map, the distance from Madison to Superior is 323 miles.
It’s two days later, in the afternoon. Ally and I have departed Madison and are driving northward to Superior and the home of my elder brother, Jim. We will spend the night.
The weather is fair once again, making for a scenic, pleasant drive to the state’s northernmost city.
We travel along Interstate 94. Three hours into the drive, we pass the halfway point. Then, at Eau Claire, we merge onto US Highway 53.
Traffic thins as we journey north. We begin to have miles of roadway to ourselves.
The time passes. Cruise control maintains a steady pace.
Ally watches movies on her portable DVD player. I reminisce about other trips to Superior. One in particular comes to mind. It was years earlier, with Robin and Lianne, and it included a singularly memorable event—that of observing black bears in their natural habitat.
It occurred at a small clearing in the Wisconsin Northwoods, thirty miles outside of Superior, along a rural dirt roadway. The clearing was used as a feeding site by an area farmer. The farmer, who periodically drove to the northwestern Wisconsin village of Poplar and a taco shell factory there, routinely hauled unusable, discarded taco shells back to the site—for the benefit of the local black bear population. Black bears frequented the site, feeding on the discarded shells. Word spread, and curious local residents, wanting to see the bears, also began to visit the site.
One evening at dusk, we joined a string of other vehicles parked along the roadway, opposite the site. We sat and waited. Before long, a small black bear emerged from the woods. Then another. Soon there were several, varying in size. We watched as the bears foraged about, undeterred by our vehicles and the occasional sound of a car door being quietly opened, as some onlookers discretely ventured closer.
For my brother Jim, who was our tour guide, it was a familiar sight. He had seen the bears before—including a particularly large one that sometimes appeared. For Robin, Lianne and me, though, it was an entirely new experience.
My reverie ends as we cruise along. I know we are nearing our destination when, up ahead, a large shape swoops low over the highway. It’s a bald eagle, the white feathers of its head and tail clearly visible.
I alert Ally, and as she scrambles to pause her movie and get a glimpse, the eagle glides gracefully over the open landscape, disappearing into the tall trees beyond.