Leaving My Personal Wonderland and Fun in Green Bay (Day 13)

I'll be honest, I was sad leaving Isle Royale National Park on that Friday morning.  I really hate the summers in Maryland and Isle Royale provided an amazingly quiet and cool retreat from the Mid-Atlantic heat.  So on our last day there we slept in, grabbed breakfast, said goodbye to our new friends and headed to the seaplane dock to depart.  

For this leg of the flight, I sat in the back as we had another couple join us on the flight back to Houghton.  The girls took the middle seat.  It gave me an opportunity to take pictures with a different view.  

Here you can see the Rock Harbor Lighthouse from the airplane.  

Norah was exhausted and fell asleep on the 45-minute flight back.  

Back to the opening to the Portage Canal leading to Houghton.  

Landing over the Portage Canal Lift Bridge 

The flight back was quick and fun.  As we landed and got back into our car, we needed to get lunch, so we headed to downtown Houghton and went to Suomi Restaurant.  I grew up in a town that had a lot of people from Finnish descent.  So seeing a Finnish restaurant in Houghton was cool.  I immediately ordered a little bit of Michigan (pasties) and a little bit of Finland (pannukakku with raspberry sauce).  It was all sooooooo good!

After eating lunch, we walked around downtown Houghton for a few minutes before hopping in our car and heading south.  We had to make it to Milwaukee as the girls were flying out of there early the next morning.  

The downtown was beautiful.  Their main street had a bunch of little shops with neat products in them.  The girls stopped into one to get some stickers and other souvenirs.  

We left Houghton around 1pm and headed south, planning on a stop in Green Bay, Wisconsin.  I had a little surprise for the girls up my sleeve.  

The trip from Houghton, Michigan to Green Bay, WI is about 4 hours.  During this trip, you go from Eastern Daylight Time to Central Daylight Time and you gain an hour.  We arrived in Green Bay around 4pm CDT and I took the girls immediately to Bay Beach Amusement Park.  This is a real neat amusement park run by the city of Green Bay and is a "pay by the ride" amusement park.  The best part is that tickets were 25 cents a piece and most rides required 2 tickets to ride!!!  50 cents a ride is an absolute steal in today's day in age.  $20 goes a long way here!

The girls were so excited to be surprised with an amusement park and it was a welcome stop after a 4 hour ride in the car.  We gave them a couple hours to play before we needed to grab dinner and head on the road for 2 hour ride Milwaukee.

We at dinner at The Depot in downtown Green Bay.  This was in an old train station along the Fox River that included a large Donald Driver statue.  They had pork rinds so I was happy.

We got into Milwaukee around 9:00pm, checked into the LaQuinta Inn and everyone went right to bed.  The girls had a 6:30am flight back to Maryland the next morning they had to rest up for.