The Ice Caves Of Bayfield

On Monday Father told me about the Ice Caves in Bayfield, Wis., abutting the southern shore of Lake Superior.  He wanted to go because, hey, they're retired and they have money, what the hell else would they do?

This didn't seem too far-fetched.  And I did look at a slideshow of the caves, which is seeing a resurgence if not a newfound popularity because the lake has frozen over for the first time in five years, allowing anybody to reach and even get into these caves just by walking on the lake, and it looked pretty cool.  Finally, it was something for the family to do, so why not?  And hey, it's not as if I had anything productive to do on a Sunday.

Driving to do play-by-play for games in the Bay Area, Corvallis, Ore. and Seattle while I was in college was the last time I took a road trip.  And since I technically did not get behind the wheel for any of these journeys because I was being driven by people who owned those cars, today was the first time I have driven so long on the road.  Well, there was one time where I was going to a graduation party for a friend in St. Paul, but the directions were wrong so I drove all over the metro area for, like, two hours before I finally asked for directions and go to his mother's place.  My Lexus was brand new at the time, too, which is a bad thing, because the owner's manual said to break it in gently over the first 500 miles, and I know I had put on less than that before getting lost.  Maybe that's why it's giving me so much trouble at 20 years old.

I digress ... so it was 3 1/3 hours to go up there and come back, 4 if you include our stopover at the Burger King in Superior, Wisc., which became the spot where Mother and I switched places behind the wheel.  I wouldn't consider it white-knuckle, nor was I nodding off to sleep, like I did that one time working the night shift at Macy's over the holidays.  It was fine, although because Father wants to keep the heat on, I was sweating through my underwear by the time we got back at just before 9 p.m., almost 14 hours after we started.

Go.  If you have time, and if the weather cooperates (I think there's supposed to be a warm-up to well above freezing, which may start to melt the ice covering Lake Superior), check it out.  I wouldn't say they are "caves" per se, more like crevices, although there are some big cut-ins of rock you can try to see close-up if you don't slip and fall on the ice.  Also, the first time I saw a curtain of huge icicles I thought that I spent a whole day just to see something that I can see if I look out onto the back deck.  But there is something to being in an area that you can't get to over the summer (or, for that matter, even in most winters) because you would be in water that extends downward at least ten feet.  And there is something about seeing such copious amounts of water just frozen off the side of a cliff, or stalactites hanging underneath rock, and thinking that winds howling across the lake were so cold and so fast that it was able to freeze that cascade in its tracks.

I thought my parents had fun.  Once they decided to hightail it back (I wish we could have gone as far as we could, but I'm sure we didn't) Mother walked faster than she did when we started out to the caves.  Father and I walked as fast as we could, but she just dusted us.  I was thinking, "Did she hate going up here?"  I don't remember her being enthusiastic about the ice caves.  But she says she just had to pee.

All in all, it was a great time, and more important, a time for the family to do something together.  And best of all: 14 hours, no arguments.  Well, when we got into the car for the ride back and Mother was fiddling with the GPS, Father, thinking that she needed to stop because we were across the border and so she couldn't bring up any Minnesota destinations like our house, slapped her hand in order to get her to start driving.  That wasn't nice.  But hey, I wasn't involved, so I'm happy.