La Pointe, WI

Yesterday, the Madeline Island Ferry Line shut down service between Madeline Island and the Bayfield mainland.

Cars and trucks on the Lake Superior ice, just off the Bayfield, Wisconsin shoreline

This weekend, there will be "limited" windsled service across the two miles of Chequamegon Bay ice, with Saturday trips departing the Island at 9 am, 11:30 and 4 pm. Saturday windsled runs will depart Bayfield at 9:15, 12:15 and 4:15 daily, for the time being [schedule subject to change].

On Sundays, the planned windsled schedule is as follows: Trips depart La Pointe at 9, Noon and 4 pm. Trips depart Bayfield at 9:15, 12:15 and 4:15.

A good, solid ice road is perhaps a week to ten days away, weather permitting. Stay tuned and we'll try to keep you updated on the availability of ice road travel.

The Windsled Schedule Hot Line has a recorded message which may be accessed at 715-747-5400.

The summer of 2009 will bring the opening of a new art gallery on Madeline Island.

The Bell Street Gallery is the creation of Steve McHugh, a well-known professional photographer from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Steve has been a Madeline Island summer resident for nearly two years now.

Steve saw one of our commercial listings, located at 807 Bell Street, this past summer. He was able to look beyond the rustic facade and the bright red paint job that adorned the building. Steve and his wife Mary fell in love with the location and the property's commercial potential, so they purchased the property in October of 2008.

Steve has created the Bell Street Gallery Blog so that his fans may track the progress of the building remodel and his preparations for the opening of the Gallery in the summer of 2009.

I'm confident that Steve McHugh's Bell Street Gallery in the town of LaPointe, Wisconsin will be a huge addition to the cultural scene on Madeline Island and I'm eager to see him succeed!

Rumor has it that the Madeline Island Ferry Line may be shutting down in the next few days, in preparation for the formation of an ice road.

Lake Superior at dawn, Canal Park, Duluth, Minnesota

As of this evening, the Ferry Line recorded message informs Islanders that they should move vehicles over to the Bayfield side before Tuesday, December 30.

This could be the earliest and best ice road we've seen in a couple of decades. And the impact of the ice road on the LaPointe community is huge.

During ice road season, Islanders and visitors save quite a bit on ferry fees. Goods and people travel pretty much round the clock between the Bayfield mainland and the Island. There's no waiting for boats or for the windsled. Life is good!

Of course, the windsled will be running during the period between ferry shutdown and the opening of the ice road to traffic.

If you're looking for information on when precisely the ferries will stop running, call the Madeline Island Ferry Line, at 715-747-2051.

It's a bit chilly here tonight.

The temperature right now is 49 degrees. The sky is clear and a low of 37 to 42 is predicted for tonight.

Today it seemed like tourists switched suddenly from t-shirts and shorts to thick sweaters and fall jackets. A couple of guys walked into my real estate office this afternoon looking for firewood for their campsite at the State Park. We chatted briefly about real estate prices and they took a brochure and business card with them. I gave them a small bundle of split oak for their campfire and in return, they left me a couple bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale, a pretty fair trade.

Leaves are changing here already. It's perhaps more noticeable on the northwest side of Madeline Island, but you'll see trees aflame in red and orange along South Shore Road and Big Bay Road as well. There's a kind of luminous orange that appears at this time of year which has the curious property of bathing everything around it in color. Whether by reflection or refraction, you'll notice in the late afternoon and evening that these red-orange "flame trees" almost seem to give off their own light.

The reds, oranges, yellows appear sporadically as you drive around the Island, but they're more apparent on the nearby mainland. Drive west on Highway 13, beyond Herbster and Port Wing, and you'll see more widespread change in the overall color of the mixed hardwoods flanking the highway.

Our fall color season on Madeline Island tends to last longer than in other locales, primarily because the surrounding lake moderates our temperature, probably giving trees the false impression that it's warmer outside than the actual area temperature. The lake effect slows down the onset of frost and promotes more moderate air temperatures, because the water holds its thermal absorption and stays warmer than the air as late fall turns into winter.

Anyway, this weekend seems to be heralding the arrival of Fall. The Bayfield Apple Festival is two weeks away and we should see peak color by the time it opens.

Thanks in part to the Wisconsin State Bureau of Aeronautics, Madeline Island is receiving nearly four million dollars worth of gravel.

The Madeline Island Ferry dock is a beehive of activity, with bargeloads full of gravel for road and sanitation and airport projects being delivered daily. Every time the crane swings from barge to the giant hopper on the ferry dock, you hear the sound of money being poured onto the Island.

Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle presented the Town of La Pointe with a check for $1.2 million on August 11. That portion came from the Bureau of Aeronautics, to pay for 21,500 tons of gravel needed for future airport projects.

The Madeline Island Sanitary District will be using about 2,000 tons. That leaves nearly 65,000 tons to be used by the Town of La Pointe over the coming decade for road improvements and annual repairs to town roadways. And the total cost of the gravel will come to $3,651,600.

Ashland County is helping to pay for the gravel, contributing nearly 40% of the required funds. The County, in turn, received a grant from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation to rebuild Highway H on Madeline Island.

Upcoming road projects will include the re-paving of half of Main Street, Big Bay Road, Middle Road and Black's Shanty Road. Northwoods Paving of Ashland, Wisconsin, will be the general contractor for the gravel and blacktopping contracts.