My wife and I made it to Madeline Island, the only inhabited island of the Apostle Islands. We learned that the island is a sacred place for the local Anishinaabe people and considered to be the center of the universe. Read some more history of the island.
We were there for a benefit concert by our favorite band, Medicine for the People, and got to hang out with the band members a little bit before the show at Tom's Burned Down Cafe - aptly described to us as a pile of junk with tarps over it. Apparently it has burned down three (unofficially four) times. The town doesn't want to give Tom any building permits, so the entire cafe beyond the original deck is built on vehicles so technically it's not a "permanent" structure. There are all kinds of funny quotes painted and posted around the cafe, from the quaint to the profound. Some of my favorite are:
We were there for a benefit concert by our favorite band, Medicine for the People, and got to hang out with the band members a little bit before the show at Tom's Burned Down Cafe - aptly described to us as a pile of junk with tarps over it. Apparently it has burned down three (unofficially four) times. The town doesn't want to give Tom any building permits, so the entire cafe beyond the original deck is built on vehicles so technically it's not a "permanent" structure. There are all kinds of funny quotes painted and posted around the cafe, from the quaint to the profound. Some of my favorite are:
"Go crawl back into the loophole you came out of, Tom."
"Those who suppress freedom always do so in the name of law and order" - John V. Lindsay
"We put the SIN in Wisconsin."
Here is a slideshow of our time... at the cafe, during the concert, swimming along Barrier Beach in Big Bay State Park, and then finding a boat buried in the sand at Au Train Bay in the Upper Peninsula, Michigan. Trivia: Michigan comes from the Anishinaabe phrase mici gama, sometimes seen as Michigamme, which means "great water."
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