August 23rd
With Carrie all moved in and our awesome dinner (and wine) at Cooper’s Hawk behind us, we were ready to rock ‘n roll this anniversary weekend edition of Splorin’ Saturday. Three days of Splorin’ — it doesn’t get any better than that!!! Friday, we slept in a little and didn’t leave the hotel until around 8:15AM (that’s very late for a Splorin’ day). We were headed for Judi’s Place in Oostburg, WI. Since we left a little late we took the freeway to get there — we were surprised to see Judi’s Place listed on a blue information sign along the road – it must be good. It was pretty darn big and busy — and as typical there was a group of gentlemen sitting at the cafeteria-style counter. Unfortunately we were seated nowhere near them to be able to overhear what they were talking about. We were intrigued because this restaurant had all sorts of interesting omelettes and things. Mike opted for the “Steaky steaky” omelette which had sirloin steak, fried onions and mushrooms, while Tammy was VERY EXCITED to see a sauerkraut and kielbasa omelette! Mike’s omelette sure showed promise but it actually was pretty lacking. The steak tasted like….well…nothing. The onions were just diced up onions and the mushrooms seemed like canned mushrooms. There was so little flavor that Mike actually had to break down and ask for A1 steak sauce (admitting defeat on taste) in order to enjoy the omelette. Tammy loved her Polish omelette though and couldn’t wait to try it at home. (during the week when Mike is in Bloomington of course!)
After breakfast we were off for a short drive to Kohler-Andrae State Park. We broke one of Tammy’s Splorin’ rules — that we need about an hour between breakfast and the state park where we’re hiking in order to allow our yummy (or in Mike’s case today, not yummy) breakfast to settle — the state park was only 20 minutes away.
Luckily the first hike we were to take today was on the “Black River” trails which were some pretty easy trails, so no indigestion was had. The trails where across fields, through a pine plantation, and through some mature hardwood forest. All the trails were wide and grassy — nothing too difficult at all. Unfortunately nothing too exciting either.
We were now going to tackle the “Kohler Dunes Cordwalk”. We didn’t know what to expect with this trail — we had never heard of “cordwalk”, but since this was across sand dunes we figured it was some type of board walk. The interesting thing to us was that the trail was described as a “moderate to difficult hiking challenge”. Turns out we agreed with that rating — there were a lot of hills in the dunes to climb up and down and at many times the “cordwalk” was extremely tilted off to one side or another. Without good mobility and balance it would be difficult trail. The main problem with this trail is that it is not a loop trail — it runs basically the length of the park parallel to the shoreline of Lake Michigan. Luckily there was a parking lot in the middle of the trail.
So, we walked up the cord walk to one end, then back to the parking lot along the beach, then to the other end of the park on the cordwalk and back to the parking lot on the beach again. The cordwalk was really cool — it led you through the dunes and around large depressions. It was a very cool walk!! Heading along the beach back it was fun to try to outrun the waves (they were very large that day!!) and keep our feet dry. Mike won that challenge, Tammy not so much. Well, Tammy didn’t really try –when it comes to waves and the beach, Tammy will always be a little kid at heart playing in the water. Upon starting the southern end of the cordwalk we began on the Creeping Juniper Nature Trail. About 1/4 of a mile down the trail we passed a big pine tree and suddenly came across about 8 or 10 birds on the ground. They were pretty small in size — about the size of small chickens. As we took pictures and tried to figure out what these were we heard a lot of noise in a little stand of juniper bushes and out pops the momma wild turkey. She was less than impressed with us, but she just gathered all the babies and led them along the trail. We didn’t want to disturb them any longer, so we kept walking down the trail.
We quickly came upon a family of 5 and told them about the turkeys and hopefully they would be able to see them. Once we reached the end of the trail we had to head back along the beach. This was much more difficult than the other beach segment. Mike walked most of the way along the side of the dune, while Tammy (who already had wet feet) stayed down near the water.
Next up was the Woodland Dunes Nature Trail, the Marsh Trail and the Black River Marsh Boardwalk (yes, boardwalk, not cordwalk). The nature trail was through a mature forest. Tammy spotted a deer ahead on the trail that was munching on some twigs. She seemed quite unimpressed with us and just moved off the trail a little bit as we approached. As we got closer we saw her fawn off on the other side of the trail. We just kept walking slowly and she moved a little ways off the trail — never stopping eating, but also never taking an eye off of us.
We left her and her fawn to their browsing while we kept heading down the trail. Much to Mike’s dismay Tammy, spotted another deer. Grrrr. Maybe Mike needs glasses. (or cataract surgery) We made it through the campground and it was pretty different than the campgrounds we usually see at Wisconsin State Parks. Usually the campgrounds are packed to the gills with people — these were pretty sparsely populated. Turns out it was because it was earlier in the day on Friday — many were yet to arrive for the weekend. We also saw something we never thought we would see in a campground — there were camping spaces right along the road — people would just park their camper on the side of the road and unload. Literally people sitting in camp chairs on the side of the road. That’s camping? The marsh board walk was neat — it took us out into the middle of the marsh, lots of pretty flowers and cattails to see.
We ran into the family that we mentioned the turkeys too — and yay! — they were able to see them (although they did say momma shuffled the babies off pretty quickly).
We had one last trail to tackle — the “Ancient Shores” trail. This was supposed to be a 1.3 mile trail that followed geography of the where the former shoreline of Lake Michigan was. It was a very unimpressive trail. But hey, a hike is a hike. The biggest thing about this trail was that it was listed at 1.3 miles but we hiked the entire trail, and even back tracked over a little bit of it, and only measured 0.9 miles. Oh well, a bad trail is still better than a good day at work. We made our way back to the almost empty campground and took a much needed shower.
A good friend of Tammy’s suggest Schwarz’s Supper Club in New Holstein, WI. We just have to preface this supper club with a HOLY COW! This is what we have been looking for in a supper club!!!
From reviews and Tammy’s friend, we knew this was yet another “order in the bar, eat in the dining room” supper club”. We got there about 4PM and planned on having a drink or two and then dinner. We walked in and were able to find a seat at the bar without a problem. After ordering our drinks were were trying to figure out how the restaurant worked. There was another couple sitting near us that ordered appetizers to eat at the bar, but were not eating dinner. Mike was finally able to get the attention of the bar tender and ask how dinner worked. They give you menus and then when you are ready to order, you stand your menu up in front of you. A waitress comes over and takes your order — you can even decide if you want to have your appetizer in the bar or at your table and 15 to 20 minutes later you hear an announcement “Mike, your table is ready”. You then go to the hostess stand and she tells you your table number — and just like Toby’s — your salad is there waiting for you!
Both of us ordered combination dinners. Mike got the “petite” prime rib and “petite” cod fillet (“petite” is in quotes because neither were small). Tammy ordered the scallops and the tenderloin. Mike’s prime rib was fabulous!!! Definitely one of the better ones that he has had. The baked cod? Not so much. But the service was amazing, and they had a great relish tray too!!!
We didn’t get to eavesdrop much, but a very elderly couple came and sat at the table next to us and they were both wearing very loose fitting, very white, pants. This was the end of summer and it appeared as if they were making a fashion statement — SUMMER IS NOT OVER YET!!! Once again, we brought the average age down by about 20 years. On the way to the hotel in Green Bay for the night, we decided it was a good thing that this supper club was so far way because if it were closer — we would go here EVERY SINGLE NIGHT!!!!! We got back to the hotel relatively early and decided to have a nightcap at the iconic Packer bar, the Stadium View.
August 24th
Happy Anniversary!!! 28 years!! I think it is safe to say Splorin’ Saturday was not something we thought we’d be doing 28 years ago. We wish we had a blog back then so we could see exactly what we were thinking about our lives ahead, but all we can say now looking back is what a ride it has been. If we keeled over dead tomorrow, wow, what a life!!! (that isn’t meant to sound fatalistic, just the truth) We wouldn’t change a thing!!! This certainly wasn’t in “The Plan”, but Mike hasn’t always been right. 😉
Speaking of “The Plan”, “The Plan” Mike had laid out 3 wks prior to this day had our Splorin’ going to a restaurant that would not be open by the time we got there. Sorry Rusty Tractor, but you have to open earlier than 8AM to catch these two Splorin’ kids. A quick replan on Friday evening found us going to Scaturo’s Bakery and Cafe in Sturgeon Bay, WI. They opened at 5AM — a much more convenient time for us (although we did not arrive until 7:03AM). There were a lot of cars in the parking lot and a group of 8 people standing outside the door when we arrived. Oh boy, really? Were we going to have to wait for the first time ever for breakfast? Whew! Nope, the group of 8 looked to be a “running club”. We quickly ducked into the restaurant and were told to grab a seat anywhere we liked. We were excited to see yet another “coffee klatch” of elderly gentleman in the room next door to us but there were no other tables in that room. We were happy they were there, but sad that we were not close enough to overhear their conversation. Mike had the “Sconnie 2.0” omelette (basically just ham and cheese) and Tammy went back to the standard Veggie Omelette and side salad. Mike skipped the lettuce salad and had a “bacon salad” (aka a side order of bacon). Food, coffee (and company) were awesome!! Will stop again if here this early in the morning for another ‘splorin’ excursion. (still a few more state parks in Door county to tackle.) We had to pay for our meal in the Bakery portion of the restaurant where we learned our waiter was the “waiter of the month” (and also shared the same last name as the restaurant — was he a son, cousin, brother?) and also that, even though bakery goods still look delicious, they are not as tempting as they used to be.
After breakfast we were off to Newport State Park. This state park is on the very tip of Door County. You can’t go much further without driving into Green Bay or Lake Michigan. This is a different kind of state park than what we have been visiting lately. Most of the parks we Splor’ have beaches, boat launches, large camping areas, etc. This state park basically has hiking trails. There are a couple of very small sand beaches on Lake Michigan, and it only has 16 camp sites. All 16 of these campsites are “backpack” camp sites — meaning that you have to hike all of your gear in (some of the sites you have a 2 mile hike from where you can park your car). With hiking being our primary purpose for visiting the state parks, we were excited that this one was so focused the same thing.
“The Plan” was not fully formed before arriving at the park. Mike had a couple routes picked out, but until we got there we didn’t really know where we were going. It turns out that the south side of the park has a couple of loop trails — which are always the best for us, but in this case the two loops shared a common central portion — so if we did both we would travel that middle portion twice — BORING!!! So, Mike came up with the idea of just doing the outside of the two loops into one big single loop.
Pulling in there were no cars….anywhere! The only cars we saw were ones that were parked in the backpack campsite parking. Awesome…the whole park to ourselves!!! We parked and layered ourselves in our bug spray and took off. A portion of this park is a pennisula out into Lake Michigan — the first “combined loop” of our day traversed the outside of this pennisula. We headed down the trail and immediately took a wrong turn. Sometimes the maps that you get for the park are not detailed enough to really see where you need to go. We knew we wanted to be hiking on the trail near the water, but we ended up at the beach almost immediately. Backtracking a little we were able to find the trail where we needed to be. A little way down the Newport Loop, we found the trail that branched off along the shoreline. This was a very cool trail. It twisted and turned along the shoreline — from which you were able to see the amazingly clear Lake Michigan water on one side and short limestone cliffs on the other.
It was here that we came across the first two backpack campsites. On the reviews we read that some people said you could bring a wagon to pull stuff to your campsite — but that wagon would have to have anti-gravity properties to be able to get to these sites!! We couldn’t see the campsites from the trail, but it was obvious they were very secluded. If you want to “get away” while camping — this state park is for you!!!
Mike read on one review that someone hiked 3 miles without seeing another person…well, we only made it 2.5 miles before we saw 2 people out searching for firewood from their campsite. A dad and his son trying to find just the right wood. We said a quick greeting and were on our way. Coming around the far side of the pennisula now on the Rowley’s Bay trail, we were coming to the last of the campsites for this portion of the trail. We heard people LONG before we saw them. It was obvious these people were much more interested in partying than real camping — or at least partying and camping. Mike still wonders how they got a keg that far out into the woods (no, we didn’t see a keg, but it seemed like it might have been a possibility –Mike seems to be particularly worried about keggers at state parks LOL). We ran into them on the trail — 4 early twenty-somethings with a hatchet looking for firewood of their own. We still did not know what we were doing for our next hike. Mike knew this portion of the hike would be about 6 miles. We talked about driving up to the far end of the park and doing the loops trails there, and Mike came up with the idea of doing the full loop of those sections. The map said that loop trail was 7 miles. That would be a trail that was longer than what we originally started Splorin’ Saturdays with — GAME ON!!! It was pretty clear by this point that there was not going to be much for hills this day so we decided to go for distance. We made it back to the car having done 5.28 miles (Mike was off by a little 😉 ). Seeing 6 people on the whole first hike was AWESOME!!! This was our kind of park — we like hiking alone!!! Back at the parking lot we were suprised to see 4 or 5 cars there since it had be so quiet (we had bet how many there might be – Tammy won). Those people must have been behind us on the trail because we never saw anyone other than those remote campsite campers.
We drove the whole 1/4 mile to the next parking lot — only to find a TON of cars. UGH!!! People everywhere. This was the primary beach for the park. We saw lots of people picnicking. We got ready for our next hike along the European Bay loop trail. 7 miles here we come!! The first part of this trail was an accessible trail (easy traveled by someone in a wheelchair, walker, or cane). When we got to the point where we took off to the north, we ran into a group of people trying to get back to the parking lot. Mike pointed out they were coming off the Lynd Point trail which went right out along the shoreline. We decided that we would take that trail on the way back if we were not completely dead by that point in time. This trail is what Mike likes to call a “multiple lollipop” trail. Which basically means it is a single trail that has several loops in the middle of it. As we come to each loop (or lollipop) we pick one way to go around that loop in this direction and then take the other side in the opposite direction. This now takes you, dear readers, to Mike’s theory of loop trail traversal for encountering the fewest people. One thing we disklike about meeting people while hiking is having to pass people, or have people pass us. So meeting people on the trail should be limited to people traveling in the opposite direction of us as much as possible. Mike’s theory is that most people when faced with a choice of going right or left, will choose the direction of their dominant hand. Since most people are right-handed they will choose to go right. So — he makes us always go to the left. We have no idea if this works or not, but it seems to make sense (at least to him). So, the first loop we hit we headed off to the left, and never saw anyone (coincidence? hmmmm).
One thing we like is seeing wildlife on the trails. Deer, turkies, snakes, frogs, etc. One thing we saw a lot of this day were snakes. We have learned exactly what a snake sounds like and how to spot them. We saw 9 snakes in this state park (all of them garter snakes). However, had we seen all we heard it would have easy been double that amount. We tried hard to get to double digits, but just couldn’t make it. Mike desperately wanted to see deer (and to see them before Tammy this time 😉 ), but alas no deer were seen. :-(. We popped out of the southern part of this trail to a road (where we would have parked if we skipped the portion we just covered). We then headed off toward Europe Lake. This next section of the trail was so unlike any other trail we’ve been on; it was crazy. We walk from lush green forest to dark almost black (think evil) forest with no undergrowth, no sunlight able to penetrate the thick trees in a matter of a few feet. Upon making it to the farthest north portion of this trail we encountered two women who were out searching for firewood for their camp. Apparently that is what you do if you camp in this state park — search for firewood. A short way down the trail we encountered two teenage girls wrapped in towels heading the way the two women just went. After they passed us, we looked at each other and almost simultaneously said — those girls smelled like they just took a shower!! Both of use were already thinking that we would like to take a shower, but this state park did not have shower facilities. We then came upon the Lake Michigan shoreline and a nice little hole through the rocks where waves were crashing in. It was gorgeous.
We now headed back down the trail and encountered a couple of groups of people walking their dogs. We also came across another first for us — two people on mountain bikes! Even though many of the trails we use have allowed mountain biking, we had never seen any before. They asked if there was any more sand on the trails and we had to tell them — yeah — we are on the Lake Michigan shore — there is a LOT of sand! We made it back to the road and decided to take a quick break on the beach before completing our hike. It was a very welcome break — we were bushed!!!
We then began the last push through this Splorin’ day. We got back to the Lynd Point trail and decided that, of course, we HAD to do it!! GAME ON!!!! The majority of the Europe Lake loop trail was big and wide and a pretty easy hiking. Along the Lynd Point trail it quickly narrowed down to a foot wide trail with lots of rocks, lots of roots and twisty and turns small rock falls to climb over. In short – this was our kind of trail!! We encountered a couple groups of people headed the opposite direction; they seemed like they were having a blast like us! Once we hit the shoreline and started making the turn south we encountered family of four. We heard the kids long before we got to them and came around a bend and saw the kids running back and forth by the water and we wondered where the parents were. A minute later we encountered a very clearly unhappy mom, and a dad who seemed to be trying to make the best of it. The mom was actually carrying a small bike. We looked at each other trying to figure out how (and why?) they had a bike out on this trail — it definitely was nowhere near capable of being biked. We said our “Hi”, “Good Afternoon” and got a grudging hello from the dad and nothing from the mom. A little bit further down the trail, Mike was convinced that we were almost back to the beach and the parking lot where we parked. We then encountered a group of 4 fairly elderly people who seemed to be having a little bit of problems moving along the trail. We stopped to talk to them briefly when they asked if they would run into the accessible trail if they kept going in the direction they were going. Mike told them they would in about 3/4 of a mile of pretty tough hiking. They then asked which way would get them back to the parking lot quicker. Even though we didn’t exactly know how far it was, we knew it would be quicker for them to turn around and we told them that — but they kept going anyway. Mike was nowhere close — it turns out we still had 0.85 miles to get to the parking lot (but it was a LOT easier than the way they were going). Mike hopes those four elderly people are still not out on that trail looking for where it intersects with the accessible trail. We made it back to the beach and saw some glimpses of the water again,
and then, FINALLY the parking lot. We got back to the car and had long drinks of water and some almonds. That hike was the longest single hike of our Splorin’ career at 7.65 miles — WHEW!! We. Were. Tired. Even though it was not very hot — we needed to get cleaned up before dinner. As we mentioned earlier, there were no shower facilities at this state park. However, we noticed on the way in that the bathrooms in the park office were quite large and had running hot water. We decided we could take a wash cloth bath and get ready in these bathrooms. Unfortunately Mike ended up with a good sized blood blister on the side of this foot, so he looked kind of funny walking around in his sandals. We got cleaned up and we were off to dinner. We had an extra 45 minutes to blow along the way. We decided that we would just go and stop somewhere if it looked interesting. Somewhere along the way we got the idea to stop at a winery if we saw one. We finally came across a sign for Simon Creek Vineyard and Winery. We were not that impressed with their wines and especially not the guy giving us the tasting. Granted, we had a really good experience with Ron at Coopers’ Hawk on Thursday so that could have factored in to our opinion of this guy too. We really like dry red wines, but it seems like most wineries in the Upper Midwest primarily make sweet wines. This was no different. Even though they had some drier wines, the taste was just not to our liking. Instead of buying a bottle of wine, Tammy found a cute little foldable sign that says “I LOVE MY HUSBAND MORE THAN WINE”, (or MAYBE it actually said “Enjoy life, Drink good wine.”) so of course Mike bought it for her. It was then time for dinner.
Donny’s Glidden Lodge was the Supper Club destination for dinner this evening . This restaurant is literally right on Lake Michigan — the dining room is about 20 feet from the shoreline and the atmosphere was just perfect to celebrate our anniversary.
This may surprise our loyal readers — but Mike had the prime rib. Tammy had the Signature Dinner – The Glidden, it was a Filet Migon with gorgonzola cheese and candied onions on toast points!!! Since it was our anniversary afterall, Tammy even ate the toast. They had an amazing salad bar as well. The service was wonderful — the waitress took very good care of us. Tammy was even able to overhear some conversation from a family seated behind us — a gentleman at the next table talked about being diagnosed with diabetes and how he was able to take control of it with diet, exercise and losing weight. Hmmm, that story sounds familiar, but not exactly sure why. ;-). We like to take a picture with the restaurant sign so that we can remember our evening. (we are getting old and our memories are not what they used to be) Tonight, there was no sign and in fact, it was hard to figure out exactly where the restaurant was located in this lodge. But we wanted a picture anyway, and we are both happy we decided to take this one.
After dinner we were off to the hotel in Green Bay again — we took the “long way” of course down Glidden Drive – a five mile drive right past hundreds of houses and lots right on Lake Michigan. Some of them were very large multimillion dollar mansions, some smaller old cottage style homes, and quite a few empty lots for sale. Tammy thinks it would be lovely to live along this drive just to sit and stare out at the lake. Mike thinks that would be boring — no barges to look at, no pirate ships — give him Lake Pepin any day!
August 25th
Wow — yesterday was quite the anniversary!!! The only way we can top that is to make it to our 29th and see where that lands us! “The Plan” had us sleeping late in Green Bay and then making our way back home, maybe finding something to do on the way. After talking about it, we decided that the “something to do” would be to go to yet another state park for a little more Splorin’.
There are many state parks that do not have a lot of hiking trails — we ended up looking for one somewhere close to our route home that had just a few miles of trails so we could tick that off our list of state parks. (we are determined to do them all!) We found Council Grounds State Park — and it became our Splorin’ destination for the day!!
Before we could Splor’, we needed to stop and get some breakfast. We decided that we would just hop in the car and start driving towards the state park and find a restaurant on the way. After half and hour on the road, Mike finally decided that we might not get lucky enough to find some place that was on one of the blue freeway signs. Mike gave Tammy Bonduel, WI as a destination for breakfast. She quickly found a couple of good candidates. It was decided that Hungry Bear Cafe and Catering would be our destination if it was not too busy. (We knew Sunday mornings were big for breakfast enthusiasts.) We were able to find our way there and while the inside of the restaurant was quite busy, there was outdoor seating that had quite a few open tables — we opted to sit outside. It was a gorgeous morning, around 65 degrees and sunny — the perfect weather for enjoying breakfast with the best of company!!!
Tammy had her typical Veggie Omelet with a salad and Mike had a ham and cheese omelette with a side of bacon salad. It was a nice little place and when Tammy went in to the bathroom, she discovered that the bear motif was VERY big on the inside. Not sure there was one foot of wall not covered by bears of all shapes and sizes!
Off to Council Grounds State Park for some Splorin’!!! Well, not a LOT of Splorin’. As we previously said this is a state park without a lot of hiking trails. After arriving we drove down to the river to hike the nature loop trail. This was supposed to be a 0.5 mile trail, but we made it all the way around the loop in about 0.3 miles. We continued down to the river to some of the fishing docks. It was a nice trail, but not a lot of diversity to see.
As we got to the river, we found that there were quite a few benches along the way — you could sit and enjoy the river view. We walked down the river to the next dock and found a couple more benches. We followed the “unofficial” trail along the river back to the parking lot and saw many, many more benches. We decided that this state park has been going out and stealing benches from every other state park — we easily saw 2 or 3 times the number of benches than we have seen in all the other state parks COMBINED!
We then headed to the southern end of the park to do our last hike of the day. We were going to go across both the Blue and Green trails. Before we got started on the trails we encountered a couple that was in a big patch of raspberries filling buckets with them. We did our “good afternoon” to them and continued on our way. The Blue and Green trails were pretty uneventful — but a good walk in the woods was all we were looking for, and that is exactly what we got! We knocked those two trails out and were ready to head home afterward. As we were getting back to the car — the couple picking raspberries were just getting done. I hope they got a lot!!
We then began our way back home. Usually after Splorin’ we hit a supper club, but this was a Sunday special edition of Splorin’ so we decided to mix it up a little. Instead of going to a supper club, we went to Eau Claire West Festival Foods Brat Barn for a fundraiser for Memorial High School Choirs. Mike had a very tasty (bunless) brat with mustard. Tammy had a (bunless) hockey puck, er, hamburger. Seriously — it looked like it had been cooked about 18 hours before and left on the counter since then (and Tammy said it tasted like that too). Oh well, it was for a good cause. We finally made it home….and crashed — whew, what a WONDERFUL SPLORIN’ three day weekend!!! All in all, we did a marathon’s worth of hiking in 3 days.
Splorin' Saturday 