Lake Winnebago We Go

This next destination is a county park in Calumet, WI. This park is on the water, the campground is less than 200 yards from the water.

The park hosts are really nice folks that are flexible. When we pulled in Tom noticed the size of our trailer and suggested a move to one of the larger pull-through sites, and of course we accepted.

LOOKING ACROSS FROM OUR SITE

BASKETBALL COURT

CLIMBING JUNGLE GYM

CONFERENCE ROOM / CLUB HOUSE

Out past the trees is the water... and what goes well with water... fishing. Four boats can launch at one time.

The park is a no frills county park that has a nice playground for the children, a conference building, and an observational tower.

In its heyday it was the water tower for the Fond du Lac Table Company. In 1936, under the federally funded Work Progress Administration it was moved to Calumet Harbor, and erected at Columbia Park, as a navigational aid. Today it is an observation tower, and navigational aid open to park visitors. Me the "I'm uncomfortable with heights" guy tried to climb to the observation deck, and managed to get up 87 steps of the 100+ steps. The biggest reason for not completing the exercise was the wind; as I climbed higher, the wind was blowing harder. I will make another attempt on a day when it isn't so windy.

This is a nice restaurant, and within walking distance of the campground too. Fridays and Saturdays they have bands playing live music.

Saturday we went for dinner, before the music out on the patio. At this supper club it begins with checking in at the bar for a table, having a drink of your choice, ordering your meal, then being escorted to your table. 

Once the diner is seated, the server begins bringing your soup, salad, bread, and eventually the main course. Carol and I made it simple for our server, we had prime rib and sea scallop combo.

I had the rice pilaf, Carol had the twice-baked potatoes.

Carol had this blueberry cheesecake, with blueberry drizzle, I unfortunately had a poor copy of a cherry pie, which was not worth taking a picture of. After dinner we took a nice walk along the waters edge, better known as the boat dock.

Another night we took a walk around the park, and saw Bigfoot leaving a party... took his empties and went home.

You meet all kinds on the road. In one of the souvenir shops recently, I saw a t-shirt that said "Bigfoot saw me, and no one will believe him".

The little town of Calumet and Pipe have some unique points of interest. 

This is the second oldest building in Pipe, WI. It was the town bank, and now it is the local butcher shop, with good meat by the way. What I do find confusing is the town sign that welcomes you to Pipe, but all the address signs in the yards indicate Calumet, not to be confused with Calumetville, just down the road.

Another unique P.O.I. is the antique tractor store, which is in the big town of Calumetville, five miles from Calumet.

Out front is the attraction causing people to stop and gawk...

I decided I needed a project to do, so I worked on the cab roof marker lights.

You may be asking yourself... why does he wants to mess with these lights... because they leak during periods of heavy rain. When I first noted the issue, I took the truck into the Ford dealership in Wickenburg, AZ. They verified my assumption, and ordered replacement lights. The lights came in, but they said they were the incorrect ones, and put ours back on. THAT WAS A MISTAKE. They did a shoddy job putting them back on, and they leaked even more. 

Back to me taking the project back on. I got out my trusty 3-step ladder and removed the lights, one at a time, and put silicone caulking around the opening into the cab, then secured them back down. The outer four were pretty easy from the step ladder, it was the center one that took a little ingenuity. Here comes the ingenuity... I opened the front door all the way, lowered the window, braced the door with the step ladder, and had one foot through the window opening, the other on the passenger seat. The mission was successfully completed.

Here we are on another local mission, and this one pertained to food, cheese specifically. The first stop was to the LeClare Creamery, all the way in Calumetville.

This creamery has a lot of goat milk products, including some of their ice cream.

This silo originally stood on a farm nearby for over 100 years. It lasted so long because of its tongue-and-groove construction, no nails were used in its construction. The openings and ramp were added after it was moved to LeClare Farm.

The structure is now home for the goats, which are natural climbers.

These guys enjoyed the tree too. This pen had about five goats, only one actively attempted to eat the tree. Matt was to the rescue, I pulled the branch down a bit more for ease of access. Later I actually broke off a couple of branches for the other guys to chow down on. Other animals on the farm include llamas, and some cattle, and chickens.

Their motto here is "eat, shop, tour", and we accomplished 2/3rd of it, the tour was closed due to a private event.

Our take away included several flavors of goat cheese... and a scoop of ice cream, made from cow's milk; they do offer ice cream, in pints, made from goat's milk. Talking with some of the locals that frequent the farm, the eatery serves up some great food. Outside there is a greenhouse full of plants to decorate anyone's yard or garden.

Like I said earlier, this journey was about food, so our next stop was in Chilton, WI, at Vern's Cheese Company.

Need anymore need to be said...yes. We did not buy any alcohol, the photo was for research. The distillery that produces this brand is south of where we are currently, and may require further research when we get to Breezy Hills Campground.

I will leave you with this following note on todays journey...

This is how I challenged myself this morning...

PANORAMIC VIEW FROM ATOP THE TOWER

For those of you who really need to know, it is 121 steps (includes observation deck) to the top.

ACROSS TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE LAKE

ENTRANCE TO PARK AND PRIVATE MARINAS

SEE OUR RIG IN THE TREES

IN THE MIDDLE LOOKING DOWN FROM THE TOP

While I have been conquering fears, Carol has been beading along smartly.

She has started several others, but the patterns made no sense, so she stopped doing them, but is on the march with another bead project.

We have been keeping ourselves busy with a few recipe experiments too. 

ALMOND FLOUR BISCOTTIES WITH CHOCOLATE DRIZZLE

MEAT LASAGNA WITH BACON NOODLES

The original recipe called for deli sliced chicken as the noodles. This lasagna is a meat and cheese lovers dream of a lifetime. It contains ground beef, bacon, ricotta cheese, mozzarella cheese, and parmesan cheese. The alfredo sauce is broth (beef or chicken), half and half, cream cheese, garlic, butter, and parmesan cheese. Stop that drooling, it makes a mess.

This afternoon was a part of a good day, it started to rain.

Its hard to see, but the rain is steady, causing run off from the roof. It brought back my childhood days of playing in the rain. I put on my rain jacket, went out into the rain, and did some puddle jumping... not over, in... what a joy. Walking along the boat dock I had the opportunity to see fish jumping out of the water everywhere. What a walk.

Carol and I drove down the street to another park to see what it was about, and it turned out to be walking trails.

Shaginappi Park is 100 acres of wetlands, prairie, old-growth forest, and shoreline. 

The only questionable decision we made going to this park... it rained the day before... and made part of the trails a bit muddy.

The rest of the trails were pretty much grass covered. Down one of the trails is a lodge, the Rotary Lodge, that was built in 1939 by the Fond du Lac Rotary, and at one time served as the main dining hall for the old Camp Shaginappi Boy Scout Camp. On our little excursion we saw a gold finch, which I was too slow in getting a picture of, butterflies, and frogs

These little frogs were everywhere.

Also along the way we also saw many berries...

WINTER BERRIES

WHITE MULBERRIES

BLACKBERRIES

After our hike we took a drive to get diesel for the next leg of our trip, and it was only $3.25 a gallon, which is pretty good now days.

One more experiment recipe...

Our last weekend should be interesting, there is a fishing tournament Sunday, it is only Friday and some of the vendors are already setting up for the event. It is my understanding there will be food, drink, and live music... can't wait.

Next stop is Breezy Hills, so there probably won't be much to talk about.

 

Will the Sequels Ever End

I feel like I am creating "Rocky 59, it Never Ends". With the 4th of July weekend upon us, we chose not to do a lot... except tour Washington Island.

In an earlier post I mentioned doing a little recon on Washington Island, so we did it. It was a beautiful day for it too. How many of you remember Miss Muppet sitting on her tuffet...

There was a bench to sit at, and it was surrounded by spiders like this, fortunately they were not aggressive, just enjoying the sun.

This was the passenger ferry we rode to the island, from the  island landing we rode a tram around the island. The photo is courtesy of Voight Marine Services. When we boarded the boat we went to the top, and while we were waiting for boarding to complete, we looked down in the water and saw fish swimming around (I don't know if they were part of the tour experience, ha ha)

Unfortunately these are not exotic fish, they are only carp, some consider them trash fish. These guys did not let the departure of the boat bother them one bit.

After we pulled out from the dock, we headed north towards Washington Island, passing the infamous "Death's Door" passage.

Death's Door, home of more than 200 shipwrecks. The captain steered us port (left) a bit so that we could get a good look at another operational lighthouse

This lighthouse, on Plum Island is no longer manned after the mid 1970s. The lighthouse in the photo is the rear range of Plum Island. There are several lighthouses on this island. The first lighthouse bult on the island in 1849, unfortunately too far in in passage to be of great value, and mariners still had issues navigating Death's Door passage.

Bottom photo courtesy of Andrew Apollo

Because the Plum Island lighthouse was not doing its job, they abandoned it and built another lighthouse on Pilot Island in 1858.

Because it was a government job, the Pilot Island lighthouse didn't prove to be much better than the old Plum Island lighthouse. Always remember the government's motto... there is always enough time to do it wrong twice. (did I type that out loud, oops)

Around the late 1880s a sailing captain who traveled the passage quite a bit, proposed range lights be built on Plum Island. Our speedy government only took until 1895 to approve the idea, with construction beginning in 1896.

The brick structure by the lighthouse is the Keepers house. The Keeper had the south side and upper floor of the house; one Asst. Keeper lived upstairs on the north side, and the other Asst. Keeper lived on the 1st floor of the north side.

The next two photos are the fog signal building, boathouse, and oil storage building.

Once we crossed the harbor channel it was time to time up at Detroit Harbor, on Washington Island. I mentioned earlier that our tour of the island would be by tram...

This was our tram, two cars pulled by an SUV. History of the early island settlers begins with a bunch of Scandinavians moving to the island to farm. For you people that like shopping, the tour does stop at the mall for some shopping, but first we passed Washington Bay.

The tour driver was giving the islander prospective on how they see us, a 30 minute ferry ride from the mainland. The island is over 35 square miles in size, with over 100 miles of roads throughout the island. Why so many roads? 718 permanent residents, plus the tourists in the summer, which increases the population to nearly 1600 when the rental cottages are filled.

Brace yourself, we are now going to stop at the mall to do some shopping.

The big building in the first photo is the candy, swimming, souvenir, hardware, clothing, paint, and food snack store. The other building is handmade crafts from the locals. Leaving here we headed into downtown Washington; I couldn't get my camera ready fast enough to take a photo of downtown. I did see a grocery store, couple of bars, realtor, newspaper office, and a couple of eateries.

Leaving town we headed for the next tour stop, the Stavkirke Church.

Before we enter the church lets discuss the name. Stavkirke refers to the use of vertical posts; the term "stav"  means pole or support. 

This church is a replica patterned after the Borgund church, in Norway, built in 1150A.D.. The project was started in 1991 by local carpenters, and a large group of volunteers. The main portion of the church was dedicated in 1995 as a Christian house of worship. In 1999, the bell tower and dragon heads were added. 

At the time the original church was build in the mid 1100s, paganism was giving way to Christianity. The carvings are a blend of pagan and Christian symbols.

Our next stop on the tour is a farm museum representing what life might have been in the earlier days on the island. The first thing I want to say is that it is a working horse ranch, with other animals too. I was able to get a picture of the working horses...

As you may notice, some of the horses were comfortable with humans around. The other livestock...

Visitors can feed the livestock, for a quarter per serving. Around the farm are other buildings that were located on the island from days gone by.

TYPICAL FAMILY LIVING SPACE

WEAVING BUILDING

INSIDE WEAVING BARN

BARN

CIDER PRESSING BARN

INSIDE PRESSING BARN

Anyone know what this piece of farm equipment is?

USED FOR PLANTING CORN CROPS

Our last stop on the tour was Schoolhouse Beach. Apparently it is a tourist destination on this island. The selling point to the beach is the smooth rocky shore. Smooth rocks are still tough to walk on without water shoes. The reason the beach got its name was because the schoolhouse was located really close to the water. 

Because winters were pretty harsh near the shore, with a lot of freezing temperatures and icing, the school was moved up the hill. This new schoolhouse later became a church, and an addition was added to the left side of the building. From the last stop we scurried back through downtown so that we could catch our ferry back to the mainland.

We made it back intact, and ready for lunch.
 

On the way back we stop at Mink River Basin...

This was a good place to stop for lunch, mainly because I stopped so a car could back out of the parking lot to enter the road. As you might guess, this gave me a sign that I should take his parking spot, and have lunch there. This place is an upper crust kinda place, they have a dress code...

Fortunately Carol and I met their dress code, so we sat down and had lunch. 

TEMPURA FRIED SHRIMP

DEEP FRIED WHITEFISH

Last night was the 4th of July, and there were fireworks all around us, some of them we could see...

Made our preps for departure today, stopping at Piggly Wiggly, and Waseda Farms. Waseda Farms is a local working farm that sells meat, veggies, eggs, and dairy products, plus they have a looky-loo zoo, no petting or feeding though.

You will be happy to know that the Sturgeon Bay series has come to an end, we are heading closer to Fond Du Lac.