Door County Stopover

We arrived in Sturgeon Bay on Sunday afternoon, set up camp and had a quiet evening. Our plan was to take a bike ride on Monday and replace our failing fresh water pump on Tuesday afternoon.

Well the weather had other ideas. We woke up to rain on Monday and it rained off and on throughout the day. So, we sat in our tent room, reading, enjoying the sound of the rain.

As you can see, with the flaps down, we stayed nice and dry. The good news was, there was little wind with the rain, so the tent stayed mostly still. It can flap around in high winds.

Tuesday brought us a beautiful sunny day with highs in the 70s, so Bill and I planned a nice bike ride along the Ahnapee State Trail, which is a rail to trail conversion following the former path of the Ahnapee & Western Railroad from Agoma to Sturgeon Bay. The railroad ceased operations in 1986. I love riding rail to trail conversions and I am a member of the Rails to Trails Conservancy.

On our ride, we rode round trip from Tranquil Timbers to Forestville. We decided not to ride all the way to Algoma, since we needed to be back to deal with our water pump.

Even though it had rained the day before, the trail was dry and easy to ride. Although both of us agree, there is more resistance than on pavement. This is good practice for the C&O Towpath ride we are doing in the fall.

The trail shares the path with the Ice Age Trail, a long hiking trail that goes from Sturgeon Bay in the far northeast corner of Wisconsin, down to Janesville in south-central Wisconsin and then back up to St. Croix Falls in far western Wisconsin.

A nice lunch at Clark’s Bar and Family Restaurant gave us a break and then we headed back.

We passed this typical small Wisconsin dairy. There are thousands of these small dairies still operating across Wisconsin, resisting the trend toward corporate owned massive dairies. Although I suspect the corporate dairies are putting pressure on, even here.

I particularly liked this section of the trail with the wildflowers and reeds on one side. Here the trail is up high ground, surrounded by water filled marshes.

We made it back to camp and shortly there after the water pump arrived UPS. Installation was not particularly difficult and we got it all set and tested. The results were not particularly impressive, a slow flow. I got the instructions out to troubleshoot and noticed something very important. They sent (or I ordered) a park model version, designed to run on 115 VAC. No wonder the pump was running slowly on 12 VDC. I quickly drove to the local RV accessory store to see if they had the right pump. They did. So, as I was standing in line, one of the sales people noticed me and came over and said be sure you check that pump carefully because the 12 V model and the 115 V model carry the same model number. I chuckled and said, “yeah I learned that the hard way.”

Back at the trailer, it was quick work to install the correct pump and everything’s working great.

Yesterday was another nice day, sunny and low 80s. Bill and I went into town for lunch and then went exploring. Amazingly there is a “Door County Wine Trail.” Several wineries only produce fruit wines, particularly Cherry and Apple. A couple produce wines from grapes shipped in from various wine growing regions. But one, Door 44, grows hearty varieties right here in Door County at the 44th Parallel, thus the name.

We purchased several bottles, a Rose’, a Sparkling called Bubbler, for those of you not from Wisconsin, that is the colloquial term for drinking fountain and a couple of red blends. We look forward to sharing these with Brian and Gary next week.

It is another nice sunny day this morning as we pack up and head to Franklin Lake in the Chequamegon-Nicolet national forest.