Day 31: Sunday September 25th, 2016
Location: Kewaunee River Segment (Part 1), Kewaunee County
3.8 miles of trail covered
3.8 miles of trail covered
Where have we been for a year? Or 512 days, to be more precise. Well, that's a long story that I will condense into three terms: ticks, poison ivy, geocaching. Ticks are scary little buggers, and if you read our blog about the Timberland Wilderness Segment in Lincoln County you'll know there are a few ticks to be found along the Ice Age Trail. Both of us have dealt with Lyme's disease in the past, and Theresa got a bad case of Anaplasmosis once. These are nothing to sneeze at, and as we get older we are more and more concerned with this.
There is also no shortage of poison ivy in Wisconsin, a ubiquitous and pernicious little plant with a highly effective defense mechanism that affects at least 85% of the population. If you're part of the 15% of the people who are unaffected by urushiol (the chemical compound in most 'poison' plants) count yourself very lucky.
And geocaching? You can look that one up at www.geocaching.com. It's a new hobby for us, and it has taken away from our time on the trail. You may not care about geocaching, but it WAS the reason we found ourselves on the Ice Ace Trail again, this warm Sunday afternoon. We were 'caching' along the shore of Lake Michigan, and had our bikes with us. On a lark, we decided to ride this section of the Kewaunee River State Trail and pick up a few miles of IAT. The weather was uncertain, but the worst that could happen was getting wet. No problem for seasoned geocachers.
We parked our vehicle at a convenient location at the end of Main Street. Not THE Main Street - the little one that you get to when you turn west off of THE Main Street at Hathaway drive and follow the frontage road to the end. [Edit: This is no longer the Official Route of the IAT, but it was when we were there back in 2016.] Onto the bikes and away we rode.
There is little to be said about bike trails that follow old train tracks that you don't probably already know. They all have a low, gentle grade, and the only question is whether or not they are properly maintained. This one is, and it gets a lot of traffic. We met numerous people in both directions on this beautiful day.
We decided to bike only a few miles to the parking area at Bruemmer Park, a distance we judged to be about 3.8 miles. Since we had only one vehicle, there was nothing for it but to turn around and bike back the was we had come. Plus - there were ominous clouds forming in the west, and despite the lovely trees, the occasional views of the Kewaunee River, and the pleasant temperatures, we decided it would be prudent to make haste.
You know that sudden gust of wind that sometimes precedes a downpour? Meteorologists could explain the different conditions that lead to this effect, but for the layman, it's enough to know that when the wind starts gusting suddenly, you're-a-gonna get wet. About 3.1 miles into our return trip, the gust came. A little more than a half-mile from the car, we put it in overdrive.
I've never actually seen Theresa move that fast on a bike. Before or since. Something about that gust of wind created a motivation in her like spotting an open checkout aisle at Walmart on a busy Saturday two weeks before Christmas. Fine by me. Childhood humor flashed through my mind about 'Books never written', specifically 'Two miles to the outhouse, by Willie Makit'.
We made it.
Both bikes were secured onto the rack and we were diving into the van as the first few fat drops fell in what turned out to be a good old-fashioned gully washer. Safe and dry in our van, we watched the rain sweep out into the lake, and then steered our vehicle towards a restaurant.
Running total: 240.5 miles of trail covered; 21.6 miles ‘extra’ hiking/biking. End of Day 31
There is also no shortage of poison ivy in Wisconsin, a ubiquitous and pernicious little plant with a highly effective defense mechanism that affects at least 85% of the population. If you're part of the 15% of the people who are unaffected by urushiol (the chemical compound in most 'poison' plants) count yourself very lucky.
And geocaching? You can look that one up at www.geocaching.com. It's a new hobby for us, and it has taken away from our time on the trail. You may not care about geocaching, but it WAS the reason we found ourselves on the Ice Ace Trail again, this warm Sunday afternoon. We were 'caching' along the shore of Lake Michigan, and had our bikes with us. On a lark, we decided to ride this section of the Kewaunee River State Trail and pick up a few miles of IAT. The weather was uncertain, but the worst that could happen was getting wet. No problem for seasoned geocachers.
We parked our vehicle at a convenient location at the end of Main Street. Not THE Main Street - the little one that you get to when you turn west off of THE Main Street at Hathaway drive and follow the frontage road to the end. [Edit: This is no longer the Official Route of the IAT, but it was when we were there back in 2016.] Onto the bikes and away we rode.
There is little to be said about bike trails that follow old train tracks that you don't probably already know. They all have a low, gentle grade, and the only question is whether or not they are properly maintained. This one is, and it gets a lot of traffic. We met numerous people in both directions on this beautiful day.
We decided to bike only a few miles to the parking area at Bruemmer Park, a distance we judged to be about 3.8 miles. Since we had only one vehicle, there was nothing for it but to turn around and bike back the was we had come. Plus - there were ominous clouds forming in the west, and despite the lovely trees, the occasional views of the Kewaunee River, and the pleasant temperatures, we decided it would be prudent to make haste.
You know that sudden gust of wind that sometimes precedes a downpour? Meteorologists could explain the different conditions that lead to this effect, but for the layman, it's enough to know that when the wind starts gusting suddenly, you're-a-gonna get wet. About 3.1 miles into our return trip, the gust came. A little more than a half-mile from the car, we put it in overdrive.
I've never actually seen Theresa move that fast on a bike. Before or since. Something about that gust of wind created a motivation in her like spotting an open checkout aisle at Walmart on a busy Saturday two weeks before Christmas. Fine by me. Childhood humor flashed through my mind about 'Books never written', specifically 'Two miles to the outhouse, by Willie Makit'.
We made it.
Both bikes were secured onto the rack and we were diving into the van as the first few fat drops fell in what turned out to be a good old-fashioned gully washer. Safe and dry in our van, we watched the rain sweep out into the lake, and then steered our vehicle towards a restaurant.
Running total: 240.5 miles of trail covered; 21.6 miles ‘extra’ hiking/biking. End of Day 31
