Day 122: Connecting Route, City of Manitowoc Segment (Part 2), Manitowoc County
Day 122: Friday, November 26th, 2021
Total Miles covered for the day: 6.0
Location 1: The Connecting Route west of the City of Manitowoc Segment, from the west trailhead to the corner of Custer Street and Alverno Road
2.6 miles of trail covered
Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. At the beginning of the week we started planning another long hiking weekend, and even booked an Airbnb to stay in. We were going to meet up with a bunch of other people; give out a lot of snail patches. But as the four-day weekend approached, a period during which I was NOT on call at work, the weather forecast started throwing doom and gloom in our way.
Rain. Sleet. Snow. Wintery mix. Wind and cold.
Been there. Done that. Not gong to do it for another entire weekend. We bagged all of it.
Suddenly freed from all obligations, we were at leisure to be spontaneous, which was great.
"What do you want to do this weekend?"
"Let's go to Cabela's in Green Bay and shop for cold-weather gear."
"Great idea! While we're out there, we should go finish hiking the Manitowoc Segment."
This is the simplified version of course. But it all came so much easier when we didn't have to prepare for it in advance and take a lot of gear with us. No overnight stuff, no people to meet - just dress warmly and go walking.
We actually did wake up pretty early, and the final decision to go hiking didn't come until we looked one more time at the weather forecast over coffee. The starts aligned, just enough, and we were driving to Green Bay in one vehicle by 10:00 am.
The goal was simple. After doing our tiny bit of shopping, which involved stops at Cabela's and three different Kohl's stores, we were going to Manitowoc to walk off the rest of the Segment and enough Connecting Route to get us off map 95.
Let's just say our hiking was more successful than the Black Friday Shopping, and significantly less crowded. I've always disliked shopping as a whole, and Black Friday crowds during a resurgent pandemic weren't making me like it any better.
Thankfully, Theresa dislikes shopping as much as I do, so we were both more than willing to end that nonsense and go for a walk. It was a chilly day, overcast and gray, with temperatures hovering in the upper 20s. When we started walking at 1:47 pm, it was 28 degrees. Fortunately there was no wind, so it actually felt pretty comfortable.
I dropped Theresa off at the intersection of Vista Road and W Custer Street, and she started hiking west while I drove a little over a mile and a half to South Alveno Road. I dropped the van there and started walking east down the road.
The only picture I took during the connecting route leg of our day was of this great old barn, now literally being swallowed up by growth of the city.
We crossed paths in the middle, and all I can say is it was an urban walk in cold weather.
For the second leg, we did much the same thing. Theresa came and picked me up, and we warmed in the car a bit. Then she got out at literally the same place she started the first time, only this time she was walking north along S Rapids Road. I drove to the other end, the end of the Connecting Route, a distance of a little over one mile, and walked south. Once again, I waited for her to come pick me up at the end.
With that, the walk on the connecting route was over. There is little to say about it, except that it is distinctly urban, with no concern about hunting. There is no sidewalk along Custer Road, but the road is wide and we were in little danger from the frequent traffic. There is a sidewalk on River Street.
We ended this part of the hike at 3:15 pm.
Location 2: The western half of the City of Manitowoc Segment, from the west trailhead to the intersection of 10th Street and Park Street
3.4 miles of trail covered
Just east of where the segment officially starts/ends at Broadway and Rapids Road is Schuette Park. At first I thought the park was named for the French word for "owl", which is Chouette. This turned out to be wrong, even though we did in fact hear several barred owls as we walked through, the light rapidly fading. Instead, it is named for Henry Schuette, in honor of his and his wife Helen's donation of 16.29 acres of land for the park. Schuette is a fine German variant spelling of the name Schütte, originating in the Rhine region and meaning 'archer'. I can picture bow hunting in this small neck of woods at some point in the distant past, but with the number of trails passing through here now it seems unlikely that any animal larger than a rabbit would take up residence.
Because we were in a single vehicle, we had to continue our crisscross hiking, so I drove to the end of Clay Pit Road to drop Theresa off. For some reason, we were followed by a local patrolman all the way to the end, though they never stopped to ask what we were up to. They just turned around when they saw were were a couple of hikers and went on their way.
Meanwhile, I drove back to the west trailhead, which was essentially an arrow on phone pole, and started east.
The trail is gravel to start out with, directly along the edge of the river, and it leads to a rickety old bridge. Except it doesn't. If you heed the yellow blazes, the trail is actually up on the park road, and not down by the river, where the trail absolutely used to be. If I had to guess, someone took a look at that bridge, listing severely shoreward with no hand rails, and said, "You know what? That thing is a lawsuit waiting to happen."
It's a lot worse than it looks in the photo.
I didn't actually cross it, but I did step out onto the boardwalk to take the photo. I think it's still reasonably sound, but the cautious and prudent hiker will follow the blazes and not test the theory.
Out on the river, there were a large number of geese making up their mind on when they wanted to start their migration south. Their conversation was animated, and I could tell from the grousers that they would only put up with this cold weather just so long. Side note: Can you still call them grousers, even though they are geese? They might not appreciate that.
I really enjoyed my hike through Henry and Helen's old acreage. Except that the only way I knew I was on the right path was that I had studied the maps extensively before I started. The signage was abysmal. At one point I stood on an observation platform and was able to visually survey quite a bit of the park.
What you see laid out there is the Ice Age Trail heading off into the distance, and other crisscrossing paths meant for mountain bikes and other uses. This is why I found the lack of signage so distressing. There are many trails in this park, and after descending the hill with a large switchback, which uses three relatively good blazes but could have used five, I think I only saw three or four more blazes for the next three quarters of a mile around the point.
The trail does have boardwalks in a number of places, though, and it was on one of those that I crossed paths with Theresa.
Obviously it gets wet down here at different times of year. For today, everything was frozen solid.
On I went. The trail is level and easy to walk, except for occasional small bumps.
 |
| A rare blaze |
And there are more boardwalks when you might need them.
If I were a Schuette boy, growing up in Manitowoc, I don't think you could have kept me out of these woods. It was a delightful place to visit. There were flocks of geese on the river ice and many more sailing by overhead as the early setting sun heralded in dropping temperatures and approaching winter.
The crisp, still air didn't feel all that cold, but gloves were still nice to have. I was all alone on the trail after I passed Theresa, but for two rabbits that jumped out of the way as I passed.
I reached the end of the hike through the park at 4:34 pm. Darkness was fast approaching, and by the time Theresa got here to pick me up it was full-on black.
The next leg was a short walk up Clay Pit Road that took us to Revere Drive, past the 'Chiefs Club' which boasted a completely offensive cartoonish Indian as a logo. I won't even dignify that one with a photo.
Then I had Theresa walk north to cover the 0.6 miles along Revere Drive, while I drove up and parked just around the corner on Michigan Ave. This leg walks past the very large Evergreen Cemetery and across a high bridge over the Manitowoc River. The river itself was almost invisible in the darkness, but if you look down on the west side you can see the remnants of a much older bridge that must have crossed just above the water line. There is even an old street sign that now faces the water, amidst a tangle of brushy undergrowth, forlorn, forgotten and useless.
More memorable, perhaps, is the eternal flame that burns on the median strip in front of the cemetery with a flag flying at half-mast, in mourning of the most recent in a string of tragedies.
We were doing this in ridiculously small chunks because we didn't want to miss any turns. We were now a mere seven tenths of a mile from the end, and we decided we would chance just one turn. It was a mistake.
The last leg (west to east) travels along Michigan Street, where it dumps out onto 11th Street, before turning into Water Street and ending at Park Street where we left off a week or two ago.
Except that it doesn't.
Unknown to us, because we missed that little detail, Michigan Street turns into Huron Street before it reaches N 11th Street. So when I dropped Theresa off at the Linebacker Bar to make her way east, I told her she was looking for Michigan Street.
I blame myself for the fact that she missed her turn onto Huron. There is a sign indicating that there is a turn, but it is nowhere near the actual corner, and she didn't see it. In the four plus years since Manitowoc became an "Ice Age Trail Community", they haven't done a very good job of maintaining their urban signage.
So while I was hiking down Michigan Ave and saw it turn to Huron Street, I realized there was a problem. I could see a long way down the road, and I couldn't see Theresa.
At 6:30 I called her.
"Where are you?"
She told me, and I cringed. She was four tenths of a mile past the turn, still looking for Michigan Street. She said she figured something was wrong, because she didn't recognize anything.
I had her turn around, and come back down while I went up to meet her. Together we walked back to Huron Street and I pointed her four tenths of a mile west while I hiked the last quarter mile south to the Linebacker. If she hadn't missed the turn, she would have been done by the time I called her.
It was not the celebratory end to the day we were hoping for. Instead we dragged ourselves to the finish line at just shy of 7:00. The temperature had fallen to 24 degrees. We were bedraggled, but on the plus side we were successful at walking off of map 95, so we got to add one more orange square in the front of the atlas.
For the first time I went through and counted how many maps we have left to go, and it's only 40. That means we've completely finished 72 maps, and there are a number of maps where we have completed a large portion.
We're starting to look down the road and ask 'How many are left?', with regard to maps, miles, counties, and segments. What's amazing to me is that this is becoming a countable number. We have achieved amazing things this year, and even if I can't yet see the light at the end of the tunnel, I can hear the faint rustle of wind far ahead. I know the light is there, as surely as I know the sun shines on the other side of the earth while I sleep in total darkness.
Running Total: 849.1 miles of trail covered, 142.2 miles 'extra' hiking/biking. End of Day 122.
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