Day 157: Kewaunee River Segment (Part 4), Kewaunee County

Day 157: Monday, April 11th, 2022

Total Miles covered for the day: 0.0

Location 1: The Kewaunee River Segment, between the Bruemmer County Park parking area on County Road F and the east trailhead in Kewaunee

3.8 miles of trail covered

Today was the second day in a row we had a SnOTT hike, and it was every bit as enjoyable as the first. 

Last night we needed to drive down to our accommodations in Mishicot, and we thought, 'Why would we take both cars down there, and then turn around and drive both cars back up?' This made sense, so we left one car behind at our meeting spot, the giant grandfather clock in the middle of Kewaunee. When we arrived, a few minutes early, there was a single car waiting for us. This quickly turned into two, then three. The turnout was smaller than yesterday, but on a cold, windy Monday in early April it represented a full house. 

By 9:57 am we were ready to rock, and the six fearless women (plus myself) stood in front of this world-record monolith (it actually keeps time) for the group photos. 

The clock itself is nearly 36 feet tall, and has been a feature in Kewaunee since it was built in 1976. It was originally attached to the Svoboda Industries building, but it moved here in 2014 where it has stood ever since, and it makes a darn fine landmark for a meetin' place. 

This spot marks the beginning of the Ahnapee State Trail, and is duly marked with a Mile 0 sign. To be honest, though, by the time the 'trail' reaches this spot it's not much of a trail. In fact, looking around, it's not easy to see where the trail goes from here. Even on Google Maps the 'trail' part of the trail doesn't start until you get to Beardsley Street a couple blocks to the northwest. Even so, if you look slowly and carefully around you can spot yellow blazes marking the way across the street, through a parking lot, and off into the distance. 

This woman was not exactly a first-time hiker, but she wasn't really an 'Ice-Age-Trailer' either. It was close to home, she said, so she thought she'd come out and give it a shot. Since she always hikes alone, this was going to be a new experience for her. She told us later in the day that it turned out to be a great experience. She and the hikers in this group got along very well, and their hiking style and pace worked out perfectly for her. 

Below is Delores Olver, who I have credited many times before as being the first owner of the 'Snail on the Trail' nickname. Delores graciously allowed Theresa to take on that persona, and we've had a lot of fun with it ever since. Delores is a delightful person who, like us, got a very slow start on the IAT, but is now picking up lots of trail miles, if not the pace. 

When all was said and done today, Delores ended up coming back to Mishicot and spending the night with us at the Condo. There was plenty of room for five people, and it was nice to be able to offer this to her. 

The first thing we did was break up into groups. Theresa and I only had 3.8 miles to walk, and no one else who came all this way wanted to go just 3.8 miles. I don't blame them. 

As a result, we were the only ones doing the short hike. I'm not completely sure if we had anyone doing the whole 12.5 miles today, but we had a group that went as far as Clyde Hill Road, which was about half of the segment. 

Theresa and I drove back to Bruemmer County Park to retrace our route from 2016, with two minor differences. First, the trail doesn't end in the same place it did back in 2016, so we'd be covering some new ground, and second - we were on foot this time.  

When we covered this section of trail in 2016 official trail ended a little further to the north, at the end of Main Street, after crossing the Ahnapee River one more time. Back then we were being chased by a massive thunderstorm, and we barely escaped by diving into the van just as the first few fat drops of rain started hitting the windshield. 

Back then we really had no idea how to properly measure the distance we had gone. We used string with marks on it to estimate, and came up with 3.8 miles. I now know that distance to be a bit shorter, but it all comes out in the wash because now that the trail ends in a different spot, the actual distance we needed to walk today was 3.8 miles. 

This explains, by the way, why at the very top of the post it says Total Miles Covered for the Day: 0.0. It's because we couldn't count those miles twice on our overall journey. I have a spreadsheet that tracks how many miles we hiked, vs. how many we biked, and I am going through the effort of updating those numbers. When all is said and done, we're going to go back and hike all those miles we biked back in the day. 

Back in the day. Who am I kidding? We were still biking connecting routes until August 21st of last year, and even did part of the Monticello Segment on a bicycle last October. We've got 350 miles of roads to hike if we want to go back and hike it all, but I suspect we may chose to hike only one of the bifurcation legs and leave the other one as a bike trip. 

Back to the hike. 

We started walking today at 11:15 am. It was another cool, breezy day with cloudy skies. We're getting quite used to temperatures in the upper 30s, but we're starting to get puzzled about when the spring weather will hit. As far as we're concerned it can hold off until we're done with all this. We don't need 90 degree temperatures for hiking roads, thank you very much. 

We touched the sign at Bruemmer Park and we were on our way. 

One of the first things we did was cross the river, which by the time it gets here is starting to be a pretty good-sized waterway. This is my picture of the Loch Ahnapee Monster. 

WATCH YOUR STEP!!

We were walking along the trail, a lovely, level, well-groomed masterpiece when I nearly stepped on this fellow. 

And he didn't move an inch. I don't know when he crawled out of the mud, but he and about a hundred of his friends were up on the trail soaking up as much sunlight as they could on this very chilly spring day. He was in a state of cold-blooded lethargy that made it impossible for him to jump out of the way, so from then on Theresa and I had to step carefully to avoid the need for any sad eulogies on this blog post. 

* Editor's Note: No frogs were hurt during the filming of this segment hike. 

With the temperature holding in the 'cold' range all spring, there wasn't much of anything that looked like it was starting to green up, except for these guys that we kept passing. 

Look at that camouflage! Even that close up he blends in amazingly well. 

Like before, the trail was easy-peasy. 

There was still a lot of standing water to the sides of the trail, but no puddles to contend with as we walked. It really is an excellently groomed trail. I just wish there were more yellow blazes to offer security to the hikers. 

This was an excellent find. Right at 12:00 we came across this covered picnic table, and we stopped immediately to have some lunch, though neither one of us really needed it. 

Not everything is completely flat out here. Just before we got to County Road E there was this home way up on the top of a hill that must have had a great view of the river. 

At County Road E there is no road crossing, and therefore no reasonable trail access from the road. Instead, we slipped underneath like the trains from the last century. 

Assuming one takes the correct fork where the bike trail splits in two, there are no more crossings of the Ahnapee, but there was one more bridge crossing as we made our way across the marsh. 

And when I got there I found this delightful painted rock. I left it there for someone else to discover. 

Even the birch trees were showing no signs of spring yet. 

At 1:38 pm, we reached the end of the trail, back at Mile Marker 0. One more Segment done, only eight more to go. 

We had been going really slowly, hoping the others hikers would catch up to us, but they never did. Then Theresa did something truly uncharacteristic. She turned around and started walking back up the trail the way she came. It was her intention to go no more than a half-mile and see if she could find them, so as to be able to hike along the trail with them for a little while. 

While she was walking, I was putting a few things in the car and was about to take off to follow her when what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a little red rabbit and her husband so dear! 

Our geocaching friend, Conejo Rojo, who is also busily hiking the IAT, showed up there in the parking lot, and they were parked right next to the van. Turns out that she was also out hiking the same general area we were, but hadn't known about our events, or planned on hiking with us. I chatted for a while with Mindy (her real name) and her husband Tim, but they had plans and so did I, and we parted ways. 

When I caught up to Theresa she had found her fellow hikers, and the bunch of them were happily walking and talking like old friends. I walked with them, of course, and this time when we got into town I noticed that there were, in fact, a few blazes put up that helped guide us through the last few blocks, but they were hard to see. A little sun-faded ,and on old graying posts, but they were there. 

I don't know exactly what time we reached the cars again, but we did a lot more talking when we got there. I'll make a long story much shorter. Delores wanted to hike again the next day, but needed somewhere to stay. With much cajoling we convinced her to come and join us at the Condo in Mishicot. She went her way and we went ours, but we met up later in Mishicot, and all went great. 

Our way was to head north. We had heard someone talking about an outstanding Chocolate Shop in Algoma that we absolutely had to check out. They couldn't remember the name, though. I'll make another long story short. The chocolate shop wasn't in Algoma. We wasted time, and money, buying so-so candy at a place in town that sold a few chocolate items, but we became convinced that the real chocolate shop was in Sturgeon Bay, so we jumped in the car again and headed north once more. 

We had three reasons for going north. Four, really. We are planning to have our "Final Hike" up here on the Sturgeon Bay Segment on September 24th, and we're planning to have a big celebration meal afterwards. So we needed to scope out a place to eat. That was a big one, and we spent time driving around and looking for the best spot. We found it - the Get Real Café, and we had a late lunch there just to make sure we liked it. 

Second, we needed to find the real chocolate shop, which we did when we walked into Door County Candy. I put the blinders on and just let Theresa pick out whatever she wanted. I think she had a little bit of sticker shock when the clerk rang up the final sale, but I reminded her that we were staying at the condo for free and our house guests were providing meals for us, so we could afford a little bit of splurging. 

The third and fourth reasons for coming up here involved scoping out the campground and exactly how we wanted to set up our final hike, but we decided to do that later in the week when we come back up here. Instead, we wanted to spend the time and take a late afternoon stroll on the IAT to chip away at a few of the 14.0 miles up here. 

Except that when we finally picked out the place we wanted to go hiking at quarter past five there were police cars parked on the trail, and we just took that as a sign to give it up for the day and drive the hour and a half back to the condo. Enough was enough. 

Running Total: 1053.9 miles of trail covered, 155 miles 'extra' hiking/biking. End of Day 157.

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