Day 161: Forestville Segment (Part 3), Sturgeon Bay Segment (Part 2), Door County
Day 161: Friday, April 15th, 2022
Total Miles covered for the day: 7.0
Location 1: The north end of the Forestville Segment, between the north trailhead and the Forestville Dam
4.1 miles of trail covered
SNAIL HIKE!!
Holy Ice Age, Batman!
This morning we had a 45 minute drive to get to our starting location, and on the way we literally had our phones go off with a Severe Weather Alert, warning us of snow squalls and possible white-out conditions. As advertised, we ended up driving through a blizzard for nearly the whole way up, and we were fairly certain we would be alone at the start of the hike.
We were wrong.
The snow stopped shortly before we got there, and there were three smiling faces ready to hit the trail by 10:00.
Unsurprisingly, everyone was bundled up for the weather. What was surprising was that literally none of the snow had fallen this far north. It all slipped just south of where we were planning to hike.
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| Theresa, Patty Elle, Charlene, Jane Betlej and Brock |
Today we walked with Patty Elle (a new member of the Snails), Jane Betlej (who has hiked with us before, several times), and Charlene, who as far as I can tell was not a member of the chat group, and not a member of either of our typical IAT Facebook pages, and so sadly shall remain forever without a surname in this blog. She was, however, a delightful hiking companion and totally unfazed by the wind and the cold.
Speaking of wind, Jane took photos of me fighting the wind to get across the parking lot.
It wasn't really that bad, but not too far from it, either. The temperature may have been in the upper-twenties, but the wind chill made it much colder. We needed every layer to start the day (even Theresa).
We did the hike in pieces, as usual, and started by driving down to the intersection with Center Road. There was plenty of parking by the side of the road, and we took off hiking north by 10:22 am.
The north end of the Forestville Segment is as beautifully groomed as the rest of it, and it's as flat as a railroad bed. Of course - it is a railroad bed.
This particular group of five left me as the odd man out, literally, so I took on the role of photographer like I normally do. That is one well-chilled group of hikers down below.
Just before we reached the north trailhead and our waiting cars, we crossed paths with Dawn and Laurie from Neenah on the trail. They were doing an out-and-back, but they were excited to see us and happy to earn their patches.
Once we reached the cars, we said good-by to Patty. She had already hiked the whole trail, and admitted to us she was "just in it for the patch". Which we always think is delightful, and we were just happy she hiked with us at all. We didn't realize until then that she was already a thousand-miler.
We all piled into the car and headed back south to set up for the next leg. On the way I took this photo of the barn on Center Road.
Jane and Charlene stuck with us for the next leg, which was all the way down to the Forestville Dam.
It was a short 1.8 miles back up to Center Drive, and it went faster than we thought it would. I think the cold and the wind kept us moving.
I'm not sure what Theresa was saying here, but it was not a flattering photo.
We reached the end of the trail at about 12:30. Jane captured the moment for us, while we celebrated finishing the Forestville Segment, and the completion of Map 103. This was a much nicer photo of Theresa. My hat flaps looked a little goofy, though.
From here we gave Jane and Charlene a ride south to the other end of the segment that we had already hiked. They were going to finish that walk, which left Theresa and I free to do a little more hiking on our own, and we took both cars and headed north.
Location 2: The southernmost 2.9 miles of the Sturgeon Bay Segment
2.9 miles of trail covered
We decided to go up and work our way north on the Sturgeon Bay Segment. We dropped a car off at the trailhead in Maplewood and then started taking short leapfrog hops north.
First, we drove to Idlewild Road, then took another hop up to Tagge Road. Along the way we got more education reading the signs talking about the Cranberry Marsh, and what they had to go through to keep it from swamping the rail lines. It was only a few hundred feet of rail line, but it took a whole lotta doing before they got it done.
All that so that now we could casually walk across their hard work.
Here is more evidence of just how marshy the area is.
This was just one of the many, many golden crowned kinglets that kept flitting about on the trail as we walked by.
As the sun finally broke free from the clouds the wind started dying down.
Suddenly 35 degrees felt hot and we shed several layers each.
The time was 3:48, and we could have walked more, but we were both tired after fighting the wind and the cold, and the day-after-day hiking. Besides that, we wanted to celebrate a little, so we took both cars south to Two Rivers were we stopped at Susie Q's Fish Market for smoked dinner. It's a carryout market that closes early, and this would be our last chance to enjoy their fabulous fare on this trip.
We bought five different kinds of smoked fish, and sat right there in the car to take the first few bites. Then we drove back to Mishicot to spend our last night in the condo. In the morning we needed to get up early and pack up all our stuff to check out.
It was a satisfying day. We completed one more map and one more segment, leaving us with only seven segments and some road miles left before we started back at the beginning to hike off all those miles we traveled by bicycle in days past. I'll think about that later. I'd rather just focus on the seven more segments.
Running Total: 1086.3 miles of trail covered, 155.8 miles 'extra' hiking/biking. End of Day 161.
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