We spent most of the week at Peninsula State Park. Luckily the bronchial problems were subsiding, so those of us afflicted could actually enjoy getting out and about.
It is nice to get away from the phone and radio, though unfortunately I had some obligations in Switzerland I had to attend to--the local library let me use my memory stick to run puTTY and check that things were going correctly. The only interruptions were mosquitoes and the rock of doom. No ads, no baseball, no need to ignore the convention (of course I haven't paid them any mind in 24 years ...); just birds and buoys and powerboats. And bugs, though not frantically too many.
Oddities on the way: a banner for a short term storage firm on the side of a decrepit barn--maybe not the best ambiance for the ad? Funny how many more cars were driving away from the park than toward it--Sunday afternoon back-to-Illinois traffic.
The campsites were mostly empty, the water spigot was nearby, the showers were close and not upwind, and we broke an unholy number of plastic tent stakes. Next time I'll try steel. The campsite was fringed with poison ivy, but we successfully evaded it.
The area is part of the "Niagara escarpment," a ridge of sedimentary rock that marks the extent of some glaciers. North of it was ground down, south of it is hilly, and the boundary is a ridge in places. Not just the ground underfoot but the forest changes as you go up the trails. The cliff rocks crack in horizontal and vertical layers, like huge gray Lego bricks--that sometimes fall out and leave shallow caves. Trees that cling to the treacherous cracks sometimes wind up at the bottom.
One beach is deep (at least two inches, I didn't dig farther) in empty zebra mussel shells, another is rocky with distorted fossils, another is shallow and sandy.
The concession stand carried something no sporting goods store in Madison carries anymore--air mattress repair kits. The salesmen I talked to didn't understand why the kits had gone missing, since they generally sold like hotcakes--but the stores weren't getting any more.
Youngest Daughter says she's more of a city person and grumped about the hikes and the chores and having to set up her tent all by herself. Youngest Son claimed a sore throat when chores came around: he was more interested in exploring. He went out on the lake on a bike-paddle boat by himself and seemed to have a grand old time climbing the observation tower (went back a second time). Each of them had to start a campfire themselves, and Youngest Son got a kick out of hatcheting firewood into kindling. When out hiking, Youngest Daughter glommed a pair of binoculars and released them only reluctantly. (Luckily we brought 2.)
Better Half and Youngest Daughter went to Sturgeon Bay to see a museum, and she and Youngest Son went to an art gallery that specialized in kinetic sculptures, and she and I went to a cafe with WiFi (to discover that I'd forgotten the WiFi card).
Mrs. James reports: Sturgeon Bay's maritime museum gives a history of the shipping trade in the area beginning with a video on how to make a birchbark canoe. Sturgeon Bay boasted 4 shipyards into the 1940s, and the town doubled in size during WWII, when the 4 companies had contracts to make various smaller boats. They made sub chasers and submarine tenders, cargo ships and oilers small enough to go through the Welland Canal of that day, destroyer escorts and corvettes. There were detailed video interviews, circa 1985, of people who worked to build the boats, including a lot of women welders, who were all very proud of what they accomplished.
Now, Sturgeon Bay bristles with yacht masts. Newer cabin cruisers look like something from Star Wars. Huge and sleek and high tech. All they need is grey hulls and tractor beams.
The huge tugboat Purves doesn't hold tours on Wednesday. However, when Youngest Daughter and I asked questions of the volunteer leaving the boat with his toolkit, he gave us an impromptu tour. He was the chief engineer on this boat for 25 years. He went to a different boat when his company sold the Purves, and the ensuing years weren't kind to her. He said they cleaned layers and layers of gunk and old oil off the equipment when the museum bought her.
The engine room was huge, and there was an open space amidships where the exhaust pipes from the engine room vented out. Bob said that the men hung their laundry in there to dry. Most cabins were utilitarian, with a bunk, a dresser, and room to turn around. Two cabins were not exactly private; people had to walk through them to get to the galley. The galley was restored to 1957, when Bob first came aboard. Back to James.
In the park we wandered the trails and went to the boat launch to watch the stars at night and told stories around the fire. No smores this time (but we did have fish and shrimp cocktail on our last evening). Breakfast was summer sausage and cold hard-boiled eggs and cheese and fruit and fruit juice and a couple of Oreos. (The raccoons didn't get any this time, though they nearly got the bread.)
We toured the lighthouse too. Better Half covets a "summer kitchen," but I'd feel a little cramped living in the tiny quarters of the lighthouse. It was funny to see just how much smaller the new light is than the old--and it includes spare bulbs that automatically rotate into position, and a solar panel to charge the battery that runs it. The old one was a 2 1/2 size: the lens looked to be only about 18 inches across (we weren't allowed to get close).
The Rock of Doom: I discovered that using a chunk of dolostone to keep the kindling out of the ash is not altogether without risk--40 minutes into the fire time a loud bang put the fire out for a couple of seconds and threw burning embers onto a chair. Reactions varied from "Cool, I wonder if it will do that again" (guilty) to "Never do that again." Since we lacked some heavy mesh to keep embers out of our hair, the latter voice won.
Mrs James again: Driving down the lake shore route instead of the interstate, coming home. The old lake ports are doing their best to attract summer visitors, now that the boats are too big for the harbors. Manitowoc is still big enough for the carferry Badger, between Manitowoc and Ludington, and for 500 foot cargo ships to come in. The Saginaw was unloading grain into a Budweiser elevator across the river from the museum.
Manitowoc's maritime museum has the USS Cobia, a Gato Class WWII sub, of the same type built at Manitowoc. Manitowoc built 10 Gatos and 18 newer subs. They had to be launched sideways into the Manitowoc River, instead of endways as done in the ocean yards, and they heeled almost 80 degrees over when they went in.. They took their sea trials in Lake Michigan, then went down to Chicago and the canal to the Illinois River and Mississippi. The subs were armed at New Orleans and sent out.
Manitowoc has the Manitowoc museum; Sturgeon Bay's has Door County Maritime Museum.
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