August 21st - 24th Green Bay area

Over the course of several days, I drove from northern Wisconsin over to Green Bay (the body of water), then along the shoreline to Green Bay (the city) and to the small towns south of there.  This post gives general information about that route and I'll do separate posts about what I found in Green Bay (the city) and in the village of Little Chute.  [Again, I wrote a lot of this on my computer's writing program and my only choices are to retype the whole thing or live with different spacing and appearance.  So sorry - you get the second choice.]

Route Maps

route on Wednesday the 21st to Peshtigo

Friday the 23rd to Apple Creek

route in Green Bay on the 23rd

route on Saturday the 24th near Lake Winnebago

Campgrounds

* Peshtigo's Badger Park Campground – (Peshtigo is pronounced PESH-tih-go) This is a small city park, and I’d had trepidations about staying here just because it’s so small – I figured it wouldn’t have a wifi signal and knew I couldn’t get one on my hotspot, and I usually find it more comfortable to have large areas to walk the dogs in.  But it turned out to be great and, in fact, I decided to stay an extra night.  The campground does have its own wifi signal, and it’s part of a large recreation area that includes a football field for the local school teams and a small pond with walking trails and large green areas that the town uses.  Except there weren’t many in the campground (it was a Wednesday) so my main competition for dog walking was from local townspeople with their dogs.  Very pleasant, very comfortable.

There was even a band playing in the band shell that first night; they have them every other Wednesday during the summer and this was one of them.  This band played what they called early rock and started off their set with an early Beatles song, and when I gave the dogs their last walk before bed it was a CCR tune - you get the idea.  It looked like half the town had turned out, with lawn chairs and blankets on the grass, and most of the campground had their lawn chairs out for the show.  Nice show.

* Apple Creek Campground/De Pere – This was a weird campground and not particularly comfortable, though that wasn’t entirely the fault of the campground.  Fortunately they had a decent wifi signal, because my hotspot still wasn’t picking up anything.  There were no paved roads anywhere in the campground, so I was glad to be there in sunny weather.  They too have pay showers - “to conserve water” they say.  It was fortunately large enough for us to have room for our early morning walks, because it was on the very busy County Highway U and we couldn’t risk walking along the road. The problem for me was that my next door neighbors were a very large and noisy family in a small pop-up trailer, so they spent every minute of every day and evening outside.  With their dog tied up on a long line, who whined and barked whenever they all went off and left him there, which they did several times a day.  And anytime we appeared from around my RV, the dog would bark at my dogs, who of course would get really bouncy at the sight and sound of that dog, so it was very hard to walk them in the daytime.  And hard for me to tune the family out at almost any time because they never stopped making noise.  I’d already booked in and paid for 2 nights so I was pretty well stuck there.  But it wasn’t for forever, as I kept reminding myself.  And I drove us around the area the 2^nd day so the dogs would have somewhere else to walk. So it was okay.

Comments along the road

I kept passing many many bodies of water – rivers, streams, lakes large and small.  I know next door Minnesota has 10,000+ lakes, but upper Wisconsin seems to be trying to stay in the competition.  The state map barely seems to have room for the roads and villages between the labeling for all these bodies of water.

I saw a lot of wild turkeys in northern Wisconsin.  One day I saw 2 separate families near the road, with 2 adults and several young.  They were many miles apart, and one batch of young still looked pretty downy.  Very sweet.

I’m starting to see bright red leaves.  Nighttime temps are only getting down to about 50°, but I guess that’s enough to be a trigger for some trees.  And one morning I heard on the radio that in the Lake Superior area there was frost, so I guess it’s colder in places than I’ve been finding.

In some small town, I passed a Burger King with a sign out front: Don’t work 4 the clown, Work 4 the King.

In Rhinelander I stopped at the Pioneer Park and will do a separate posting for that.

I’ve noticed a number of towns in Wisconsin with the same names as places in Alaska.  You might say that Eagle River and even Juneau aren’t that unusual, but Kinnikinnick?  That’s the name I heard in the Bristol Bay area of Alaska – there it’s pronounced kih-nick-kih-nick, and their local team is the Kinnikinnick Knackaknockers. (I kept hearing about them on the radio when I was fishing out there, and once heard hard to forget about.)  According to the internet, in Alaska it's a type of berry; in Wisconsin it's spelled Kinnickinnic and it's the name of a river.

The farther east I went the more I saw trees touched with red.

Near the town of Laona is the Lumberjack Steam Train, another of the old trains still running in Wisconsin.

Wabeno calls itself the Center of Four Seasons Entertainment.

In several of the small towns I drove through I saw multiple businesses for sale, though I couldn’t see any one reason why.

I stopped at a rest area somewhere and found this historical marker about Wisconsin’s iron industry.  It echoed some of what I’d learned at the Iron Museum on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

All over the northern half of the state I’ve been seeing ATV trails.  They’re really geared for them up here.  Also many sportfishing facilities.

I saw a field of sunflowers with all their heads bowed down.  Does anybody know if this meant they’d been hit by disease? or bad weather? or were just ready to have their seeds harvested?  I’ve never grown sunflowers so don’t know anything about them.

And then I was back to Lake Michigan, or actually Green Bay off Lake Michigan.  Like Michigan, Wisconsin has a peninsula that sticks up into a large lake, and here too they call it a thumb.  But having seen Michigan’s thumb, I can say that Wisconsin’s is more like a very long little finger, because it’s quite narrow.  The west side of it forms Green Bay, with the city of Green Bay at its end; the east side faces Lake Michigan itself.  This finger consists of Kewaunee County at its base and Door County for most of its length.  Door County is fairly well-known as one of the most scenic areas of the country, and I'll post about that later.

A sign in Peshtigo says it's "the city reborn from the ashes of America's most destructive forest fire."  Never having heard of this I looked it up, and it seems to be true.  Oddly, it happened on the same day as the Great Chicago Fire which, probably because of the dumb Mrs. O'Leary's cow story, embedded into the national consciousness, eclipsing the other fire.  And at the same time, there was a massive fire across Green Bay in Door County, as well as fires across Lake Michigan in Michigan towns.  I found several links to this story, with Wikipedia's appearing to be the most factual.   en.wikipedia.org/Peshtigo_fire

Green Bay

Driving along Green Bay I was once again seeing houses sandwiched between the road and the water.

I saw a flock of 7 turkeys along the roadside.  Not sure why I’m seeing so many of them, but maybe they just like Wisconsin.  The bird book says they live year round in all but the farthest north part of this state, but also in most of every state east of the Rockies.  They just stay hidden better in the other states?

Driving along the mainland side of Green Bay I kept finding High Water warnings.  At least four of them, and at each one the water was definitely lapping at the road.  I haven’t heard of any particular weather system that would have dumped that much water in this area, but I guess there was one.  Makes me wonder about the safety of all those houses I’m still seeing between the road and the water.

Oconto County Court House

The town of Oconto near Green Bay (city) says it’s a Tree City and a Bird City.  I don’t know about that but I made a wrong turn and stumbled across the Oconto County Court House and thought it was worth a photo.  Oconto isn’t now exactly a metropolis and I was surprised to find such an elaborate building here.  But then I know from Texas that whatever else the county seats may or may not have, you can count on finding an elaborate courthouse, and I guess it’s the same up here.

I drove around Green Bay a bit and went to the Railroad Museum there, and I’ll do a separate posting about this.

Along the Fox River

Driving south from town along the Fox River, which dumps into Green Bay at Green Bay (city), the houses I saw between the road and the water were actually mansions.  I saw one with 6 or 7 chimneys, which seemed excessive, but it was a big house.  The name of the road is Lost Dauphin Road, and maybe that’s pretentious enough to justify the mansions.

At one point, 2 does bounded across the road fairly close in front of us.  Dext got pretty excited (and I was not unmoved).

The Apple Creek Campground has an official address in De Pere (deh PEER), a suburb of Green Bay, but it’s closest to Wrightstown, which looks almost nonexistent on the map but turns out to have 3,300 residents.  In fact, all the towns in this area look quite small on the map but Kaukauna, the next town over from Wrightstown, has a population of 15,000. 

The towns of Little Chute and Combined Locks (I swear those are the names) sit so closely to Kaukauna that I kept stumbling over bits of it as I was driving in these other places.  I’ll do a separate post for Little Chute, which held a big surprise for me.

In Wrightstown I went to Dick’s Family Foods, “since 1908” they say.  And in the same little strip mall was a cafe called Ambergris Eateris.  (heh, heh)  On the road beside the grocery store was a sign saying “Brat Fry Today.”  We happened to be there around lunch time so I got one.  Not bad.  It was a benefit run by some high school girls (looked about 10^th grade) to fund the dances after the high school games this year.  Worthy cause.

In this area I saw lots of crops growing, lots of cows, and substantial veal operations (sorry, but I just can’t eat veal after seeing these sweatboxes).

I passed a sign saying “Part of the Heart of the Valley Area - Village of Combined Locks.”  I need a guide book to this area or something because I’m not sure what valley this is – the Fox River valley?

I passed several places that said they’re Supper Clubs.  I guess supper clubs are a thing in this area.

I pulled off the road to look at the map and was passed by 3 Model T type cars.  I’d have thought they were just out for a drive on a sunny Saturday afternoon, but 3 of them in a row made me think they’d attended an event.