Cheerio to the Cheese State!

Starting with the first camping night, and getting progressively worse with each night, Kelley’s air mattress was “popping”. The individual baffles were coming apart, so there was one huge chamber, and the rest of the mattress didn’t hold enough air for a comfortable night’s sleep. So, since we were in a metropolitan area, we headed to Cabela’s to get a new one, and some more cooking fuel.

The ride through Green Bay was uneventful until we got to Lambeau Field, the home of the Green Bay Packers. The next day was to be their pre-season opener, so a lot was going on around the stadium. The streets were named for gridiron greats and there was a huge statue of Vince Lombardi in front of the brick state- of- the- art stadium. For a population of 106,000 to have the only publically owned NFL team in the country is pretty impressive. We rode around and looked at some of the statues before heading to Cabela’s.

The stop at Cabela’s did not go as planned. Bruce went in to get the mattress and fuel, and Kelley stayed out to pump up the tires. We have an automatic pump that does the work for you, but it is temperamental. It would not attach to Kelley’s rear tire at all, and when she was taking the pump off Bruce’s front tire, it unscrewed the valve and the whole tire deflated. Bruce came out with a self-inflating mattress. Sounds great! We read the directions- can take 24-48 hours to inflate initially. Back that went, and we went with the old fashioned blow up one.

Finally we were on our way! Our original goal was to stay at Peshtigo, which sadly has the dubious distinction of having the fire that took the most lives in American history. It also happened to occur on the same day as the Holland, Michigan fire and the Great Chicago fire~ without the cow! We opted to press on to Marinette as the next day was going to be a challenge. We wanted to shorten the distance for that day.

The day was fairly uneventful, and we were away from the bay for large sections, just going through countryside. We enjoyed lunch at a city park on the beach near Oconto. On many of our days, we don’t go through any towns that would offer lunch spots. We have a variety of dehydrated vegetable soups that we add hot water to in the morning. By the time we get to a lunch spot, everything is fully re-hydrated and chock full of nutrients. We always feel fortified to finish the day. ( on a side note, it is amusing but annoying that when we take these bicycle adventures to get away from the constant noise of suburbia, we always go to a park where they happen to be cutting, weed eating, or leaf blowing! )

We got to Marinette in time to do some laundry. We met a gregarious woman on the elevator who peppered us with questions about our trip. We went to dinner in the hotel, and soon the woman was back with her husband. He didn’t believe we were on bicycles, and thought we were riding motorcycles! She told us that when she related our adventure to him, the response was: “Oh honey, they’re on Harleys!”

This was our last day in Wisconsin. We were overwhelmed by the entire part we traveled of the state. It was so beautiful in many ways, and everyone we met was so kind and curious. We had more great conversations than we can recount. Overall the drivers were quite considerate as well. Michigan has a tall order to be as great as Wisconsin!

Friday Cycling: 64.5 miles

Hiking: 2 miles