October 6 - Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin

This was the day we had set aside for Sturgeon Bay, and, more specifically, for the Maritime Museum there. Since the center of the town was not more than 10 miles or so from our campsite, we arrived at the museum around 9 a.m., which gave us an hour to kill before it opened at 10. We wandered along the wharf beside the museum, taking pictures of the boats and of the drawbridge while it was opening, and then walked across the bridge to see the downtown district on the other side.

Walking up and back the three block downtown commercial district didn’t take too long in itself, but of course a couple of stops took some time. We stopped off at a bakery for some sweet rolls for nutrition and at a bookstore for erudition. Actually, we bought the newest Laurie King book for some gripping bedtime reading. Munching the sweet rolls we circled back passed a glass-blowing shop where they were apparently creating artistic glass articles and returned across the bridge to the maritime museum.

The museum exhibits started off with a timeline chronicling the nautical events in the Sturgeon Bay area starting in the early 1800s when Captains first started using the sheltered bay waters. We watched one short video on the geologic and Native-American history of the bay and another one on the construction of a birch bark canoe. The second video did a good job of documenting the process of building a birch bark canoe with authentic methods, which I found quite interesting. After all, it’s one thing to be up a creek without a paddle, but if you don’t even have a canoe you are REALLY in trouble!

But building such a canoe was clearly a lot of work and Native Americans understandably never got into mass-producing them. Shipyards developed by the emigrating settlers were, on the other hand, oriented at producing and selling small ships for a profit. Shipyard business bumped up a notch when a canal connecting the bay on the Green Bay side to Lake Michigan on the other side was completed in the late 1800s, which cut 100 miles off the trip from southern Lake Michigan ports to Green Bay. The increased traffic through the channel helped Sturgeon Bay became a local center for the shipbuilding industry.

The shipbuilding industry reached a zenith in the WWII production of small warships ranging from gunboats and minesweepers to sub-chasers and frigates—this small town of about 14,000 at that time produced a ship on the average of every 25 days, which is really astonishing when you think about it. The museum included scale models of all these ships along with a lot of historical information on the shifting business of the major shipyards. Curiously, altho Sturgeon Bay produced only anti-submarine warships the museum had a working submarine periscope that gave a nice 360-degree view of the bay.

We proceeded to the other wing of the museum that had a temporary exhibit on how ships were launched after building. That turned out to be a much more involved process than I would have thought, involving wedges, greased rails, and even “guillotines” to simultaneously cut all the restraining ropes. Fortunately we have transformed the rather gruesome human sacrifice aspects of launching ships in ancient times into the modern custom of christening the ship with wine or champagne. We could even launch a model ship inside a plastic tub of water, which we both thought was fun.

The upstairs gallery of the museum had more ship models and a steering house of a little boat. It also had a full-scale light and a Fresnel lens from a lighthouse. We enjoyed the short video on the experiences of lighthouse keepers and their families in the old days—it seemed to be a rather relaxed, routinized form of living with shopping kept down to about once a month! Nowadays, of course, the lighthouses are all automated and no longer require resident light keepers. Some of the lighthouses are, however, still occupied as we found out later that very same day.

For lunch we found a Culver’s restaurant on the north edge of town and decided to give them one more chance. This time I tried the BBQ chicken and Monika tried the chili—both were daily specials and since we split an order of fries and a drink this kept our base price to a little over $7. Well, the BBQ chicken was excellent—slightly spicy but well cooked. In fact, there was so much BBQ and it was so juicy that they just went ahead and gave you a knife and fork to eat it with. I appreciated not only the fact that they provided the utensils without asking but also the hefty, sturdy quality of the knife and fork—I could really cut and eat with them and I can’t say that about the utensils at any other fast-food joint.

Monika said her chili was also excellent altho she would have preferred it spicier. She helped me with the French Fries, which were as hot and crisp as on our visits to other Culvers, and then we ordered a “banana fudge nut” for desert. That turned out to be a large plastic boat with two halves of a banana, five scoops of their soft ice cream, 20-30 pecan halves, a covering of fudge, a layer of whipped cream, and a Maraschino cherry on top. Essentially what we got was a banana split with all fudge toping and lots of pecan halves. Wow! That was definitely a desert for 2 people because it just was too much for one person—we had trouble finishing it altho it tasted exquisite. Altho that raised our cost to a little over $10, we felt it was well worth it and we are now definite fans of Culver’s restaurants for a really good fast food meal. Those meals are so good and filling that we often don’t need to eat dinner after that type of lunch

After that kind of meal we had to get some exercise, so we went haring off after some lighthouses. Driving to the Coast Guard Station at the end of the Sturgeon Bay canal, we were prevented from taking a good picture by the “U.S. Government Property—No Trespassing” signs. But another guy stopped outside the gate told us there was a park down the shore where we might be able to get in and get a decent camera shot of the lighthouse, so we drove north along a country lane. But we almost missed it because the only marker for this park was an oversized tombstone-style rock with a miniscule plaque on it that just hinted it might be a park. We passed completely by it once and if I wasn’t looking directly for a park sign I would have never found it on the return pass.

Even when we had read the “tombstone” and thought we had found park, we still couldn’t see any indication of how to get into it or anything else, for that matter—no signs at all. Hoping to work our way back into it we took the next narrow, weed-choked gravel road that headed toward the lakeshore. It looked for all the world like someone’s driveway, but in fact that turned out to be the entrance road for the park. What gives? Why would a country create a park and then make it so obscure? Do the local folks want to keep the park a secret and prevent any foreign riff-raff from treading on their sacred property? There wasn’t even a formal name sign for the park—I only became convinced it was really a park when I found a sign that said the park was closed during certain hours of the day. Sheesh.

Since there was a wide spot in the “driveway” right beside that sign, I parked the truck there and we hiked over to the beach and then turned south along the shoreline toward the lighthouse. The shore was very rocky and covered in places with slippery, slimy seaweed, so the footing was treacherous but we persevered. Fortunately, coming in along the shoreline we did not find any “No Trespassing” signs, so we could walk up to the banks of the canal. We were rewarded with decent shore-side views of the Sturgeon Bay ship canal lighthouse, a nice white one with an old white clapboard house below it, and the lighthouse at the end of the pier that was an old, boxy red building with a small light tower on top.

We took the pictures we wanted and stumbled back across the rocks and seaweed to the truck to continue our search for lighthouses. The next one we tried to find was the Sherwood Point lighthouse at the southwest entrance to Sturgeon Bay, and we found it partly by dint of having the GPS in the car and being able to fumble around on the country roads without getting disoriented. Once again we saw the “U.S. Property—No Admittance” signs on the entrance road, but we figured that we could at least take a picture so we drove down the lane and I pulled off briefly on the side while Monika hopped out to take the picture.

A lady accosted Monika, and when she explained we were just taking a picture the lady, Elaine, invited us in to see the place. It turns out that the house section is now rented out by the Coast Guard to members of the active or retired military at $50 per night (which sounds like a great deal, by the way), and she and her husband Dick were staying for a few days. Dick, at the Moment, was off playing golf so we chatted with Elaine and walked down to the beach to look for interesting rocks for her to paint. Altho Elaine mainly paints landscapes and portraits, she also paints some of the rocks in animal shapes for her grandchildren—they apparently prize these painted animals from her very highly. I’m happy to report that the house section of the place was in tip-top shape and kept that way by all the renters, as I would expect of career military folks. So serendipity struck again and we were treated to a first-hand look at the old keeper’s house—what stories that house might have told us if it could. Elaine showed us old photographs and told us of the story of the assistant light keeper who was immortalized by a commemorative stone in the back yard that gave the woman’s name and dates of 1898 to 1928, or a span of about 30 years of faithful service.

By this time it was getting late, so we took our leave and drove back out trying to find a food store. As it turned out, we had to drive back across the bay to the northern edge of town before we found one. As far as we could tell that was the only food store in the entire town of Sturgeon Bay, which surprised us very much (we did later find one other supermarket, but it was also located on the northern edge of town.). Still, we found several varieties of low-fat cheese and cheap milk and baked goods, so we couldn’t complain too much. Back at camp we had a nice campfire for the evening, at the end of which we had a surprise visit from Elaine and Dick, who were just out for the evening and decided to look us up. It was very nice to meet Dick and chat a little more with both him and Elaine; it is so nice that the world still has some of these really friendly and trusting people—it makes up for some of the others that we also occasionally meet on our travels. Actually, I think Dick should get a medal for spending 20+ years in the military, with all that entails, and Elaine should get a medal for raising 8 children, with all THAT entails! Hah! But they finally had to go and so we said goodnight, doused the fire, and retreated into the trailer for the night.