Other than having to share the trail with horses, it's a pleasant ride in eastern Wisconsin |
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THE
AHNAPEE
TRAIL
By Jerry Kiesow  "What are you doing?" I asked the financial director, household planner, and occasional tour guide of our family – my better half.
"I'm surfing for a B&B. If we are going to Door County for a couple days of biking, I want to go in style for a change. If I'm going to straddle a small, sadistically designed seat all day, I want clean sheets spread over a sensually soft mattress to lay my strained sinew and blemished bones on when nighttime rolls around. I'm tired of camping every time we go somewhere. Any objections?"
"Nope! Not as long as it comes out of your spending
money," I replied simply (I know that look). "You find what you want. You make the arrangements. Then just point me in the right direction when the time comes to leave the driveway. You planning on spending all four nights there?"
"No, I think just two. We can travel 'Your Way' the other two nights," she said with a smile. "I just want to do this trip a little bit different."
"OK! How about if we stay at Potawatomi Park the first night, B&B the next two, and the Wagon Trail
Campgrounds on Friday?"
"That's fine."
And so it was that our annual bike hike was at least somewhat different from those of past years.
After arriving at Potawatomi just outside of Sturgeon Bay, we drove around the park six times to determine a proper campsite. That's overkill, I know, but it seems like the right thing to do – especially because we want this trip to be a little "special." We didn't think the park would be crowded with Labor Day past, and
it wasn't. However, the campers who there were just like us, wanting a little privacy, so the occupied sites, although not that many, were scattered enough to make finding the "right site," with no immediate neighbors, a challenge.
After registering and setting up, we headed out to explore the immediate area. We looked for, and found, the Sherwood Point Lighthouse, a subject portrayed on many of the area promotional brochures. A Coast
Guard-operated lighthouse, the family lives on the grounds. A sign requires all visitors to "STOP," turn around and respect the privacy of the family; therefore, one cannot really see the lighthouse unless you travel by water. We hadn't brought our boat. Next time.
We toured a few backroads and then returned to the park to check out the perimeter. There are wonderful picnic areas along the shore of Sturgeon Bay, with sailing ships and yachts and small fishing boats passing
throughout the day. A tower overlooks Sawyer Harbor. The park has eight and a half miles of roadway that can be biked and four miles of off-road bike trails.
There is a small airport near the park, and when we got back to camp between 5 and 6 p.m., the skies overhead were busy.
"Must be coming home from work," my wife said, reflecting on the many elegant homes in the area.
In the morning I wiggled out of the sleeping bag to greet the cool the air. A sweatshirt is welcome. This was to be a full day biking the first leg of the Ahnapee Trail, 18 miles one way and, of course, we need to go both directions because we have no shuttle service.
The bike book said the trailhead is at Sawyer Park. I don't doubt that, but we couldn't find it. We followed a sign along highway 42/57 that directed us to the trail. We found the trail but no place to park. While
wandering back and forth, looking for the parking lot, a gentleman from the area stopped to ask if we were lost (we must have looked as confused as we were). We explained and he said "follow me," taking us to a parking lot for the trail. Unfortunately, there are no signs indicating it is a trail parking lot.
It was not the trailhead. Rather, if you look at the map in the Wisconsin Biking Guide, page 42, you will see
a red "P" near the north end of the trail. That is where we were. (I don't know; maybe we were just a bit dense that morning, mind numb from camping.)
It was cloudy when we hit the path, but the weatherman promised sunny skies, eventually. The wind picked up a bit and quartered into our faces. If it stays this way, I thought, it will be at our back on the return trip. (Want to bet it switches?)
After an hour the blue sky shows and the sweatshirts come off. It is a great day!
The trail traverses two counties, Door and Kewaunee. It is 28 miles long, running from Sturgeon Bay on the north, then south and a little west to Casco. The trail book states, "The Ahnapee takes you from Lake Michigan's rocky shore to rolling farm fields and orchards. You can watch Great Lakes freighters ply the Sturgeon Bay ship canal …" etc. The part about Lake Michigan's rocky shore and the freighters is the part
of the trail that we missed. Where we started was several miles from the trailhead.
The trail is crushed gravel and does pass through a variety of country – farms, prairie, wetlands, woods and, yes, orchards. A portion parallels the Ahnapee River. It is a good trail, but not great. With a little improvement here and there it could be really good.
The trail is an old railroad bed, and pedaling is not difficult because of the low grade. There is another
occasional problem however – horses. This is a multi-use trail that it is definitely used – snowmobiles in the winter (the orange signs are everywhere) with bikers, hikers and horse riders the rest of the year.
This past January, someone from the Wisconsin DNR office (Sue Black, I think) was on Wisconsin Public Radio talking about a variety of outdoor subjects when the State Trail System came up. The guest stated
that many trails in the state are multipurpose and that seems to be a good way to go. Then someone mentioned horses and bikes, and the guest said that many trails could be shared by the two "sports." Don't you believe it! I am all for multipurpose when they are compatible, and I have nothing against horses, but horses and bicycles simply do not mix.
The portions of this trail that were the most difficult to pedal were the sections shared with the equestrians.
Fortunately, the worst stretch was only a mile and a half long on the northern end around County Highway O, where a ranch is located. I truly believe that if the entire trail was shared with horses, bikers could not use it. Perhaps mountain bikers would be OK – they are used to bouncing and ruts and holes – and the fat tires are more forgiving, but touring or road bikes are bad news when competing with hoof holes and the
general cutting up and rearranging of the trail's surface – not to mention the droppings. The scat can be avoided, but not the chopped-up trail.
On a brighter note, our day was full of blue sky dotted with cumulus clouds. The wildflowers – deep yellow goldenrod, white asters and Queen Ann's lace, orange spotted jewelweed and even a late-blooming orange hawkweed, purple thistles and swamp milkweed, blue-and-white variegated gentians, and fuzzy Old Man's
Beard – stood aside and waved as we passed.
In the fields in fall are squash and pumpkin. The orchards hold rosy red, juicy apples. There are hawks and hayfields, and a mama great blue heron was still teaching her youngster how to survive. It must have hatched late because the fledgling still looked pretty scraggly, although it could fly a little. There is a snowmobile memorial shelter that offers protection from the weather, if required, and deer stands are all over the place.
Every now and then alongside the trail, little signs tell the history of the original railway, the Ahnapee & Western.
We left at 9:45 in the morning and returned at 3:45 p.m. The odometer on my wife's Trek 720 registered 33.5 miles. We felt it. We were hot and sweaty. We loaded the bikes on the back of the truck and headed for the night's place of residence – the Hearthside Farm, Bed & Breakfast – and a shower.
Hearthside Farm is just that, a semiretired farm run by Lu and Don Klussendorf, semiretired farmers with very interesting stories to tell. Our room was magnificent, with a poster bed so tall I don't have a clue as to how they got it into the room. Maybe they built the room around the bed. The shower is two steps lower than the rest of the bathroom, with a slate floor and walls of stone. Just a bit different from camping.
After unloading and a shower, we asked our hosts about good places to eat. She suggested several in a variety of price ranges. We opted for The Inn at Cedar Crossing, a gourmet restaurant of the finest quality. My wife ordered the beef tenderloin with portabella mushrooms and a spicy smoked red chili rum sauce, as well as goat cheese mashed potatoes. The Wild Boar Chops complemented with crispy gorgonzola polenta,
wild mushroom shallot ragout and sun-dried tomato jam were my choice – nothing short of wonderful. The next night we ate at the Pudgy Pidgin, good family food.
In the morning, Don proved his worth as a cook. He needs two hours to prepare breakfast, which always includes fresh fruit, homemade jams, bread, coffeecake and muffins. (One morning we had pancakes made with buckwheat and sorghum with bacon; the next was eggs and crisp, fried potatoes.)
Our second day on the trail began cloudy with showers predicted on and off. It was also windy. Fortunately, this day would be shorter, only 9.6 miles one way.
We did get wet, but not too wet. While waiting out one shower under a group of trees, I glanced down and there, on my raincoat, sat a red-and-black dragonfly, a Calico Pennant. It had found the only dry spot around, thanks to the brim of my hat, the hood on my raincoat and the angle of the rain. It just sat there,
perfectly content, working its little front "feet" over and around its head as if it were doing everything possible to keep that part of its body totally dry – or maybe it had an itch that needed scratching. Anyway, after five minutes the rain stopped and we continued on our way.
A few final observations: We could not find the trailheads indicated on the map, so we used the parking areas. The southern section had no official trail markings; we followed the orange snowmobile signs.
Hopefully these minor problems will be corrected by the time you read this. The talk at Hearthside Farm was that there are people trying to upgrade the trail.
And, oh yes, B&B isn't all that bad. Actually, it is very nice. We won't give up camping, but "My Way" will no longer be our only way to travel.
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