| The interior of Rudy's Diner in Chilton, Wisconsin. Photos by Don Piele. Café to Café
Biking and eating one's way upstate
By Don Piele 
| Don Piele on the road from
Racine to Door County. |
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Each spring I'm anxious to get back on the bike and down some new stretch of Wisconsin's extensive system of back roads from my home in Racine. The perfect opportunity arose when my wife, Linda, announced in mid-May she was going to Door County for a week-long bird-watching class in Ellison Bay. I had just finished reading the newly published book, Café Wisconsin: A Guide to Wisconsin's Down Home Cafés, by
Joanne Raetz Stuttgen, and was hungry to visit some of her favorite, small-town Wisconsin eateries. So I asked Linda, "What would you think if I rode my bike from café to café on my way up north? I'll meet you at the end of your week and you can give me a ride home."
"OK," she said, "but take a cell phone just in case." Unlike bike trips 15 years ago, when I spent my nights sleeping
on the ground, this time I planned to go first-class sleeping in soft beds in small town "mom and pop" motels. You know the ones: all one floor, ranch style, built in the '50s with the sign out front, "Nice Price, Clean, but Not Fancy."
Looking at my state bike map, I decided to begin at the start of the Ozaukee Interurban Bike Trail in Mequon. This paved bike trail runs for 30 miles to the top of Ozaukee County and cuts
through Cedarburg, Port Washington and Oostburg and the homes of three of Joanne's featured Wisconsin cafés.
It was an overcast, breezy day as I loaded up my bike with two small panniers and one front bike bag. To keep the weight down, I packed only one easily washable change of clothes, incidentals, my camera and, of course, the book.
En route to Cedarburg & beyond
Six easy miles in, I rolled into Cedarburg and looked for my first café, the Cedarburg Coffee Pot on Main Street. I sat down at the counter and ordered the soup of the day, Greek Lemon. The other option was Greek Wedding Soup, which, I was informed, included meatballs and spinach.
Almost as an afterthought, I grabbed the Café Wisconsin book and showed the waitress the pages featuring the Coffee Pot Café. She rushed off to show her boss and owner, Peter Demopoulos. This proud immigrant
from the Greek village of Pyrgos asked to make copies of "his" story so he could show his son.
Because he was holding the book, I asked if I could take his picture the first of many such photos of small town café owners I would take.
When I got ready to pay the bill, Demopoulos was at the register and wrote "void" across the bottom and said, "no charge." I protested but he insisted. So I tipped the waitress that amount.
Using a Wisconsin bike map for the region, available at bike stores and online through the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, I looked first for thin little black "town roads." I had learned that by connecting points A and B using these roads I was assured of a private, paved bike route. Traffic on these roads is nearly nil.
I tend to avoid bicycle touring trails, marked on the map with green dashes. I personally don't like them
unless they are paved, such as the Interurban. The limestone paths are just too slow and uninteresting to me.
Port Washington to Chilton
From Harry's Café in downtown Port Washington run by a competent young staff of high school and college students I rode the 51 miles to Sheboygan. The temperature was in the mid-50s and it was beginning to rain. So I was happy to check into the Harbor Wind Motel conveniently located downtown on the riverfront.
The next morning, every muscle in body was registering a protest. I listened to my body and took extra time over breakfast. By 10:15, I finally felt recovered enough to get back in the saddle and take off.
From Sheboygan, my route turned northwest to Howards Grove. This was not a Café Wisconsin town (cafés are typically closed on Mondays anyway) but I spotted an old and unusual looking building with a "meat market" sign out front.
Inside I found Jim fixing lunch with steam rising from his skillet filled with meat and onions. It turned out I had walked into a historic Wisconsin meat market. Jim still makes sausages the way the original German immigrant did who built the place 114 years ago.
On the wall hung old pictures, newspapers stories, ribbons and plaques. Jim invited me to see the smokehouse out back where all the meat and sausages go to have their ph lowered to 4.7, which is ideal, so
that they remain fresh without having to be filled with preservatives.
Jim was such an engaging talker it took me 45 minutes to gracefully exit the shop. Of course, I bought a smoked summer sausage, even though I knew it would be dead weight for the rest of my bike trip.
"It will keep as long as you don't cut into it," Jim said. "Then you will have to refrigerate it."
I was getting hungry when I arrived in Chilton (population 3,206). Following the book's directions I found what had been Julie's Uptown Café on Main Street. It was now named Littlewind Uptown Café, and the new owners were Wayle and Estelle, both American Indians who had recently moved up from Chicago and bought the place.
The décor and the menu had been redone to feature Indian dishes including corn soup, buffalo stew and
Estelle's prize-winning fry bread. Unfortunately, they were out of soup and stew, so I settled for an Indian taco made with a plate-sized piece of fry bread. It was more than even a hungry cyclist could handle, so I took a "doggie carton" back to the motel.
In the small towns of the Fox Valley area of Wisconsin, motels are few and far between. You can't count on finding one in every town. I had used motelguide.com to locate some before starting my trip. In Chilton I
found the Thunderbird Motel.
A 1953 red Ford Thunderbird sat proudly in the front yard. The new owners moved up to Chilton from Cedarburg to run a very comfortable, and yes, clean, motel. A new chain hotel stood just down the road, but at $37 a night, the Thunderbird was half the price and twice as nice. It is managed by the owners who were happy to share stories about travelers and townspeople.
The next morning, I returned to the Littlewind Café for breakfast. The town "geezers" were seated at the counter having their morning coffee. In my bright yellow bike jacket, I'm seldom mistaken for a townie on or off the road.
I sat next to Joe, a retired foundry worker, now a vegetable farmer, who loved to talk about everything from Social Security, pensions and the price of gas. As I finished breakfast and got up to go, he handed me
his business card and said, "If you ever ride near my farm, stop in for some free vegetables."
I spent the next morning at the Chilton Library catching up on e-mail and writing in my travel log. I was still in town at lunchtime, so back to the café I went for one last meal. A stranger at the counter wanted to know if that was my bike out front. Yep, it works every time: if you sit at the counter they will come.
Brillion to Denmark
I finally rolled out of Chilton and headed north to my next stop. I passed the iron foundry on my way into Brillion (population 3,036) at 3 p.m., exactly the time when the Sandman Motel opens for business. I checked into my room, had a shower, and walked to Rudy's Diner.
Rudy Seljan opened Rudy's in 1939. It became a popular luncheonette by word of mouth passed on by the many truck drivers who passed it on U.S. Highway 10. Fifty years later, Rosemary and Kevin Clarke took over.
Kevin was in the kitchen when I arrived. I watched two hefty guys come in, sit down in a booth and order the meatloaf special. It's something they do regularly, I later learned.
"OK, I'll go with the meatloaf," I said. And I'm glad I did. It was real home-cooked meatloaf with real mashed potatoes and gravy, corn, and yes, even homemade bread. I couldn't resist topping it off with
Rosemary's cherry pie and ice cream. One of the big advantages of cycling all day is having room for pie ala mode.
After the lunch crowd had gone, Kevin sat down at the counter and told me about Rudy's. In 1993, they began a remodeling project to expand the small original café to twice its size. They did it in the same style as the old-fashioned diner it had been. They paid a lot of attention to style and design and built the best-looking
diner I've ever seen. They preserved a piece of the past, too. On the walls are historical pictures of Brillion and, of course, Rudy and the original Rudy's Diner.
I went back there the next morning for breakfast and a piece of Rosemary's freshly baked rhubarb pie.
The country roads in this part of Wisconsin in May are essentially deserted. You see only local farm traffic and the occasional milk truck making its rounds to the hundreds of small dairy farms. The roads are paved
and well-maintained. Many were first built in the 1890s. In just over a century, Wisconsin's transportation network has evolved from scattered trails and crude roads into a modern network that connects communities within the state. For a biker, they provide a grid of one-mile blocks from which to pick a route.
For example, if you are traveling between towns A and B that are five miles apart north to south and five
miles to east to west, you have a choice to keep or change your direction 10 times, allowing for 252 different routes between the two communities. (Trust me, I did the math.) Just imagine the possibilities on a 250-mile bike ride on this grid of back country roads.
On to Denmark.
No, I didn't abandon my bike ride and go abroad. I just rode 25 miles northeast of Brillion to find Lorrie's Home Town Café and Catering.
Lorrie and Jim Steffek recently moved into their new building out by the highway after being downtown since 1990. Back home in Racine, I live in an area settled by Danes, so it has always had several Danish bakeries famous for their kringle.
But we don't have a restaurant like Lorrie's. I ordered ćbleskiver with lingonberries, which is always available and delicious. In this part of Wisconsin, Lorrie's attracts people from all over the state.
Algoma to Ellison Bay
The signs leading out of town pointed to Poland, Luxemburg and Algoma. I headed northeast to Algoma, which didn't have a café in the book. There are 133 cafés mentioned in Café Wisconsin for all of Wisconsin, and about 25 in the northeast region, so obviously not every town could have a café that made the cut.
For dinner, I picked a local bar and grill that was recommended by a jogger running through town.
Hudson's, it turned out, had some real home-cooked dishes. Maybe someone should do a book on good home cooking at Wisconsin bars and grills.
The next day, the TV weatherman warned that this was not going to be a great day for biking. Rain was forecast for all day. I took off at 8:30 a.m. and headed north with a southeast tail wind. One hour later, I rolled into Sturgeon Bay under a slight drizzle and across the Michigan Street bridge, straight for Perry's Cherry Diner.
Perry Andropolis has transformed his father's restaurant into a 1950-vintage diner. It's a brightly painted building on the outside. Inside I was greeted with the glitz and chrome, enhanced by photo collages of Marilyn Monroe.
Angie, who had just finished her freshman year at St. Cloud State University, was serving the counter. Perry was in Green Bay watching over his first new franchise of Perry's Cherry Diner.
The Andyjacks Cherry Wraps with split pea soup was the special of the day. It was a tortilla wrapped around a mixture of chicken, walnuts, Door County cherries with a caramel sauce on the side to dip in. I'm sure this is the only place in the world that offers an Andyjack.
The uncooperative weather kept me in town for the day, so I walked over to the Holiday Motel conveniently located a block away. It was a fine "mom and pop" motel the first built in Door County and the
only one with a 5-foot fiberglass sturgeon on a pedestal in the living room.
On my last day, the weather turned beautiful again, and the jewel of Door County (Sturgeon Bay to Gill's Rock) lay ahead. This is especially good biking country as long as you stay off the two main roads, State Highways 42 and 57. Back roads go north and south and crisscross west to east from Green Bay to Lake Michigan.
My breakfast stop was Laurie's Café-A: An Utterly Moolicious Eatery. I must have driven by this place a hundred times on my way to the top of Door County. It's located off the road on an open stretch of State 42 above Carlsville. The funky Café-A sign is a tip-off. This place is packed with Laurie's extensive collection of cow knickknacks, cow bells and even a milking machine hanging on the wall. In the space
that's left are signs such as, "If you don't have anything good to say about anybody, come sit by me."
Rob was in the kitchen making cherry pies (a Door County favorite) from scratch. A local group of senior citizens had pushed two tables together for their regular Friday morning gab fest. I didn't see another tourist.
Filled up, I cruised into Ellison Bay on my fifth and last day of biking just as my odometer rolled over to
read exactly 250 miles. My final café was the The Viking, known in Door County as the home of the fish boil. I lunched on whitefish chowder.
I rode the final mile into the parking lot of The Clearing, a "folk school" located on a bluff overlooking the waters of Green Bay. This artists' retreat offers small classes with good teachers in a cooperative, familylike setting. This is where Linda had done her bird-watching over the past week.
I loaded up the bike on the back of the van, officially ending my café Wisconsin bike ride. Or should I say my first? There are still wonderful stretches of back country roads to discover and plenty of cafés left to visit in Café Wisconsin.
Take your own café Wisconsin ride, and tell me about it. Day-rides, weeklong rides, rides across the state it doesn't matter. I'll share your stories and digital photos on a Web site I'm creating.
Just remember, always sit at the counter, be on the lookout for fresh pie, and be sure to show them "the book." Now you're on your own. Enjoy!
Don Piele is a professor of mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside and director of the USA Computing Olympiad. He can be reached at piele@uwp.edu.
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