It’s May 30, 2007 and almost 10 pm at night. I’m sitting in my camper at Kohler Andrae State Park near Sheboygan, Wisconsin. It’s the first of two nights we’ll be spending here; then we’ll pack up and head up to Fish Creek in Door County Wisconsin to spend three nights at Peninsula State Park.
We were supposed to have stayed at Kohler Andrae for three nights but I was really far behind on my work so we couldn’t leave yesterday like we originally planned but instead left for camping around 12:30 pm today. Luckily, Kohler Andrae campground is close to where I live – only about an hour away.
If you’ve never been to Kohler Andrae State Park, it’s located in Wisconsin on the Western shore of Lake Michigan. I love being near the water and especially enjoy walking along the beach and watching the waves crash on shore on windy days.
Because we got a later start than we planned to today, we stopped and had lunch at a little hamburger stand on the way instead of taking the time to make lunch at home. We got to the campground a little after 2 pm. We were very conscious of the time because our reservation started yesterday and Wisconsin State Parks will give your site away to someone else if you aren’t physically occupying it by 3 pm the day after your reservation started. We explained how I was behind on my work and couldn’t leave yesterday like we originally planned. The person who checked us in suggested we call if it happens again so they know we are on our way. If they know someone is running late they won’t give that person’s site away unless it’s an unreasonable time frame such as a person calling and saying they are going to be running three days late.
Setup of our popup camper was going pretty well until my husband and I were putting up the metal bars that keep the awning in place. I put one end of it into the appropriate slot but the other end slipped out my husband’s head. I was standing directly underneath it and had it drop on my head. It sure didn’t feel good. I now have a good sized bump on the top of my head and now know to never stand directly under those things again when we are putting them up!
After we got our camping area set up, we took our bicycles out for a ride (about 4 miles) and went for a walk on the beach. Then we went to the area grocery store to pick up a few supplies we needed. Then it was time to eat. We ate an entire head of iceberg lettuce with a little ranch dressing and parmesan cheese. Then we pan-steamed a pan of asparagus and broccoli over our campfire. Then when the fire burned down enough, we made Reuben pudgie pies. For dessert we had roasted marshmallows. It was so good!
By the time we finished eating and cleaning up, it was getting pretty dark so my husband put some more wood on the fire and we sat in our camping chairs to enjoy it and chat a little bit. We weren’t hardly sitting down for 5 minutes when a raccoon came strolling into our campsite. I guess he was looking for leftovers but we certainly didn’t have any for him. A few minutes late another raccoon joined him. I have a healthy respect for wild animals so I made a beeline for the camper. My husband on the other hand was a dork and started talking to the silly things. I told him he was nuts and could get attacked so he grabbed some wood to bang together and scare them with and came inside the camper.
Those raccoons weren’t afraid of anything. They walked right up to the campfire; ignored us when we yelled at them; and ignored the pieces of wood my husband was clapping together and then finally tossed near them to scare them. Nothing fazed them. Luckily they left after few minutes when they realized we didn’t’ have any food (a big relief for me because I really had to go to the bathroom but was not going to come out of my camper until I knew for sure the raccoons had gone back in the woods.
I’m much better now. I was able to get to the bathroom and the raccoons have not come back. Tomorrow we need to make sure we are done eating a little earlier in the evening so the nocturnal raccoons aren’t attracted to our campsite by the smell of our food.
The fresh air and sound of the waves are doing their job. It’s definitely time for me to go to sleep. I’ll write more tomorrow.
Thursday, May 31
When my husband and I woke up this morning it was a little cool, only in the mid-50’s. Neither of us slept very well. My husband said he was cold, but he never thought to get up and turn on the heater. I kept hearing the raccoons coming to our campsite throughout the night, looking in vain for something to eat. Luckily we remembered to bring our cooler inside last night. We recalled it was the same one a couple of raccoons figured out how to open a couple of years ago when it had it full of cherries we had picked that day.
In Sheboygan, just few miles from the campground, there’s a bakery that has the best sandwich rolls (they’re called hard rolls around here). They’re a delicious crusty roll that City Bakery in Sheboygan hearth bakes. We decided to get a couple to have for breakfast with some homemade jam. We got to the bakery around 8:30 but found out the hard rolls wouldn’t be ready until about 11:15. So we went back to our campsite and had fruit and peanut and crackers for breakfast.
But when we got back to our campsite we saw we had a “friendly” note from the park ranger. We had set up our camper on the dirt and not on the paved area which we found out isn’t allowed. So, we had to take the camper down and move it even though we’re going to be leaving tomorrow. It was a little frustrating but it only took about a half hour to do.
Then we walked through the entire campground and took a picture of each campsite that I plan to get posted on the website in the next couple of weeks.
We were hungry after our walk, but by then it was already 11:30 so we headed back to the bakery and got a half dozen of the hard rolls. They’re a real bargain at only $1.40 for six of them.
By the time we got back to the campground we were starving so my husband started the fire so we could cook some Italian sausages over it for lunch while I made a salad go with them. We sliced the sausages in half and had them on the hard rolls. They were delicious!
After cleaning up from lunch we sat at our campsite reading and watching two little chipmunks run around. They sure weren’t very afraid of people. One of them came and sat under the chair I was sitting on for a while.
When we arrived at the campground yesterday we were told there was a nature walk today that was going to focus on identifying trees. We decided it might be interesting and went on it. It rained nearly the whole time which I think kept a lot of people away but there were still six of us and it was interesting.
By the time we finished the hike it was still raining but we thought we could still get a fire going hot enough to try out the new Dutch oven we bought. While my husband started the fire and got some coals nice and hot to put on the top of the Dutch oven, I loaded the Dutch oven with a beef roast, garlic, onions, carrots, and some potatoes. We then put the oven in the fire, put coals over the top of it, and left it sit for an hour to cook.
We had a little bit of a dilemma when it was time to check if our food was done because the Dutch oven was obviously really hot and the high heat hand mitts we had started to burn as soon as my husband grabbed the Dutch oven handle. But, with a little clever thinking we got the pot out of the fire and the lid off. That’s when we discovered that our fire had been really hot – so hot that in an hour’s time our food had cooked into little charred black chunks.
I think I better read up on how to use a Dutch oven while camping because we obviously didn’t do things correctly. So instead of having beef roast and vegetables for our evening meal, we had to have hot dogs which was a big letdown.
Between our meal getting charred to a crisp and the rain that lasted most of the evening, it was a rather disappointing end to our second day. The rain kept us from going on a bike ride we wanted to take. Instead we were stuck inside our little popup camper which I guess wasn’t the worst. We had time to relax; we both read; I did a little knitting; and I wrote this entry in my diary.
Tomorrow we’re leaving here to go up to Peninsula State Park in Door County. We’re hoping to get an early start because we would like to stop at Point Beach State Park near Two Rivers to take campsite pictures along the way.
I’m looking forward to tomorrow. Our daughter and a friend of hers are driving up to spend the weekend with us after they both get off work.
Friday, June 1
It’s hard to believe it’s already June. A person wouldn’t know it by the temperature here in the park. It’s cool again this morning; in the low 50’s but thankfully the heater in the camper works just fine and the water in the showers is nice and hot.
We’re switching campgrounds today so we had breakfast; packed up; and headed north to Peninsula State Park. Along the way we stopped at Point Beach State Park near Two Rivers to take pictures of the campsites for the website.
If you’re allergic to mosquitoes, Point Beach State Park is not the place to be in the summer. We were swarmed by mosquitoes while we were there. Even the bathrooms were full of them. Camping there before Memorial Day would probably be fine – the mosquitoes wouldn’t be too bad then; otherwise the best time would be in the fall after a frost. Then it would be beautiful there. Not only would the bugs be gone but the leaves on the trees would be changing colors.
Once we got to Door County we stopped for a burger and ice cream at Wilson’s in Ephriam. The restaurant has been around a long time and has delicious food. I highly recommend the Mackinaw Island Fudge Ice Cream.
We had a little bit of a dilemma when we got to Peninsula State Park to check into our campsite and realized we hadn’t booked an electric site (something we didn’t realize until we got about 6 miles into the campground and to our campsite. We got halfway back to the park office to ask if there were any electric sites available when we decided we could make things work. Our site was right next to the host site, which was the only one in our area of the campground with electricity.
We asked them if we could use their electricity to pump up our air mattress. They also offered to let us use their battery pack to charge up our battery if it ran low which was a great offer since we hadn’t charged the battery before we left home. It’s warm enough tonight that we don’t need to use our heater, but even if we did it runs on propane which we can easily get refilled when it runs out.
I’m going to have to go back over by the camp host though and ask for the use of their electricity again because the battery on my computer (the one I’m using to write this) is almost depleted and I’ll need to recharge my camera battery when we start to take pictures of campsites here.
Our daughter and her friend came up to visit us and stay overnight. We went to Digger’s in Fish Creek to eat. They have great pizza, burgers, hot dogs, and other sandwiches.
Tomorrow I think we’re going to take a nice long bike ride and do a little shopping at the stores in town.
Saturday, June 2, 2007
The day started out pretty nice. We had breakfast: Italian sausage removed from the casing and sautéed with red peppers, Vidalia onions, and button mushrooms, and then eggs added and everything scrambled together. It was delicious.
After we hit the showers (a rather funny experience because my daughter’s friend has never camped before and was going crazy because there were a couple of bugs in the showers), the girls and I decided to go to town and check out the shops while my husband stayed at the campground and checked out some of the trails.
Our shopping excursion got cut short when my daughter’s friend got called to come home earlier than they planned because her babysitter cancelled.
After they packed up and left, my husband and I decided to get a short bike ride in before it rained. The rain came up faster than we expected. About halfway back it started pouring. I’ve never ridden my bike so fast in my life but it was kinda of fun furiously pedaling to get back to the campsite as fast as possible.
The rain poured down for the next couple of hours. We stayed inside the camper and read. As soon as the rain stopped though, just like little elves emerging from their hiding spots, all of campers at the campground came out of their campers and resumed their outdoor activities as soon as the rain stopped.
We had planned on making pudgie pies for supper, but our wood was a little too damp and didn’t want to light. Instead, we headed into to town and tried out the Gibralter Grill in Fish Creek. My husband had a ribeye steak which he said was really good. I had that day’s special, a mixed grill of swordfish, salmon, and halibut served with wild rice and a salad. My salad was good, but the fish and the rice were overcooked. The fish was tough and chewy; the rice was mushy. I was completely disappointed and won’t be in any hurry to go back.
We then drove a few miles up the road to Wilson’s and had ice cream which was really good. We walked across the road and onto the pier while we were eating it and watched a guy using a bow and arrow to catch fish. He was pretty good with it. He caught 2 fish in the short time we were there.
Then we went back to the campground and decided to finish the bike ride that had gotten cut short earlier in the day. After the bike ride we decided to spend the rest of the evening in the camper because it looked like rain again, which it started doing about 15 minutes after we got settled inside for the evening. We both read some more and called it a night about 10 pm.
Sunday, June 3, 2007
It’s still damp and a little rainy today, but we decided to start a fire in the morning anyway and try making breakfast with our pudgie pie makers, something we’ve never done. I’m really hungry for toast but can’t use our toaster since we don’t have electricity. So we’re going to see if we can make toast and fried eggs in the pudgie pie makers.
I also need to take my computer over by the camp hosts today and see if they’ll let me plug it in there and charge up the battery. My battery only has a few minutes left in the charge and I won’t be able to write anymore in this journal or download pictures I take of the campsites today if we can’t charge it up.
I want to talk to them a little bit anyway because I saw them cooking with a Dutch oven yesterday. Since, we had that “charred beyond recognition” experience when we used our Dutch oven for the first time earlier in the week we could use some tips and pointers on how to use it correctly even though we won’t be able to cook with it anymore this camping trip. I don’t have an abrasive enough scrubbing pad to get the burned bits off the bottom so I need to take it home, scrub it really good, and re-season it.
Campers are the nicest people. As my husband was trying to get our wet firewood going to cook our breakfast, a neighboring camper came over and offered us his leftover firewood, which is dry because they’re getting ready to leave and they saw we are going to be here for another day. So, now we get some dry firewood! Our situation wouldn’t have been so bad if we wouldn’t have forgotten our tarps at home. It’s kind of hard to keep things nice and dry without tarps,
Since we were able to get a good fire going today we made breakfast in our pudgie pie makers. We had fried eggs and toast with some cherry/blackberry jam we had purchased in town. It was delicious!
It’s a good thing we had a fortifying breakfast because we spent the next 7 hours going around to all the campgrounds and taking pictures of campsites. Sunday was a good day to take pictures because a lot of people left to go home. There are over 450 campsites in the campground and we got pictures of all but about 30 of them. I’ll get them posted on the website as soon as possible.
We stopped back at our campsite for a quick lunch of some fruit and peanut butter and crackers. Then we visited our camp hosts and got some good advice on how to cook in Dutch ovens.
By the time we finished taking pictures we were exhausted so we made an easy supper of pudgie pies. Then we packed up as much as we could because we wanted to get an early start towards home in the morning
Monday June 4
I am so glad we packed up all of our outside stuff last night because it rained almost the entire night. It’s still drizzling this morning which made packing up the rest of the stuff and taking down the popup camper a wet and messy task. But we got everything down and got on the road by 8:30. We decided to stop for breakfast on the way home. When we get home we’re going to put the camper back up right away so it can dry out.
I’m glad to be going home but sad too. I love camping and can’t wait for our next trip, but it’s going to be a while. We don’t go again until September.
