Two Rivers & Manitowoc, Wisconsin

              Thursday 7/8/2013

This is Joe, Diane decided to stay home today and get some things done at the Nest. So I went out to explore. I drove a short distance to the town of Manitowoc, WI. They have a Maritime Museum -the costs $12 to tour, you also get to go aboard the Submarine Cobia. Diane and I have toured a submarine before so I opted to just take a few pictures of it.

I took this picture from the other side of the channel. You can see the harbor light house on the left side of the picture.

This is some of the history of this area.

This shows the area  I was in. The small boat just above this caption, symbolizes where the car ferry that will take you across Lake Michigan to the Michigan side of the Lake.

Close up picture of the harbor lighthouse. There is a long jetty that you can walk out to reach it.

This is the old Courthouse in Manitowoc. I really like these old buildings.

This is an old building in the downtown. I was attracted to it because of the single pillar out front supporting part of the building.

Same building; showing how large the building was.

Another interesting building downtown.

A person in our campground told me about a small old candy shop that also has a small restaurant that they thought was worth a look.

Check out the chocolate shapes in the display case.

I bought Diane some of these small chocolate round pieces. They were cream filled. I found out that Diane doesn't really like cream filled chocolate.

This is the small restaurant in the rear of the shop.

Pretty fancy.

On my way back to Two Rivers, I stopped here.

This 6 acre piece of lake front property was purchased by John & Ruth West in 1934. Mrs. West wanted to develop the weed filled strip of land into a garden. She and her gardener hand spaded all 6 acres. Seventy Colorado spruce trees were planted to develop the north and west windbreaks still standing today. They also build a very modest small home labeled the "shoebox estate." Upon their death all was left to the community. It is free to the public.

Very beautiful with the lake in the background.

Someone has their hands full taking care of all this.

I returned to Two Rivers.  A bit of history.

This is a river channel lighthouse.

I forgot to add this picture when I was in Manitwoc. This Budweiser plant has been closed for awhile. Wonder what will happen to it.

Back in Two Rivers. The Hamilton Plant is now empty. There used to be a museum in part of it, but the museum was closed as they are going to move it to another location.It houses one of the premier wood type collections in the world.

The Hamilton plant was huge. It produced wood type to print large letters on posters.

An example of the wood type print pieces.

Across the street from the plant is the Historic Washington House. Inside, the old bar is still there. There is also an ice cream parlor. Upstairs  there is a ballroom. The building was built in the 1850's.

This is the ballroom. Check out the murals on the ceiling.

Brief description.

This is a neat church just down the street. It was a fun afternoon out poking around the area.  Diane transferred the pictures I took from the camera to the laptop and edited them. I picked out the pictures that I decided to use, enlarged them and wrote the captions. I give Diane credit for the time it takes to do this. I was surprised how long it took to do all this.

Hideaway Campground, Two Rivers, WI., & Mariners Trail

                                        Saturday 8/3/2013

We left my sister's neighbor's driveway and drove just about 1 1/2 miles north of Two Rivers on Hwy O toward our new backyard. If you are on your way to the Hideaway Campground, when you see Port Sandy Bay, be prepared to turn right after it.

The restaurant sits just south of Hideaway Campground. This restaurant is very busy on Friday nights.

We had planned to leave my sister's and head north, but when we started to try to find places to stay, we found resorts were book for the weekend. We even found it hard to find a park in town to stay at for the weekend. We chose Hideaway because the internet connection was really good.

This park is very pricey for us at $42 a night or if you stay for a week, you get the 7th day free or $36 a night for 7 nights. Because we didn't have any reservations at this point, we decided to stay a week so we could take advantage of a better nightly price, and have the time to plan out reservations for a month. We couldn't plan out like we usually do because we didn't know how long we would be in Cedar Rapids because we didn't know what test or situations might arise after seeing doctors, dentists, and etc. I also needed to do bills, blogs, put in orders after we scheduled with our new destinations and had addresses. If you want to sit in the trees, you will be put on the outer edge of the park.

We chose to be put in the center of the park so we would not have problems getting our Direct TV satellite connection and no saps drippings from trees. You can see our green and gold Nest at the very end, behind the bath and laundry house.

In between scheduling reservations, ordering supplies, and doing bills and blogs, we found time to go to the lake for morning or afternoon walks.

Not too many beach goers, but lots of summer gulls.

We were happy to stay here for a week, because the weather has been beautiful ranging from 70 to 78 degrees. We finally found the sweet spot once again, after spending all spring and part of the summer in 90 degree weather. Mallery was once again happy, and able to run and not get over heated.

We walked along the bike/walking path along Lake Michigan. Once we got close to the road, Mallery had to be leashed or put in her stroller for her safety. One of the nice homes across from the lake.

We walked until we reached the outlet of where the two rivers of the town empty into Lake Michigan.

Across from the canal is the marina and a RV park.We checked out that RV park, but the internet connection wasn't good and the Hideaway was much nicer, though the daily rate was better there at $29 for full hook up and there was one site left.

At the end of the canal it splits to the left or the West Twin River, or

to the right to the East Twin River. The majority of Two Rivers sits between the two rivers.

Along the trail we found this exhibit that told us about the Rouse Simmons ship that sank on Lake Michigan in November 22, 1912. It was  en route for Milwaukee and Chicago to deliver Christmas Trees, which it had done for 20 years.

A couple days later we drove just south of the main road into Two Rivers to pick up the Mariners Trail that we had been on, north of the town.

The trail runs along Memorial Dr.

There are several pull out parks along Memorial Dr. to access the trail. This was a neat mosaic fish statue at the pull out park that we parked at.

It had a lovely saying we all need to remember!

As we started on the trail heading south toward the town of Manitowoc, Joe and I saw a gull along the beach that got our attention. It was sitting along the water edge and just didn't look right. I thought to myself, if the gull is still there when we get back, I will check it out.

This part of the trail is very nice, except it is parallel to a very busy road.

We saw a sail boat on the lake, but I don't think you can see it in this picture.

As we walked we came to the RV park that we wanted to stay at. It is part of the Village Inn & Suites Motel on Memorial Dr.

If you are lucky, you can get a front row site with Lake Michigan as your view.You do have to deal with the traffic noise though. 

The price was much better at $22 a night, but the park was full when we called to try to get in.

Wildflowers graces the hill going down to the beach.

After walking for 15 minutes we turned around and headed back through one of the many little park settings along the trail.

When we got back I saw the gull was still down by the water so I went down to it.

It definitely was sick or hurt because I was able to approach it to about 3 feet.

I talked slowly to it and made one step closer and it tried to get up but it couldn't. As I left it, I felt helpless for it and wanted to do something to help. Part of me felt silly for thinking I could do anything to help it. After all wild animals have to die naturally every day, unlike us having to go to hospitals to die.

We left and went to Pizza Hut, and while Joe was ordering a pizza, I googled Two Rivers Veterinaries and called one. I asked if there was a wildlife rescue in the area and I was told there was. They gave me the phone number and I made the call. I told them about the gull and she told me that they had been having an outbreak of Botulism, due to extremely hot weather the area had a few weeks prior. She asked where he/she was and I gave her directions. At first she asked if I could bring it in, but when I asked where I would bring it (and she found out we were not from the area, and had just ordered a pizza) she said they would come and get it. She told me they were in route to get some baby birds right then. I asked if she could call me back with a report, but she told me they were caring for over 600 wild animals and they didn't have time to call people back. (What was I thinking). I felt better, at least I did something instead of nothing, even if the rescue would just eases the gull's death more comfortably.

When we started the walk on this day it was cloudy and 72. After our walk it was sunny and 77 degrees. We were glad it was cooler and cloudy during our walk. It had been perfect for our walk along what I call the no shark ocean of Wisconsin!

On Wednesday we went to the Two Rivers Farmers Market located in the central park.

It wasn't real big,

but it had everything we wanted from fresh cherries, onions, green beans, cucumbers, tomatoes, eggs. kohlrabi, and even red popcorn. Joe said the prices were really good also.