A Time to Relax

Things got a little intense recently so we decided to run away and relax for a bit. So run away we did.

We made a reservation for a place to stay, loaded up the bikes and some stuff we'd need for a couple of days, and took off.

We picked a place on a small lake.  After putting our stuff in our room we went down to a dock on the lake and sat out on a bench there and just enjoyed the solitude and stillness.  

It was evening by this time so we just stayed there on the dock  and at the lake's edge and watched the sun set. There were birds chirping and flying around.  It was real nice. Very relaxing.

This was also the night of the full moon, a super moon. And what's  more, it was the second full moon of the month so it was what is called a "Blue Moon", a phenomena that only happens once in a great while. So it was a nice way to pass the evening.

We took the next morning slow and easy. It was mid-morning before we got to the place we were starting our bike ride from. We were riding a stretch of the Bearskin State Trail. So we got to our starting place, unloaded the bikes, and pretty soon we were ready to go.

This trail had lots of good signage, a nice thing for keeping track of where you are. While I had downloaded a map from the trail's website, we weren't far along the trail when we came across a map.  Maps and information signs along the way were typical the whole time we were on the trail.

The Bearskin trail is over twenty-one miles long but we weren't doing the whole trail, only about a third of it.  And the third we were doing was out in the middle.  We picked this portion of the trial because it would mean crossing nine bridges.

Some were short, under twenty feet.  The longest we crossed was over 250 feet.  I like bridges so nine bridges was fun, and we did each twice. Once on the way out and again on the way back.

Our turn-around point was an observation deck a little over 6.5 miles from where we started.  The satellite view of the trail made it look like a pretty big deck but when we got there we found it was much smaller.  The sign there said beavers had built a couple of dams nearby that had raised the water level enough they had cut the deck way back.  You could still see some of the pilings from where the deck had been but it was not much of an observation deck anymore.  That was fine, though.  We went far enough beyond the deck to make it an even seven miles from where we started and then headed back.

The description of the trail had said it was heavily wooded, enough so that it made tunnels over the trail in some points.  We found some of that.  A lot of the time we were in the shade, which was nice.

The trial was a challenge because it wasn't fully covered with crushed granite; there was a grass strip running down the center of the trial pretty much the whole way we were on it.  On a recumbent trike, you pretty much have to have one wheel in that grass all the time, which makes it a little harder to ride. And the only paved sections were when we'd go over a cross street and there were only a few of those. So by the time we got back we were feeling like we'd had a good workout.

It was a pleasant ride, lots of wild flowers along the way.  We saw a number of birds as well.  Unfortunately, with birds you can't always get a good picture, they can be pretty fast.  

After 14 miles, we were glad to get back to the car. All in all, though, it was a good ride.  And it allowed me to cross another trail off my list, I've wanted to ride this section of this trail for a couple of years and Brombeere was kind enough to agree to it.  So it was a good way to spend the morning.

That was the morning.  The plan for the evening was to go into Minocqua for dinner and then decide what to else to do.  We had looked at a couple of options but hadn't made firm plans when we left the trail.  What we ended up doing was going on a pontoon cruise of the lake.  Actually, several lakes.  Minocqua sits on a chain of six lakes that consist of nearly 6,000 acres of water with more than 15  miles of shoreline.  Pretty much all of the shore is owned with houses on most of the lots, some ranging from hundreds of acres down to 40 foot lots.  Our driver/tour guide was very informative, being a native of the community.  He was also very entertaining.

The Bearskin Trail has its northern trailhead in Minocqua, about 13 miles north of the closest point we got to it. We went under bridges for the trial a couple of times on the cruise.

There were some celebrity homes on the lake. Like this Frank Llyod Wright home with lots of windows, he was real big on natural lighting.  We saw homes once owned by John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson, among other famous and infamous people.  President Eisenhauer used to fish on the lake a lot, though he never owned property there.

Other homes were not necessarily celebrity homes but just interesting architecture.  The biggest home on the lake had a  miniature golf course in the yard. These were multimillion dollar homes.  Our guide figured any home on the lake would go for at least one million dollars in today's  market. Lots of money.  There were also a couple of campgrounds and a country club, complete with an 18 hole golf course, on the lake.

As interesting as all the lake front property was, we found the wildlife much more interesting.  The tour took us by an area where there were a couple of beaver homes.  Alas, none of the beaver were  out at the time.

We also saw a very large eagle's nest. The photo doesn't really convey a good sense of just how big the nest was.  It was way high in the tree, it was huge.  We know of an eagle nest several miles from where we live; this one was much, much bigger.  We actually saw a couple of eagle nests. Our guide said sometimes you can hear the baby birds asking for dinner.

The cruise was two hours long and during the course of the ride we saw lots of birds, probably more loons than anything else.  They were fun to watch.  They'd be there on the surface and then suddenly disappear beneath the water only to come back up a couple of minutes later, sometimes several yards from where they went under. The black loons were the mature ones, the dark, not quite black ones were the babies. They were getting nearly full grown by this time of year. And there were lots of geese.  The geese are beginning to gather into big flocks, getting ready to begin their migration south. That's happening where we live, too.

We had gone on the last cruise of the day so by the time we headed back to the dock the sun was beginning to set.  Sunset on a lake is a beautiful thing.  It was a great way to end the cruise.  To end the evening.

We went back to our room.  The next morning it was back to home.  But the trip was a success, despite the exertion of the trail ride, we had been able to unwind and relax.  We went back ready to face the coming week. It was a good time.