A Wisconsin bike adventure: Milwaukee to Sheboygan on Day 1

This is the start of a 6-day bike ride to and around Door County, that long finger of land jutting into Lake Michigan in Wisconsin.

Some call Door County the Cape Cod of the Midwest. The coast was certainly beautiful and the villages there were geared toward tourists. Inland were fields after fields planted with corn and soybean, and some farms had cows we could see from the roads. So maybe not quite Cape Cod there? With school back in session, roads were blissfully quiet.

But first we had to get out of Milwaukee, a metro area with about 1.5 million people.

Is the network of trails in southeast Wisconsin underappreciated by those of us who don’t live there? I found it stunning that we were able to ride 43 miles on trails virtually seamlessly from where we were staying in Shorewood, the first suburb north of Milwaukee, to Oostburg, maybe 15 miles from the day’s end point in Sheboygan. First the Oak Leaf Trail (Zipline section), then the Ozaukee Interurban Trail, then the Sheboygan Interurban Trail.

A friend said this conversion of rails to trails in Milwaukee started for the Bicentennial, so well before the national movement, then got to 76 miles and just kept going. In Milwaukee County, the Oak Leaf Trail alone is 135 miles.

Today the national Rails to Trails Conservancy and other partners are working on expanding the network, which they call Route of the Badger.

Some of what we saw felt very Wisconsin.

There was the cemetery with German text on so many grave markers. No surprise, perhaps, given that about 40% of Wisconsinites claim some German heritage.

There were even beer gardens in some of the Milwaukee parks along the trail. Sounds fun, just bad timing for us.

But that fish cleaning station at a park in Port Washington next to Lake Michigan? Also so Wisconsin. (It also meant water for our water bottles and nice bathrooms).

Other sights:

There was the awesomeness of Lake Michigan. We splashed around in Kohler-Andrae State Park. The water was colder than when I was at Indiana Dunes a few days earlier, but then it is further north. (And maybe those Indiana steel mills warm the water a bit?)

We also came across a giant data center under construction north of Port Washington. My photo doesn’t do it justice. The company behind it says it will take up 672 acres — nearly as much space as Chicago Midway Airport — and the four buildings will total 2.5 million square feet.

We ended our day in Sheboygan. Dinner was at Parker John’s BBQ. One of those wacky Bloody Marys tempted; the wackiest had the drink topped with a pork slider, 2 smoked chicken wings, jalapeno burnt end sausage and a half rack of ribs. Somehow I didn’t see anyone order that….

Not that what two of us ordered to share was any less extreme. The Pitmaster’s Platter came with three pick-you-own meats (total of 2 pounds or more), three sides and two large cornbreads.

That cup of white something? It’s buttercream frosting or something like that, which our waitress thought was a perfectly normal dip for sweet potato fries.

Must be a Wisconsin thing.