Sorry, but I could not resist today's title, which is a play on the Schmucker's ads for their famous jams that say "With a name like Schmuckers it has to be good". The Admiral is fascinated with the name and loves saying the word so I thought that she probably had high hopes that the town would live up to the motto. The trip from Port Washington is just 29.4 miles, but we managed to sleep in so we did not depart until 9:50 am.
Since we are nearing the longest day of the year, it is getting light pretty early in the morning. Early this morning while walking the Admiral and Lucky found a nice bicycle trail that they could walk along (photo at right). As you can see, the bike trail came complete with wildflowers This was good since otherwise there have not been many nice grassy areas for Lucky to enjoy. There was even one park where dogs were only allowed if confined to a car... Yesterday we explored Port Washington on foot, and during our walk around town, we found our first ever Duluth Trading Company store. They have really quirky commercials so our interest was peaked. I have been casually looking for a new pair of khaki pants, but I found a lot of the men's pants to be about as quirky as the commercials. To console me, the Admiral bought me a 2 scoop cup of vanilla ice cream on the way back to Lucky Us.
Our marina had these large Grass Carp that were loafing about near the surface in the fairly clear water. They generally moved so slow that I am not sure that Lucky ever noticed them. At least she showed no interest in them. I do not know for sure, but my guess is that the largest ones were over 3 feet long. People generally do not eat carp. When I was a kid growing up on Lake Erie, we used to catch them, but it was a strict rule with my mother to never bring a carp home. Anyway, neither I nor anyone that I know has ever tasted one... They are bottom feeders so at least their image is not a good one, especially given how polluted Lake Erie was when I was young.
Once we departed from Port Washington, we had a beautiful and uneventful 3.5 hour trip to Sheboygan. We dodge the usual small boats trolling, and vertical poles with bright red flags on them. There were three in a row with about a 100 yards between them. Once again, based on commercial fisherman that I had seen on Lake Erie as a kid, my reaction was that it was something to be avoided as it probably was either a net or a trot line with baited hooks every couple of feet. In any case, my reaction is that we did not want to catch one of these and get it wrapped around a propeller. We passed three of these sets of 3 flags strung out in a row with all three being roughly perpendicular to the shore. At the third one we saw a commercial style fishing boat just leaving (photo above), which at least partly answered the question.
As we approached Sheboygan we saw a setting similar to Port Washington with a small hillside coming down to what appeared to be the edge of downtown (photo at left). Once again in the photo you can see how the haze has built up, but otherwise the weather was great, especially since the "fly problem" has gone away. We did put up the Velcro screens, which seemed effective, but the flies were definitely
far less numerous today.
On the way into the harbor we got a great view of the old Sheboygan Light, which is yet another slightly different design. We arrived at our marina about 1:30 pm, and once again there was the debate about exploring versus a nap. Fortunately, my vote made it unanimous in favor of a nap (Yeah!). The Admiral has already picked out a restaurant for dinner so we will be off for a little exploring before dinner. I suspect that by dinner time we will know enough to make a decision about whether or not to stay another day. Stay tuned...
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