Somewhere West of Kewaunee, WI, Sat. 9/11/10

Historic building - Reinke Mill.

Nice farm house along Sleepy Hollow Road.

Frogs are loving it, just that kind of day.

A very rainy day west of Kewaunee.

Details & Weather: Hiking on a road part of the IAT west of Kewaunee, WI. It's still fun, not as nice as a trail, but still very interesting. Spent the night in Manitowoc, got up early and found a good spot to park. Raining. Started at 6:15, finished around 11:30'ish - about 5 hours. Was a mild to medium rain the entire time, hiked with my umbrella most of the way. It was actually kinda nice walking in the rain, not too many cars, always something to see along the way, peaceful.

Did 8 miles from the first parking spot, then drove to the Parallel 44 winery to park and did another 4 miles. I felt like going for 4 more but after checking my feet I had a big blister on each foot from wet socks (even though I changed socks once, still was too wet, should have worn my boots after all) so decided to stop. The winery was having some sort of art/wine fest with a lot of vendor booths being put up. Looked interesting, will need to stop back by and try their wine some day. So 12 miles for Ken, 6 miles of progress on the IAT.

Wildlife: Crows(of course); Blackbirds in big flocks; Tweety Birds; Sandhill Cranes(5 all in a flock); Turkeys (~22 - 2 large groups then a couple of individual pairs from far off); Squirrels(2); Chipmunk; Frog; Dove; a 100lb Rottweiler (at least); an Old Australian Shepherd who barked at me for no reason.

Dangers: None. Light traffic the whole time going down Sleepy Hollow Road. The trail book has it going down a bigger road which is bad, they should change it to come down Sleepy Hollow Road which is the quieter, more interesting, safer way to go on this stretch.

Conclusions: Need to do a better job keeping feet dry; seeing a flock of turkeys walking across your path within 15 yards in front of you is very interesting; there are some large red squirrels up in this neck of the woods.