After a short 7 mile bike ride, I managed to convince Don to take a drive to Sturgeon Bay. Not to go shopping, not for general sightseeing....I just wanted to take pictures of Sturgeon Bay, and of the 3 lighthouses that are around the bay area. One is on Green Bay, and the other two are situated off of Lake Michigan. I am thankful for a great husband who humors me when I ask him to drive the truck around just so I can take photos. Maybe it is his way of keeping me out of the tourist shops! After all, I can't browse the racks of clothes if I am too busy taking pictures!
Sturgeon Bay was stuffed to the gills, so to speak, with boats and yachts of all sizes. The numerous slips attest to the fact that Wisconsinites love boating! I bet it would be a challenge for people who would imbibe too much and then try to find their beloved yacht among the myriad floating in the bay. They could even ask for directions and declare they needed to go back to their white boat....like that would help at all. I bet 90 percent are white.
After getting different views of the bay, we decided to go on the hunt for the 3 lighthouses. It was not easy. Even though the Door County visitor magazine has a section for lighthouses, there are no specific instructions on how to get there and no signs along the road. If they want to boast about the 11 lighthouses in all of this county, the least they can do is provide better maps! Last year, we had no problems finding all the lighthouses along the coast of Oregon. I have come to the conclusion that people up here are much more secretive when it comes to lighthouse viewing. We stopped at Potawatomi State Park and got better detailed maps. But even then it was confusing. Their county roads of M, PD, U, etc. make absolutely no sense to this Arizona gal. They are not in not in alphabetical order and run both north/south and east/west. If half the fun is the hunt, then we should have been having as much fun as a barrel of monkeys!
On one of the small country roads we can across some wild turkeys. I think they were doing the Turkey Trot!
The first lighthouse we tracked down was the Sherwood Point Lighthouse. The road to it was narrow and halfway concealed behind a local bar. There was a "no trespassing" sign in front of the lawn, so all I could do is take a picture from the road. Oh well, at least we found it!
The next two on our agenda sit on Lake Michigan. The red colored North Pierhead Lighthouse was built in 1882 and sits on a pier that juts out into the lake. It is still in use today to aid in navigation. Its light guides the ships into the entrance of the canal dug in 1873 and connects Lake Michigan and Green Bay. As you can see, it was a very windy day, creating lots of white caps on the lake.
The Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal Lighthouse sits on land almost directly in back of North Pierhead. This larger lighthouse was completed in October, 1898. However, there were serious design problems in the construction and the winds shook the tower so violently that the clockwork mechanism was unable to rotate the lens at a constant rate. Big problem! The problems were solved and it became fully functional in March of the following year.
Now all of you lighthouse aficionados know just a little bit more about these historic landmarks! I'm feeling a bit "light-headed". Time to call it a day and end this blog.
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