Another favorite trail in Wisconsin for us is the Ahnapee. This 33.3 mile trail starts in Sturgeon Bay in Door County and continues on into Kewaunee County to the towns of Algoma, Kewaunee, Luxemburg and Casco. We can pick up the trail about a mile from Roy and Char's house and head either north or west. The photo below shows the Y in the road where we had to make a decision of which way to ride.
Our first choice was to head north (to the right) and up to Forestville Dam, a 13.5 mile round trip.
This portion included a stop to identify a plant I was asking about. Char was able to do that using the special app on her phone. That was definitely a plus for modern technology.
I was able to get ahead and get a pic of Roy, Don and Char from the front. Most of the time I'm at the back of the pack. One of the reasons I love this trail is the different topography along the way. We transitioned between forest to more swamp land where the cattails were quite high.
We all took a break at the bridge, noting that the water this year was quite high from all the rain runoff.
Forestville Dam was our turn around point. This has some interesting history. In 1877 Charles Cofrin was hired to build a gristmill in southern Door County The Ahnapee River was dammed with mud, rocks and logs. Afterwards, a 3 story wooden gristmill was erected and farmers from as far away as Egg Harbor would bring their flour to be milled. The mill would keep 1/4 of the flour as payment and could produce 75 barrels of flour a day. The mill was used until 1925. After that time, there have been two projects to update the dam. In 1934 it was replaced with a concrete dam and in 1982 that was replaced with a modern structure.
View from the dam shows how fast the water was flowing.
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