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I titled this entry for lack of the ability to come up with a better name and because I just cooked and ate my last camping dinner on the road. I’m staying in a little town park in the village of Shiocton, which has swingsets, bathrooms, and grills, but no picnic tables. I easily found enough firewood to roast corn and boil pasta over the grill, and used up almost all of the dry dinner food I had left.After a beautiful sunrise, it was another warm, sunny day–downright hot in the afternoon. After leaving the Jesse Lake campsite, I rode south along highway 55. About ten miles down, I entered the Menominee Indian Reservation, one of my new favorite places in Wisconsin.
This reservation is so big it is also its own county, a rectangular block of almost uninterrupted forest surrounded on all sides by corn fields. The road through it was beautiful and tunnel-lake under a dense canopy, and stuck closely to the picturesque Wolf River. Rafting outfitters were common along the way, as were slow vehicle turnouts with parking areas beside the river. I’d say this is one of the prettiest stretches of road in Wisconsin, and I very much enjoyed the ride.
I stopped for a break at Kashena Falls, near the south end of the reservation. This cascade of the Wolf River over a four-foot or so ledge is a sacred place to the Menominee, according to a roadside interpretive sign. It used to be the upper limit of the sturgeon spawning run. There are still sturgeon in the Wolf River, but now the river is dammed ten miles downstream at Shawano, so the ancient fish can only make it up that far. White people just can’t seem to leave rivers the way they naturally belong.
Back on the bike, I cruised through the reservation seat of Kashena and rode a trafficky eight-mile stretch to Shawano, arriving in town at 10:45. I made some phone calls and used the library for an hour, then found a city park a few blocks away to eat lunch in.
The temperature had climbed into the upper 80s, and a stiff south wind made the afternoon’s 28 miles to Shiocton tough. At least the road was interesting as it wound its way through classic Wisconsin pastoral country. I made it to my destination around 3:45 and found a tidy local cafe with ice cream (in Wisconsin, it’s a given that any town with 500 or more people will have an ice cream place). I drank a delicious chocolate malt, which cooled me down considerably.
After enjoying my treat, I backtracked half a mile to the little town park that allows camping. A dirt track led from the road down through swampy bottomland to the river at a nice sandy spot. There were already two guys there fishing, and they were catching quite a lot–northern pike, smallmouth bass, bluegill, and even a walleye. I quickly changed and jumped in for a swim. It felt fantastic to wash off two days’ worth of accumulated grime. I relaxed for a while on the shady river bank before going back to set up camp.
Tomorrow’s ride to Lucas’s house in Fond du Lac is a very manageable 54 miles. I am going to try riding the Wiowash State Trail to Oshkosh and U.S. 45 along Lake Winnebago. There are plenty of alternate routes if I need them.
