Since they removed the chance of rain from during the day, Kevin and I decided to take a ride. I planned a route the night before to go a pretty long way around Lake Winnebago.
We left around 10:30 and headed east on Winnebago Drive up through St. Peter on WH and past Wolf Lake before taking some other roads up to Chilton. From there we ended up going through part of Sherwood and then taking a bunch of back roads to Kaukauna with a planned stop at 1000 Islands. The water there on the Fox was high hence an all day rain we had the previous Sunday, and the current was moving along very quickly.
From there I had planned on taking ZZ up along the Fox River and after Wrightstown since I haven’t been on that side of the Fox River through that stretch and it snugs the east shores very closely. However, right after Wrightstown there were road closed signs. We managed our way back to it at one point, but it was only open for not even a quarter of a mile. So, we took some other roads up to Hwy 32 and headed into De Pere where we figured we’d stop for lunch.
After crossing the Fox we just parkied the bikes along the main drag where there were quite a few businesses and ended up at Nicky’s Lionhead Tavern, which seemed to be somewhat of a Packers bar.
While I used the restroom there, I had quite the experience… I don’t know how but a bee ended up in my underwear and stung me. I’m not sure if it was on my clothes and fell into my underwear, as I did have a pretty large bug hit my neck not far from De Pere, or if it was already in the restroom, but I immediately had a burning sensation after pulling up my pants and when I went to look to see what it was, is when the bee fell out onto the bathroom floor. It appeared to be some kind of large honey or small bumble bee. Son of a $)@#%!!! Me and bees? Seems I only get stung when I am out riding. Of course Kevin had a field day with this one. 🤦🏼♀️ At least the food there sure made up for it! Kevin and I were going to split our orders to share, but my burger was so good and not gigantic, so I opted to be selfish.
From there we headed west on Cty EE and ended up on E going into Freedom, then through Larson, near Appleton, Grand Chute and Greenville before making our way to Winneconne where we crossed the Wolf on 116 and took that all the way into and out of Omro. Shortly after heading out of Omro, we ran into a brief rain shower and just outside of Waukau I decided to stop at the Waukau Dam. I have always wanted to stop in there and check it out, but never have and this seemed like a good time to get in a stretch. Very pretty area.
Since we were heading kind of close to Ripon and it certainly was a warm enough day for ice-cream, we decided to scrap the remainder of our planned route out of Pickette to take Hwy 144 instead into Ripon to stop at the Sweet N’ Saulty. However, when we went to pull into downtown, the road was blocked off due to some festival and car show. There were lots of people downtown and we didn’t want to bother, so we ended up hitting the A&W instead.
Not quite 200 miles, but pretty close. We did see quite a few Maples half changed to red or reddish orange, and some other yellowish foliage on some trees. Oh and lots of soy bean fields which already had dropped all of their leaves and looked pretty close for harvesting, including one farmers field corn crop mostly harvested. I love Fall, but hate what comes after it. So, now that it doesn’t look like hardly any rain for tomorrow anymore either, we’re going to ride again. Have to get in as much as possible while we can!!!
