CAMPING AT PENINSULA STATE PARK IN DOOR COUNTY, WI & MY BROKEN BIKE!

 Lucky us!!! 

We were on the waiting list for Peninsula State Park in Door County, Wisconsin. It's very difficult to get in there. People sit on their reservation list a year in advance, to the day that they want to get a site. They hit the website at midnight to get in their reservation choices...

We went on a waiting list for cancellations, and managed to snag a week!!! 

This is a huge park with five campgrounds within it's boundaries. There are around 600 campsites in total. We mostly wanted it for the beautiful bike trails as well as the peaceful scenic surroundings.

It is located on the little finger that sticks out of Wisconsin just north of Green Bay. 

https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/parks/peninsula

It's an area known for its rugged beauty of cedar trees and rustic rocky shorelines. But it's also a high tourist area with a lot of resorts, art galleries, tourist traps and clogged up roads with weekend visitors. We try to only go during the week if we head up into that area.

It's not quite fall color time yet in Wisconsin. Some of the sumacs and low shrubbery bushes are starting to turn. But it will not be the bright autumn colors yet for another few weeks. As it is, everything is beautiful right now with glints of red shining through the woods.

The sites here are spaced far apart with a lot of shrubbery and trees in between. That's what we like about the Wisconsin State Parks. They don't scrimp on space or try to cram you in too tight together.

We have a beautiful large site with plenty of room to park our cargo trailer to one side. The site does have electric, otherwise we would be using the solar panel on the roof of the cargo trailer to charge things up for us. We have a 320 watt solar panel up there, as well as two extra flexible 100 watt panels we can set up if we need them.

But for this week, we will camp with luxury with unlimited electricity. That means we don't have to watch which lights are left on or how long we leave the Starlink on using a power. We can actually run the refrigerator and the water heater on electric. This saves on our propane use. 

We even went so far as to splurge and put up our little party lights. They are LED, and don't use a lot of power. But it's fun to put them up and illuminate our patio area in the evenings.

It sure is nice to have our cargo trailer along. We missed it during our entire trip to Alaska. Not only does a carry our e-bikes, but it also carries all of our extra gear to make the load lighter in the motorhome.

We carry extra jugs of water, bundles of firewood, a bucket of pellets for our wood pellet fireplace, and a lot of Steve's tools. We take along a battery operated chainsaw, leaf blower, and drills. He even has a battery operated work light.

I get a shelf for putting things like an electric pressure cooker with air fryer attachment, and we also bring along the Blackstone griddle and our Coleman propane grill/stove. 

Then there are extra lawn chairs, a folding table, a ladder, and a nice variety of electric cords and ropes and assorted items we might need while camping.

This really is like a "garage" for us when we go camping. It's nice to have the equipment available if we need it. We may not use every item each time, but we may need it or want to use it at various campsites. Makes camping much more comfortable. 

Speaking of campsites, we have a lot of room on this one. There is grass around the edges for Nick to sniff at, but the rest of the site is level and hard packed gravel. No mud. We have a picnic table and a fire ring and plenty of room to spread out our patio rug.

While we get set up outside, a little guy has to wait inside and patiently watch us through the door. He wants to get out and sniff!

Nick got really excited when he saw us open up the back door of the cargo trailer and start taking out the bikes. He love love loves his little trailer cart.  We took off the green nylon sections of the original In-Step2 child's trailer, and instead strapped his dog crate right to the frame. He gets to see a lot more and it's safer for him. He has actually bitten into the nylon and plastic of the original cart. So we want him to be secure and safe to go for his rides. 

He loves it so much, if the door is open and we are walking past, he jumps right in! Time to go...

We really like the E-bikes. They are Lectric XP3.0 step through. They can fold up in the middle if they need to be stored in the back of an SUV or a large compartment on a bigger motorhome. The handlebars also can flip down out of the way, and the seat can be lowered down during transport. It's just a few click clicks after unloading, and they are ready to go.

The trails in this park are beautiful to ride the bikes on. They are either paved sections of road with bike lanes clearly marked, or they are packed smooth gravel paths that meander through the woods.  There are also some more rigorous mountain bike trails in various sections of the park. We didn't go on those.

We took three different rides around the park, exploring a different way each time. All together I think we put on about 15 miles in the first day.

It felt good to get back to the motorhome and relax. Now that our recliner chairs work properly (see my previous blog) kick back with a movie for the evening. Nicholas nestles in between us, and all is peaceful and relaxing.

The campground is very quiet at night. It is patrolled by rangers and we also noticed the presence of the local police officer. That keeps down the wild ruckus partying, and makes it a pleasant experience for everyone else. 

We slept so good on our new mattress, check back a couple blog posts about that. We put in a new 10-in memory foam mattress from Wilderness RV mattress company. It sure is comfortable. 

It didn't get too cold overnight, but we did wake up to a few more colorful leaves. Some things are changing here and there. Soon the woods will be ablaze with the colors of fall.

I am writing this now on our fourth day in the park. We have just been relaxing and taking things easy. We've been cooking some nice meals and not doing much of anything. Steve decided last night to make us some "dessert"...

He is our most meticulous marshmallow roaster... Perfectly golden brown. Never burnt..

Have you ever done this for s'mores? Instead of graham crackers and chocolate bars, just get fudge striped cookies. It already has the chocolate evenly spread and the cookie portion is as close to graham cracker as you can get. Very easy to put them together, and leftover cookies can be eaten after you get home.

Just a simple slide off his roaster stick and both of the ooey gooey marshmallows get trapped in between the cookie layers.

Yummmmmmm!

Lucky little Nick met a new friend. Here's his girly female friend named Maggie. She is 11 years old and not up to any sassiness from a young buck like Nick. She put him in his place and said he can sniff but she is not about to go run around and be crazy like him. He tried to entice her to play, and she said "no thank you". 

But each time he sees her walk by our campsite, he has to try to invite her to romp with him...

Now, here's the sad part of our day:

MY BIKE BROKE! 

The thing I am pointing to is the electronic display. It's also controlled by the on and off switch on the left. We had stopped at a beautiful little picnic area to take some photos. I went back to turn on my bike, and the display was dead. It would not light up. 

How frustrating! 

We were about 2 miles from our campsite. 

The bike weighs about 65 lb.  I peddled it for a while without any type of electric assist. But it was really, really hard. Once we reached an area where the road sloped up, I could not take it anymore. I got off and pushed it by hand.

After a while, Steve took pity on me. He let me ride his bike and pull Nick in the little cart. He rode my bike the rest of the way, with the heavy pedaling. What a hero! 

We got back to the campsite, huffing and puffing. How very sad that my bike would not fire up. So we unhooked Steve's display controller from his bike and plugged it on to mine. Yay! It does work. So we know that is the only problem. It's not anything else. 

But with only one working display controller between us, there's no way we can go riding together. Bummer.

This also happened to Steve's bike last year, so we figured it was kind of going to happen to mine. The company is aware that the original display controllers don't last, and they send new ones free of charge. I called them, and with a wait on hold of about 20 minutes, they soon took care of me with absolutely no argument.  We are out of warranty by almost a second year.  They are going to send it fast, and it will be at our house tomorrow. But that doesn't help me today...  I am sad. No more bike rides.

If we tried to order an aftermarket one, this is what it would cost: 

We are kicked back in our lawn chairs, and relaxing in our campsite right now. Nick is very happy to be curled up on my lap. But what he really wants to know is: "WHEN ARE WE GOING FOR ANOTHER BIKE RIDE?" 

Soon, little boy, soon. 

(I DON'T HAVE THE VIDEO DONE YET FOR TODAY'S BLOG... I WILL ADD IT LATER)