Point Beach Hideaway

Alrighty then, it's finally time to finish talking about our trip to the Manitowoc area.  It was 2 weeks ago after all.  We stayed at Scheffel's Hideaway in Two Rivers.  It's very well kept, and those of you with satellite would love the big wide open area for the sites.  It's next door to the Point Beach State Park and the Rawley Point Bike Trail so you have easy access to both of those, and being more open than the sites at the State Park the mosquitoes were a bit decreased.  However, we paid $42 a night for FHU and I felt this was a bit extreme for an area that isn't a tourist destination. Yikes, right?

Now the mosquitoes were only decreased and not eliminated because that treeline behind us was dense forest with the "swales" that breed the nasty little devils.  Just two sites over was a spur trail to access the Rawley Point trail.

bike trail with iPhone

I stopped the bike and shot the trail with my iPhone because I couldn't hold the phone and ride.  But, thanks to the basket on the front of my bike holding my camera pack I could easily grab my Canon and snap a shot of the trail in motion.  While the iPhone definitely takes a great shot that I wouldn't complain about in a pinch, you can guess which camera I used after that.

bike trail with DSLR

The flying fiends were upon if we stopped so we just pedaled slowly and I only stopped twice for the mile and half that we rode through the forested area.  Once was for this bright fungus on a log.

From a distance I only caught the yellow and thought maybe it was a lichen but it was definitely a little "fresh" looking to be a lichen.  Gross, but cool.  (Identification update: physarum polycephalum)

My other stop was to capture the little Shinleaf blossoms that I spied toward the end of the trail before it crosses the road.

It is native to Wisconsin, the Midwest and New England and is not endangered.  So cute!  We did cross the road and continue on into town, but this post is about Point Beach so I'll tell you about that in the next post.

At the end of our first afternoon in Two Rivers we drove over to the State Park to check out their campground and the lighthouse since Wayne had never been there before.  Turns out he thought the campground would be extremely difficult for something as large as we are to get into so I made a good call going with the private campground.  I think coming here in the early fall when mosquitoes have died down to camp in a small unit under all those trees is probably wonderful.  The beach is even better than Kohler Andrae in my opinion and the trail system here is much better too.

Here's a copy of the State Park map if you're interested in visiting.  Don't forget the lighthouse is in current use by the U.S. Coast Guard so visitors are not allowed past a certain point.  It's beautiful there in the early morning as you may remember from my previous post of my solo trip.

While walking from the beach to the lighthouse we spied this interesting mark in the sand.  Anyone know what made it?  Some type of insect maybe?  It was very small.