Birthday Week Celebration - Minocqua & Two Rivers Fishing

In celebration of birthday week (Susan 8/5, Dan 8/9) we decided to take a trip up north. We usually visit this neck of the woods when the water is HARD and we can snowmobile across the water, so exploring Minocqua Lake and Lake Tomahawk provided us with a whole new experience.

Minocqua Lake has plenty of spots to push the boat up drop our chairs in the water. Beer Can Island (Yes, that is the official name of the island.) turned out to be our favorite spot and we spent most of our time here meeting new people and giving boat tours.

We LOVED Beer Can Island simply for the fact that Gretchen could run around freely and we didn't have to worry about where she was or what she was doing. As always, she did what she does - RETRIEVES!

At around 4pm every day, the eagles started to fly. This was a sure sign that the fishing was good. Another sign were nibbles we were feeling on our legs as we stood by the boat. Dan supplied the girls - who are half our age and had arrived to help us celebrate our birthdays - with drop lines and minnow heads and we started catching blue gills left and right. We had a blast with these girls and really wish we could remember their names. They were a whole lot of fun. We highly recommend hanging out with chicks half your age on your birthday.

Three hot chicks, half our age. Happy Birthday Dan!

Even the fish were partying on our birthday!

We spent the night on the boat next to the railroad bridge where we rode snowmobiles last winter. It was a cool quiet night with no mosquitoes! We love sleeping snuggled on the boat, especially in perfect weather.

The next day, we explored Lake Tomahawk and tried a little bit of fishing. The weather took a bit of a turn but with the storm quite a way away continued to fish away until my fishing rod started making an odd noise, and Dan saw my hair standing straight out. There was actually enough static in the air to cause her hair to stand on end. Dan snatched the rod out of my hand and we made a beeline for shore to wait out the storm. After the worst of it passed, we crossed the lake and waited the rest of the storm out at the Lakeside Bar & Grille.

We spent the last day of our trip exploring Minocqua Lake and doing anything to avoid the inevitable. We will do almost anything to avoid the end of our trips.

Here's Dan at Albee's Yacht Club Bar & Grille,
just before we loaded the boat and left town.

But WAIT, there's more...

On Monday, we met up with our friends Jim and Terry for a fishing trip on the big lake. I drove the boat so the guys could focus on fishing. We found a lot of fish with the Huminbird and ended up catching two nice coho salmon. We had a great time with the guys and can't wait do head out with them again.

Terry, Jim & Dan the Great Lakes fishermen!

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EAA by Water

This year we decided to go to the EAA Airshow by boat! We walked the air show on Saturday and ran into our friend Ralph and watched Sean Tucker perform his amazing stunts in the middle of a HUGE wind storm. On Sunday we closed out the show at The Streich. Here we are late in the day on the last day of the show where we met our new friends Mary & Chris and introduced them to Rum Chata.

We closed up the weekend by floating to the seaplane base and visiting with the last remaining volunteers. We look forward to taking the boat to the airshow next year!

Lake Winnebago North

We spent another weekend on Lake Winnebago exploring and enjoying the northern half of the lake. We kicked off the weekend at High Cliff State Park and met our friends Bob and Doreen at the High Cliff Golf Course Restaurant at the Club House. Dinner at the restaurant was fantastic and the after dinner entertainment was the icing on the cake! Cookee's Folk & Fun was the best guy with a guitar sing along entertainer (besides Susans dad) that we've seen in a long time. We had a blast listening and singing along and watching Dan get the whole bar dancing. (Yes Sweetie, you brought out the Pee Wee, but everyone loved it!)


After Cookee was finished for the night, (and after he invited Dan to every one of his shows) we headed back to the harbor, sat by the boats and enjoyed Doreens tequila while listening to some good old George Strait.

On Saturday, we headed up to Waverly Beach and enjoyed hanging out in the water with about 50 other boats. The weather didn't completely cooperate with isolated thunderstorms and bizarre wind shifts so we headed for the Menasha Marina. We love the Marina and Diane the harbormaster is a fantastic lady. We all agree that there isn't another person who knows and loves the lake like Diane. She really has a pulse on all of the happenings on the lake, and everyone who knows her loves her! We took her recommendation and hired a taxi to take us to Georges Steakhouse and Piano Bar for a nice dinner.

Bob & Doreen on the Crown n' Water

Rain at Waverly Beach

(Notice the silly people who didn't get out of the water. Duh!)

All tied up at the Menasha Marina. Thanks Diane!

On Sunday, we decided to go exploring up river and take the boat through the Fox River Menasha lock to Little Lake Butte Des Morts. We followed the river all the way to the dam in Appleton, and on our way back stopped at the Appleton Yacht Club where we met the lovely Paige and had a few marina cocktails. The people at the Yacht Club were really nice, and we all decided that we would definitely put them on our future visit list.

After making our way back through the lock to the marina, we parted with Bob and Doreen and headed back to High Cliff. We decided we were hungry and the lake was really laying flat so we made way back to Waverly Beach and moored the boat within 50 yards of the beach. We found two spots at the end of the bar and met Joe and Sophia who were "just friends". Sophia was so sweet and proper and Joe was a riot and loved hearing our boating stories. He was so much fun and even walked us back to the dock to see us off. We had a great time with them and look forward to seeing them again soon.

The lake was flat as glass on the way back to High Cliff, so Susan took over driving the boat and then practiced docking the boat in the harbor. After 4 - 5 tries she finally got it, and then finally docked the boat at the launch! Just another step toward her goal to being able to completely handle the boat herself!

It was another fantastic weekend on the northern part of the lake, and we look forward to spending more time on the lake, sucking up as much of the summer as we can.

Next stops, EAA Airventure & Birthday Week!

Door County Scuba

We headed to Baileys Harbor for a weekend of camping and scuba diving. The harbor was a bit stinky due to the Alewife die off so we took up residence in the Baileys Woods Campground. (Our usual spot is Baileys Grove Campground but they were all booked for the weekend. Great news for them! Bummer for us.) The new owners of Baileys Woods have done a great job of revamping the campground and changing their previous reputation as a "party" campground. Everything was nice and clean and quiet.

Here we are sharing stories with Ron, Sue, Dave, Wendy,

Lucas, Jim, Amber & Brad.

On Saturday morning we met the scuba crew at the marina and loaded up the boat. The wind was blowing pretty good with 2 footers in the harbor so the ride out was a rough one. Not to be deterred however, we found two wreck sites shallow and protected enough to dive on - the Christina Nilsson and the Emeline.

Scuba Dan!

Dan celebrating his first dives of the season!

Ahhhh following seas are much nicer!

Conditions on the east side didn't improve much overnight, so on Sunday we headed to the west side of the peninsula to enjoy calmer water and great scenery. The weather report for the day called for 90 degree temperatures, so we were very happy to be on the water and later IN the water. Our crew of divers enjoyed exploring the Fleetwing.

Elison Bay Launch with Lucas and Amber entertaining Gretchen.

Amber & Sue cooling off in Garret Bay.

Leaving Hedgehog Harbor & Garret Bay

Special thanks to Linda & Ron for contributing some of your photos. Thanks to everyone for another great weekend of scuba diving. We look forward to the next time!

July 4th - Another Successful Plan B

We were actually heading toward Eagle River to spend the weekend in the north woods. As things would go, an unfortunate vehicle malfunction left us high and dry in Green Bay, and there we were with our boat parked in the parking lot of a GMC dealer on the hottest day of the summer.

We always meet great people on our adventures, and as luck would have it, we weren't the only ones in this predicament! As we sat in the lot wondering when we would be back on the road, we met Tom, Theresa and their cool dog Bo who were also heading north, hauling their boat, and broke down. None of us were willing to completely give up on our weekend plans so with nothing better to do, we opened the cooler and shared a few while waiting to hear the damages from the repair shop.

Tom & Theresa were lucky enough to have their vehicle repaired within hours, however we were stranded at least until Tuesday. We were not about to sit in the parking lot for the whole weekend, and realized there was a U-haul dealer not even a block away from where we were. A U-haul dealer with trucks and hitches! So before we knew it, there we were pulling the boat with a U-haul truck! (No pictures of this. Thank God!)

We usually launch the boat at one of the ramps on the southern half of Lake Winnebago, and spend our time between Fond du Lac and Oshkosh. We love the lower half of the lake and spend a lot of time at The Streich, Jim & Linda's and the Yacht Club. This time we launched at High Cliffs and spent our time on the northern half of the lake. This was a completely new experience for us, and we had a great time finding new spots and meeting a lot of new people.

Exhausted after our day in the parking lot, we spent the night at High Cliff State Park and met our friends Bob & Doreen at The Streich the next day. For dinner, we headed up to Oshkosh and ate at The Boat Yard. We had been reading a lot about another party spot on the lake called the Sandpit and set off to find it the next day. The Sandpit is on Lake Butte des Morts, which is connected to Lake Winnebago by the river. The river is a really nice boat ride, especially since we fit under most of the bridges. The railroad bridge is the exception, which we patiently waited for 4 times throughout the weekend. It turns out that the Sandpit is not as cool as The Streich, but we hung out there for a little while and let Gretchen swim.

On our way north, we made a quick stop in Neenah and headed to Menasha next. We stopped for gas at the Menasha Marina and met Diane who we had heard so much about from Bob. Shes a really great lady who knows everything about the lake. We loved her and Menasha and plan on gong back to explore more.

It was really hot and we were wanting to get back in the water so we made our way to Waverly Beach. Waverly is another hot spot on the lake for boats to gather and party. This was our first trip to Waverly but it won't be our last! Waverly Beach isn't just a beach, but there's a bar and restaurant there too. The Vic Ferrari band way playing and there were hundreds of boats rafted together on the beach. Most of these boats had never seen us before and after we anchored a few of them came over and told us they thought we were the cops (HILARIOUS)! We spent the rest of the day in the water at Waverly. We met a lot of great new people* , including Bob the walleye guy and his family, who gave us three walleyes he had caught that day and the couple from Michigan tech and the criminal defense lawyer** who told his kids he wanted to give us his card!

*If you guys are all reading this, we are sorry we can't remember your names. We remember your faces, and swimsuits. You understand. We can't wait to see you all again!

**Thanks, for the offer, we don't think we need you yet, but we know who to call if we get into trouble! Great kids, by the way.

At the end of the day we headed out on the lake and tossed the anchor to wait for the fireworks. It was a beautiful night on the lake with an incredible sunset and from where we were anchored, we could see the Neenah and Menasha fireworks. After the fireworks we headed for High Cliffs and docked the boat for the night. We crawled in our bunks thinking we would have a nice peaceful spot to go to sleep however after the fireworks were over, at least 100 boats headed for the boat launch. We were surprised to see so many boats coming into the harbor since we had not seen a single boat while out on the lake. We were sure that the ramp would be highly entertaining to watch but both of us were too tired to get up to watch and we fell asleep to the gentle sounds of boat motors.

Considering how the weekend could have been a total bust, we kept ourselves together as always, and pulled off another incredible Plan B weekend.

Big Lake Fishing

Here's Gretchen watching over our poles on the big lake. We decided to take a quick fishing trip after the Deep Six Dive Group summer picnic. The lake was as flat as glass and caught two salmon and enjoyed a tasty dinner at home.

Yes, this is the big lake!

Resurfacing!

A cold and damp spring coupled with some "life" stuff has kept us quiet for the 2011 boating season, but now things are settling down and we are finally getting some summer weather and opportunities for some blog-worthy boating. Here's where we've been so far...

FREMONT: In April, we took a trip to Fremont for a little fishing on the Wolf River. We launched the boat at Chico's Landing and battled the strong river current and wind. With every dock under at least a foot of water, maneuvering the boat was quite a challenge. In spite of it all, and with a little help from the guys at Chico's we had a great time anyway. We didn't catch any fish, but spent some quality time on the boat and enjoyed partying with the guys in the bait shop.

LAKE WINNEBAGO, Memorial Day Weekend & Bethany's 21st Birthday: How cool was it that Bethany wanted to spend her 21st birthday with US? On The Boat!? We were feeling like the "cool" parents for sure and took her and her boyfriend Danno for a camping/boating trip. Once again, the weather didn't cooperate so well, but we managed to make the best of it anyway.

Here we are docked at Kalbus Country Harbor:

And here's Bethany's first legal adult beverage. Happy Birthday Nina! We love you!

2011 - There's No Stopping Us Now!

We shoveled her out of her winter dock to celebrate the new year with a few of our hearty friends. Gale warnings, 20 degree temps and below zero wind chills didn't stop us! We launched at the Port Washington Marina and headed over to Newport Shores to watch the crazy Polar Bears go for their New Year's day dip.

Here we are with our hearty friends:
Lucas, Amber, Brad, Linda, Doreen, Bob,
Jeff and Wendy. (Thanks for the picture Eric!)

She was a little chilly!

Here we are, a little cold, but happy.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Susan & Dan