Wisconsin Maritime Museum

 We started our tour around Lake Michigan in Manitowoc home of the Wisconsin Maritime Museum. The highlight of the Museum is a World War II submarine, the Cobia. While not built here, the Manitowoc Shipyard built 28 submarines of this class during the war. These submarines were taken to Chicago and then via the Chicago canal to the Mississippi river, down to New Orleans, and finally through the Panama Canal to the Pacific Theater. What an amazing journey. The 45 minute tour of the submarine was quite informative and gave you a picture of life on the sub. They ran on batteries under the water for most of the day, surfacing at night to run the generators to recharge the batteries. Average temperature was 90 degrees, and rising to 120 degrees in the engine room. There were bunks everywhere to fit the men, including over the torpedoes. The tiny galley (6x6 feet) cooked the meals for all 80 men, what was considered the best food in the Navy. Resupply of their food was the primary reason that subs had to return to base (in this case Perth, Australia) from their patrols of 2-3 months. The museum had models of ships, some common ships of the Great Lakes and the exhibits on ship building, but the submarine tour was what this museum is about.

Cobia's Galley

We then headed to Whitefish Dunes State Park on Lake Michigan for a short hike along the sand dunes. It’s actually hard to believe these are sand dunes, because they are covered with trees and other plants. The Brachiopod nature trail I had planned to take was closed because of a bridge being out, so we took the Red Trail to Old Baldy, the highest sand dune in the park. It was disappointing, the trees all around spoiled most of the sight lines.

Whitefish Dunes State Park

Peninsula State Park is a large park with over 800 campsites, most of them along the water of Green Bay. If you enjoy hiking, biking, or swimming this is a great place! Our first night we enjoyed the sunset from the beach just a short walk from our campsite. We had an interesting time, getting into our campsite. While it was a large, deep site, it had a tree right in the middle of the site. The road near the site was narrow with trees on both sides. We did manage to get our trailer into the site on the second try and were congratulated by the camp hosts who were next to us. 

Sunset at Penninsula State Park