Turtle Tales: Day 45 (B) - Seek and Ye Shall Find!

Today started out rainy and gray, but as the day progressed, the weather improved and the great lighthouse hunt got better as well!

Again, in our travels to find the lighthouses, we passed through many wonderful lakeside villages and places of interest. I am actually enjoying traveling Wisconsin! Some of the areas we passed through today reminded Jim and I of some of the seaside villages in New Jersey and Cape Cod, Mass., areas. And then there were some areas in Sturgeon Bay that reminded me of the Hamptons on Long Island. Beautiful, HUGE, homes with boat houses and guest houses to boot! Landscaping to die for! Just mouth-dropping AWESOME! (Guess you had to be there....)

Our first lighthouse stop today was the Sturgeon Bay Canal Lighthouse. This lighthouse is located on US Coast Guard property, but we were able to get pictures from the parking lot.

The second lighthouse was located in the same place but about 200 yards off shore at the end of a metal walkway. This was the Sturgeon Bay Canal North Pierhead Light.

(Remember, you can click on our link "Lighthouse Friends" and get more information on all the lighthouses we have visited. Each one has a story to tell, and most of them are very interesting!)

We then traveled to the quaint town of Algoma, to see the Algoma Pier Head Light You will note that I am calling some of the lights simply "Lights" and some "Lighthouses". This is because a "Light" is free-standing and unmanned, whereas a "Lighthouse" is usually attached to, or close to another structure - normally a lighthouse keepers residence.

Our fourth light was the Kewaunee Pierhead Light, (which actually looks like a lighthouse), located in the town of Kewaunee. They had a Lighthouse Store here, and we strolled through it and brought a few postcards, but as usual, being a specialty shop, it was very expensive. They did have some very nice lighthouse items that we have not seen before.

We moved on to our fifth light(house) of the day, the Two Rivers North Pierhead Lighthouse (in the town of Two Rivers) which had been moved from it's original location on the breakwater to a park in town.

Our next lighthouse was the Rawley Point Lighthouse, located on a US Coast Guard Station adjacent to Point Beach State Park. Believe it or not, they charged us $5 to go 100 yards to take a picture of the lighthouse! (It was worth it!)

The seventh lighthouse of the day was the Manitowoc Breakwater Lighthouse, located in the town of Manitowoc. This was an interesting stop, as the lighthouse was located near a marina which housed some of the biggest and most beautiful luxury boats/yachts we have seen thus far! I picked out a couple I liked, but Jim said we were not taking home a boat bigger than our house! Drats!

Our final lighthouse of the day was the Sherwood Point Lighthouse, which was located west of the town of Sturgeon Bay at Sherwood Point. It is also located on a Coast Guard Station, so we took pictures from the edge of the property until a gentleman came and told us to come on up on the property and take all the pictures you want, and feel free to roam to your hearts content! As it turns out, the lighthouse can be rented by active, retired, or disabled military personnel, and the two gentlemen that talked with us about the lighthouse were brothers - one of which is a Coast Guard Rescue Diver stationed nearby, and the other was his brother and family visiting from Chicago, and they were staying in the lighthouse for the weekend. Is that too cool or what! Had we known about the ability to rent the lighthouse for a night, we probably would have set that up prior to our arrival. Again, we have met some wonderful people in our travels and it just makes the effort to find the lighthouses so much more enjoyable!

Our quest to see a ninth lighthouse proved fruitless, because it was to far off shore to be visible.

So here are some pictures of our most productive day...........eight lighthouses, over a dozen quaint little towns, ten interesting barns, one huge deer that crossed our path, and one ugly wild turkey which we almost had for dinner!

Sturgeon Bay Canal Lighthouse