# 3815. Go to the ISC Hall of Fame in Kimberly

Until I met the hubby, I never knew what ISC was. Sure I was a sports fan. I followed the Brewers, Badgers, and Packers. I understood football, baseball, basketball, and softball...or so I thought. I quickly learned that softball went beyond just high school, college, and Olympic teams. It was more than the co-ed leagues that the park and rec departments offered. ISC (International Softball Congress) , along with NAFA (North America Fastpitch Association), are Fast Pitch Softball Organizations and are usually Men's Teams.

Before the recession hit, ISC was bigger, especially around here, than it is now. Teams would pay guys from South America, Australia, and New Zealand to come here for the summer and pitch. These guys could really hurl the ball. The hubby would have about 2 seconds to call the pitch from the time it left the pitcher's hand and hit the catcher's glove. These teams were hard core. I remember the hubby calling a game off at 2:00 AM because it was so foggy that you couldn't see the ball and the guys were upset. Some teams were very good (The Farm) and others were not so good. It is a very interesting game to watch and I wish the hubby still umped it.

Like most sports, there is a Hall of Fame for Men's Fastpitch Softball and it's located in Kimberly, WI. The International Softball Congress Hall of Fame is located in the Kimberly Village Hall. It is a very small Hall of Fame. Neenah High School has more trophy cases.

Because I actually have watched Men's Fastpitch, the ISC Hall of Fame is something I like to visit when I stop at the Kimberly Library just to look at the memorabilia.  On my most recent visit, the hubby and Grandma also checked out the Hall of Fame. Grandma has never seen the Hall of Fame. It was neat to see what draw her attention (like the old catcher's equipment). The hubby played tour guide and explained how the balls were made entirely of cork and how they hurt.

Most of the items in the Hall of Fame are team pictures of whoever won the championship that year plus random memorabilia from various games, signed balls. I personally like the jacket from the longest game ever.. 34 innings.

I will keep checking out the Hall of Fame whenever the fancy strikes when I'm at the library. If you ever get to the Kimberly Village Hall, you should take 5-10 minutes to get a glimpse of this unique sport.  It is nothing fancy. It doesn't cost anything to visit. You might learn something or recognize someone who know that is enshrined a Hall of Fame.

Running The Oshkosh Marathon 5k

I figured since I am doing the Cell Com Marathon 5K and the Fox Cities Marathon 5K, I will do the Oshkosh Marathon 5K. The Cell Com 5K and the Fox Cities 5K are both the Saturday before the marathon, which is held on Sunday, at a nice reasonable time like 9 AM. I figured the Oshkosh 5K would be the same.

Diana and I before the race. Diana ready for the half and me for the 5K

Either I didn’t pay enough attention when I was signing up or they changed the day on me… mostly I didn’t pay attention. I wrote down Saturday, April 23. I even created an event for April 23 on Facebook. This past week, I got an email saying the marathon and ½ marathon would start at 7 and the 5K at 7:10 and the only mention of anything on Saturday was the Kids run and the Expo. I started to dig deeper and realized that the 5K was on Sunday at 7:10. Good thing I didn’t have plans that early on Sunday. The hubby wanted to do know who I was doing it with so he could just pick me up on his way to Fond du Lac. Then I informed him that the race was at 7:10 and I’d be home by 9 at the very latest. We didn’t have to leave until 10 anyways. I wasn’t sitting around Oshkosh for 2-3 hours post-race all sweaty and gross, then sit through softball and dinner the same way.

I really enjoy running the Cell Com and the Fox Cities. They make the 5K special. You get a medal just like the marathon finishers. You have a fairly decent feast afterwards. No one is driving on the roads you are running on nor do you have to worry about cross traffic. I felt like the 5K is an afterthought to the Marathon/Half Marathon in Oshkosh.

The Start of the Marathon

Everything is all about the Marathon/Half Marathon runners. They get medals, the post-race feast is mediocre at best. The finish line is a bunch of cones. Okay so the marathon/half marathon finishers get the same finish line and food but I feel for a marathon/half marathon more effort should be put into the whole event. There were even leads on bicycles. I want someone to lead us on a bicycle. At times we had traffic going in the opposite direction. At one intersection, the cop had to direct traffic since they allowed cross traffic. If you don’t want to shut down the downtown for several hours, move the race.

Water Station (photo courtesy of Dutrirun Facebook Page)

The best part of the course was running past the Alpha Xi House at UW-O. I’ve been trying to find it for years and the one time I do, it’s 7:15 on a Sunday morning and I’ve got a race to run.

The t-shirt we got is actually very nice even if the tags were still on it. However, there was 1 shirt for all the divisions unlike the other races where the 5K has it's own shirt.

The best part: Finishing in under 41 minutes… 40:20 to be exact. That is a personal best for me. My next goal is to break 40 minutes. I might have done it too if I didn’t try to sprint the last .1 mile and jogged it. I ended up walking part of the finish because I went too fast.

Will I do the Oshkosh 5k again? Maybe. If it is early on a Sunday morning, probably not. If it is moved to a reasonable time, I might consider it. I didn’t like getting up before my alarm normally goes off during the week to go run a 5K that luckily wasn’t in the rain. Maybe it’s Oshkosh. Maybe I just have a high standards after the Cell Com and Fox Cities. Maybe I was cranky it was so early on a Sunday. Who knows but I wasn’t impressed.

Checking out Frogg's

We were heading back from my parents, when we had this conversation in Chilton:

The hubby: I think Chilton Has a Dairy Queen

Me: There’s that other ice cream place

Hubby: It’s on the other end of town. Dairy Queen is over here.

Me: Sherwood has an ice cream place. Not sure how late they are open. I’m not all about Dairy Queen. I want real ice cream.

Looking at Culver’s Flavors of the Day on my App

Me: Culver's in Neenah and Little Chute have your Flavors of the Day.

Hubby: We’ll go to Little Chute after stopping at home. Culver’s sounds good

Driving through Sherwood, we see that Frogg’s Ice Cream is open. We decide to stop.

I was disappointed… soft serve. No real ice cream. Okay. I will make do. It’s somewhere new and we wanted to try it anyways. We walk into the shop. It’s just a counter where you order. You actually sit outside and eat. I decided I will get a kid’s cone. Then I see the sprinkles. OK. I can do a cone with sprinkles. Sprinkles make everything better.

My friend Melody would love this place. Frogs galore. It is cute in the country chic kind of way.

I order a tadpole (kid’s size I’m assuming). The hubby wants a medium cone dipped in chocolate. The guy is like I can’t do a medium dipped in chocolate because it’s about this big (holding his hands about a foot apart). The hubby settles for a small dipped in chocolate. Both cones cost us less than $4.00. Regular cones are pretty cheap. It’s when you start getting into the sundaes and blizzard-like treats that it gets pricey. My cone was $1.65 with the sprinkles.

We get our cones and they are huge. I swear they are bigger than JDs. For the price, you can’t go wrong. We decided we can drive the 10 minutes to Sherwood for cones instead of going to Dairy Queen. They taste better. Maybe next time we will get Frogs in a Blender…

An Afternoon With Lil' Bro

Sometimes things go as planned and other times plans change on the spur of the moment. The original plan was for the hubby to drop me off at my parents on his way to Concordia and I would have lunch with my parents and Lil’ Bro at Wayne’s before Lil’ Bro and I would go explore Lion’s Den. Afterwards, Lil’ Bro would drop me off at Concordia.  The first part of the plan went as planned for the most part. We had lunch at Wayne’s even though they screwed up our order and Lil’ Bro was missing half his food.

When we got to Lion’s Den, our plans fell apart. There was no place to park. Cars were half way back to Hwy C. It was crawling with people. We decided to go to Lime Kiln Park instead since neither of us had been there before. I was disappointed. There really wasn’t any place to hike. It was a great park to play at. There was a really nice Frisbee golf course and some horseshoe pits. I wish Lil’ Bro carried horseshoes around in his car. You could wander a little by the river and see the Old Lime Kilns but for hiking, there did not appear to be a good trail for that.

The Lime Kilns

Lil’ Bro said we could go park at the Grafton pool and walk the bike path. That didn’t sound like fun. I wanted nature trails and hiking. I asked him if there were any other places to go hiking. I was thinking Harrington Beach in Belgium (opposite direction from Concordia). He mentioned Terry Andrae State Park in Sheboygan… again north of where Concordia was. I looked at him and asked “You’re going to drive all the way to Sheboygan, then drive me back to Saukville, before going home to Belgium” He said he would.  So instead of a little hike around Lion’s Den and softball, we were going to climb dunes in Sheboygan and no softball. I let the hubby know the plans and we were off to Sheboygan.

I have never been Terry Andrae except to see one of my brothers run cross country there in college. I never explored it. Terry Andrae is a state park on the shores of Lake Michigan so naturally there are sand dunes and several paths you can use to explore the dunes. 

The state park rangers want you to stay on the boardwalks to protect the dunes. Unfortunately that wasn’t always possible. One of the paths was under water and the only way around it was to walk on the dunes themselves. Lil' Bro never saw the water over the boardwalk. I suppose we could have gone through the water but in April, it wasn’t warm enough for that yet.

If I was by myself, I probably would have been a little more adventures and took one of the dune paths down to the beach and climbed back up.  I would have probably walked to the other path and back to the car instead of driving to the other parking lot and exploring the path from there. I like exploring random paths no matter how much walking and exploring I need to do.

After climbing the dunes for about 45 minutes, we headed home. It was a work out but not as bad as High Cliff or Devi’s Lake. Lil Bro’ wants to take me to another state park in August to go hiking. He said it was worse than Devil’s Lake. I told him I have 4 months to get into shape.  Beat keep working on that Cardio....

It was a fun afternoon with Lil’ Bro. We will have to do it again sometime. 

Exploring Schmeeckle Reserve

The hubby had softball at UW-SP. The diamond was by Schmeeckle Reserve. I kind of knew of the place because I saw it when I was walking last year. It was probably where I lost my credit card. I figured I had plenty of time to explore before the game since he had to be there an hour before game time.

I first explored a little section of the Reserve which was right by where we parked. I thought it would have taken me into the reserve but one of the bridges were closed and I didn't get very far. There is a little stone amphitheater and a student memorial hidden within this section of the reserve.

In a way I was glad that I couldn't cross the bridge because then I was able to explore the other side of the reserve. I started at Lake Joanis and followed whatever trail seemed the most interesting. The trails are well signed and there are several "you are here" signs. I don't think even I could get lost. The trails are either boardwalk or gravel if I remember correctly. Also plenty of benches to rest on in case you got tired.

My wanderings took me down the Frog Chorus Trail which I am guessing in the summer months are full of frogs. I did not see or hear any frogs. From there I wandered through the Cattail Marsh. That reminded me of college when JDow was doing a project on Milkweed or something for Environmental Science. Cattails... milkweed... close enough. That path actually leads you back out to the road and over where I was initially. I decided to turn around and head towards the visitor center.

The Visitor Center was very cool. There was this little museum -- Wisconsin Land of Wealth Museum to be exact. I took a few minutes to explore it even though I didn't realize it was a museum. I thought it was just cool stuff. I even got to sit in an old truck. I think I made the hubby jealous again. Also inside the visitor center is the Wisconsin Conservation Hall of Fame. Apparently I missed this or I would have checked it out.

After leaving the Visitor Center, I followed the Trail of Reflections back to the Frog Chorus Trail so I could finish my journey around the lake. The Trail of Reflections was very serene. There were several spots to sit and enjoy nature. There was a little look out tower that several college students were enjoying the view from. My favorite spot though was the Reflection Pond. I could spend hours sitting in the swing watching the pond life. Even the hubby said it was his kind of spot.

Once I found the motivation to get out of the swing, I continued my journey around the lake. Being such a gorgeous day, several kayakers were out on the lake. You can canoe, fish, and even sunbath at Lake Jonais but no swimming. It was tempting to pull of my shoes and socks and dip my toes in the water but this is Wisconsin in April and I'm sure the water temperature was probably about 40 degrees. Well that and the no swimming sign.

I was pleasantly surprised on how nice this reserve was. I was figuring a few trails but the UW-SP does a really nice job at preserving the natural habitats of the area. Hopefully the hubby will have more games at UW-SP that I can attend so I can explore a few more trails in the reserve.