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.