Richard Treks: BALM: Week 2 Day 2

Today was a leisurely ride along the Bay of Green Bay from Green Bay to Oconto, where the Copper Culture Indians lived around 5000-6000 B.C. There's a park here in Oconto with a burial ground considered to be the oldest cemetery in Wisconsin and one of the oldest in the nation.

I've read some about the European search for a northeast passage to the South Sea, but I don't recall Jean Nicolet. He's big around here, a French explorer who sailed Lake Michigan and into the bay, thinking it was the opening to the South Sea, spices, and riches. Later, he ascended the Fox River, portaged to the Wisconsin, and travelled down it until it began to widen. So sure was he that he was near the ocean, that he stopped and went back to Quebec to report his discovery of a passage to the "South Sea," unaware that he had just missed finding the upper Mississippi.

At some point tomorrow Gary and I (George, Gary's sister, is stopping here to visit friends) will be leaving Wisconsin and the bay and entering Michigan and the shores of the lake. Today, though, was all bay, with rivers and creeks winding through fields and towns, huge trees, and lots of birds: cardinals, orioles, humming birds, red winged blackbirds.

The house we're staying in tonight was started in 1856 when Louis Reed arrived here on a steamship. First one building, then a separate building, then a third to connect the two. Around here the house is known as the Big Bay House, which has been in the same family since it was first built. Laurel Edwards, one of George's friends, is really proud of the homestead. Laurel says her daughter Megan will live here next.

It's not that often that you find someone so connected to and so much a part of place. As a touring cyclist, you ride through a place, maybe stay a night, and hopefully meet a few people who can tell you about the place you're temporarily a part of. So it is here: the bay, a family of fishermen and mink ranchers, the fifth generation to live in the same place.