Lake Winnebago and a sad farewell

This trip was a very emotional for me especially, because we were out camping and having fun, but it was also the weekend to re-home our 5-year-old beagle, Babygirl, to her new family.  As many of you know, she was just too jealous of Kaylee and could not adapt to her being around.  We went up on Friday because Topher had a 72 at work and we fully expected to camp at High Cliff State Park, but decided to pull into Calumet County Park to check out what their camping looked like.   Because it was extremely windy, we liked the idea of having electricity so we settled for a spot right on the water at this park and changed our plans to just check out High Cliff for the day.  We first set up camp, which went quite faster than expected with the amount of winds we had, before heading down the road about 15 minutes to High Cliff State Park.  High Cliff has a nice beach park, some awesome trails, a shorter butterfly trail that has some cute little landscaping bridges to walk through or longer ones where you can see old Lime Kiln Ruins, the Red Bird Chief Indian statue, or climb to the top of the lookout tower to see Lake Winnebago.  I took Babygirl out just her and I for some last bonding and a selfie or two.  After checking out the park, we stopped for some lunch at the Countryside Bar and Grill and had a delicious burger and a cold Blue Moon.  We headed back to camp and took a walk around and let Kaylee swing on the swings before cozying up in the tent for warmth.  

 

The next morning we set out on an adventure around Lake Winnebago; stopping at the Ledge View Nature Center which caught us up on our history of sturgeon fish and maple syrup making (we made sure not to leave with out buying a few jars), then headed our way to check out the Lake Winnebago lighthouse before stopping in for some pizza and wine tasting at the Vines & Rushes Winery.  The day was getting longer by the minute as we were getting closer to having to drop Babygirl off.  But the time had come, we met her new owner and were welcomed by her new 7 other brother and sister pups.  We quickly knew she was going to a good home. After saying our goodbyes, we set our path to Bamboo Bend to check out the Sturgeon spawning, drove by the castle/history museum in Appleton and had some Thai food for dinner before heading back to camp.  That night was very quiet and felt as though something was missing but I just had to kept myself distracted or reminded myself that it was for the best. Babygirl, you were a great pup and cuddle buddy and are missed every day!