I would have felt a little guilty leaving Tracey with the babies, so we worked out a way to combine the campout with a visit to her parents' new home.  We all drove to Watertown, Wisconsin and her mom greeted us with sandwiches like she always does.  We visited them that evening, then, in the morning, Quinn and I packed up for the trip to Door County .  Lorraine sent us off with cookies and peanut butter bars.  Tracey, Tate and Macy stayed behind to hang out with her parents.  Our first stop was in Appleton to visit Irvin Udulutsch, the man who wrote The Flock Family History.  I’m indebted to him because this book is nearly the only source for information on Tracey’s mom’s family.  Anyway, I just like meeting people, so we went to the St Paul Care Center and had a nice chat.  He told me about his trip to Stommeln, Germany, the little village the Flocks and Rademachers were from.  Man, I hope people visit me if I live long enough to need a nursing home.

We then headed to Green Bay and after having some forgettable Chinese food, we arrived at Allouez Catholic Cemetery.  Tracey’s Hogan and Howlett ancestors are buried there so I snapped some photos. 

With our hunting out of the way, Quinn and I headed for Potawatomi State Park outside of Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin in Door County.  Man, did we luck out.  I always search Google before I go places so I have a plan and, when possible, reservations.  But you still aren’t really sure that a place is going to be great until you get there.  As we approached, the woods got thicker and thicker with more birch among the pines than they have down south.  When I told the park ranger we wanted to camp, she laughed and said, Come on in.  She said we were the only campers and advised us to camp next to the warming cabin in case we got cold.  The cabin had a huge hearth and was stocked with firewood.  We felt like we were in a movie where all the other people on Earth had just vanished. 

We parked the van and headed out for a hike on Ice Age Trail.  There was an observation tower somewhere, so we headed for that, but the gray day turned to dusk, so we turned around and walked back in the silvery snowlight.  We were a little lost, so the sight of the cabin warmed our spirits.  We were going to head into Sturgeon Bay and find a fish fry or a crab boil or something, but it would have been a shame to leave our private cabin, so we ate leftovers and built the biggest fire we could.  There was no furnace in the cabin, so we huddled around the fireplace and talked science until bedtime.

I told Quinn about The Tuning Problem in physics.  The Tuning Problem concerns the apparent fact that many parameters, such as the masses of the particles and the relative strengths of gravity and the other forces, had to be nearly exactly as we find them to be in order for stars to form and thus for life to form.  Our current laws of physics actually say very little about what these values should be, so our universe is just one of many that are equally likely.  Most of the other possible universes, though, would be very uninteresting.  They might recollapse before any stars could form or they might never even form atoms.  Our universe seems precisely tuned for the possibility of harboring life.  (This is no surprise to me.  Since we are here, it’s obvious that our universe is so tuned.  As Einstein wondered, perhaps God had no choice in the matter.)  Anyway, Quinn realized that our weekend was the result of some apparent fine tuning.  Here’s the deal:  if there had been more snow, the park would have been full of snowmobilers.  Less snow, and there would have been more campers.  As it was, the trails were closed and we had this beautiful state park to ourselves.  Just one of life’s gifts that we showed up to enjoy.

One thing I learned when I was younger:  the nights are longer when you sleep outside.  Quinn admitted that he was bored and was looking forward to going home the next day.  So, we set up the airbed and snuggled up by the fire.  I marveled that no one came by.  No ranger, no high school partiers, no cross country skiers.  I don’t know when I fell asleep, but I awoke around 1 am.  The fire was almost out and it was very dark and quiet.  The snow blowing from the roof swooped outside the windows in the muted, steel-gray light coming from the frozen bay.  I got up and stoked the fire.  Quinn woke up and told me he had to go to the bathroom.  We got our coats on and walked the 30 yards to the pit toilet.  It was very nice and well-lit, so we got the job done easily.  I was glad we ventured out so I could smell the air and experience that delirious pleasure of getting back into the warm sleeping bags by the fire and drifting off to sleep again.

We awoke at 6:30.  The light was still dim.  We got the fire roaring again, and sat without talking for awhile.  I didn’t want to leave, but we had nearly 500 miles to go that day.  It was easy packing up.  We headed into town to get breakfast and pulled up to Perry’s Cherry Diner just as they were opening.  Again, we were the only ones there, as if our waitress and the cook had gotten up early just to open up and feed us.  Greek omelet, potato pancakes and French toast sticks.  I felt like a starved dog being fed.  It was awesome. 

Sturgeon Bay has two shipyards and I was amazed at the size of the Great Lakes freighters we saw.  We drove 2 hours to Watertown and back to Tracey’s folks' house.  Again, Lorraine had made sandwiches.  We showered and re-packed the van.  Tracey was ready to go home and I think her folks were ready to get back to their routine as well.  The drive home went well.  Quinn was great with the kids and there was very little crying.  In all, 21 hours of driving totaling 1040 miles over 3 days.  This was one of those trips that we might not repeat with the benefit of hindsight.  That’s why it’s important to say “Sure, let’s do it” instead of finding reasons not to do things.  I’ll be old when I decide that trips like this are too much effort.