Door County Folk Festival
Mary Pat Schmidt Materials
Nature Hikes: “Placeholder Title”
Friday, July 7, 2023 - 3:30pm-5:00pm - Toft Point - 7950 Ridges Road - Baileys Harbor, WI 54202
Saturday, July 8, 2023 - 3:30pm-5:00pm - Bayshore Blufflands - 5454 Bayshore Drive - Sturgeon Bay, WI 54235
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Friday Nature Hike - Mary Pat Schmidt (Waukesha, WI) 3:30 PM Friday Nature Hike - Toft Point - 7950 Ridges Road - Baileys Harbor, WI 54202

Toft Point contains several outstanding native plant communities concentrated on a 1-mile-wide peninsula along Door County's Lake Michigan coast. The natural area is bordered on the north by Moonlight Bay, and on the south by Baileys Harbor. There are more than two miles of Lake Michigan shoreline, with areas of wave-cut dolomite cliffs. Stretches of limestone cobble beach, mixed with marly soil, are exposed during periods of low lake levels. The vegetation of the eastern shoreline, influenced by the cooling effects of Lake Michigan, consists of a narrow strip of relict boreal forest dominated by balsam fir and white spruce.

One of my favorite hikes in Door County, which begins off Ridges Road, where there’s a small parking area, and it travels northeast through a mile of forest toward a spectacular, rocky dolomite shoreline on Moonlight Bay.

Round trip, the easy hike is about two miles, and it provides various points of interest along the way, including the historic Toft guest cottages and barn, remnants of a stone quarry and an old lime kiln, which – according to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources – is one of the state’s best intact examples of the early circular kilns that once dotted parts of the Niagara Escarpment. The areas of vegetation are also of interest. They change from a forest of sugar maple, yellow birch, hemlock, balsam fir and scattered white pine, to a tamarack swamp and wetland, to a boreal forest dominated by balsam fir and white spruce.
 

Saturday Nature Hike - Bayshore Blufflands - 5454 Bayshore Drive - Sturgeon Bay, WI 54235

Hugging the shores of Green Bay between Egg Harbor and Sturgeon Bay, the Bay Shore Blufflands Nature Preserve is a grand landscape filled with scenery straight out of a picture postcard. Wind-swept fields, towering pine forests, ephemeral wetlands and springs, cobbled lakeshore and stretches of rural open space along Bay Shore Drive all contribute to the beauty of this special place.

 


Mary Pat Schmidt is from Pewaukee, Wisconsin. She was introduced to folk dancing in college at Marquette University, where she took a Phy Ed class in beginning Ethnic Dance and fell in love with it. She has been folk dancing with the Milwaukee International Dancers since the late 1980's, after seeing a notice promoting folk dancing at the International Institute which reignited her passion. In the Milwaukee group, she is on the Leadership Committee.

Mary Pat is also a former member of the Romanian performing group, Viata Romanesca, and the Bulgarian group, Na Lesa. She is now retired from a long career in Medical Technology (laboratory blood work), and besides dancing, spends time hiking and biking with other folk dancers.