High Cliff and night cruise to Park Johns

High Cliff State Park Lime Kiln from Lake Winnebago

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Another fantastic day on the water. Friday afternoon our friends came over to go boating on the pontoon bar. We launched in Menasha at the Paris St boat launch and headed for Lake Winnebago. The lake was calm with a soft wind coming out of the Southeast with 6 inch waves. We decided since it was so nice we would cruise over to High Cliff and let my daughter and her friend get some swimming time in. The ride over was very nice and I have to admit it was fun coming back to this area. Its been well over 15 years since I have stopped at the High Cliff beach. As you come across the lake you can easily spot the Lime Kiln ruins projecting out of the tree line at the High Cliff State Park. As we came into the bay there were 6 boats scattered around the edge of the bay. Looked like everyone had brought the family and friends out to enjoy the day and get some water time in. We anchored just outside of the High Cliff State Park Beach. As usual, we had snacks and drinks ready to go. We let the girls do some swimming and playing on the inflatable donut and popsicle they brought. I pulled out the camera and grabbed some photos of the boats and people coming into the park to hit the beach. It really is a beautiful spot to stop. With a very nice sandy bottom beach and fantastic views. We got lucky as the algae bloom was not in the bay. It can get worse over here depending on the wind. After a few hours, we decided it was time to head back and get some dinner. The majority vote was to go back up the river and stop at Parker Johns. We slowly headed back along the lakeshore and checked out all the cool houses on the North Shore. The lake had picked up to about 2 - 3ft waves. We got to see how sea worth the old pontoon bar really was. We have discovered that it is a little nose heavy in these conditions and we needed to use the human trim tab methods to get it smoothed out. We only dropped the nose under the waves twice. Which got a few of our younger passengers a little nervous. We laughed and reminded them they are sitting on 2 big bobbers and unless we put a hole in a pontoon we are not going to sink. As we pulled into the Menasha Channel the waves settled down. We ran up to the Menasha Marina and parked on the West side of Marina. As we tied up I noticed they have about 12" cleats out here that you could tie off a tug boat with. A quick little walk up to Parker Johns and sat out on the deck overlooking the marina and filled our belly's. Back to the boat turned on the lights and headed back to the boat launch. Another fun little journey on the Lake Winnebago System. Defiantly a day we will all remember for years to come.
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