I just returned from an unexpected reporting trip that went something like this:

Drive four hours, then arrive at a small hotel where a friendly innkeeper has a bottle of chilled red wine waiting for me. Then borrow a bike, ride a brisk seven miles on a FLAT road with almost no traffic, some of it along the water. Then join my friend, a photographer, for a seafood dinner at an old-fashioned crab house where a band is playing favorite old standards and the banjo player just happens to be the county administrator.

Lest it sound like my life is totally charmed, I worked a 16-hour day yesterday, starting at 7 a.m. on a boat and getting home at 11 p.m. after an action-packed Tidal Fish meeting at DNR. More on that later.

Lately, i have spent far too much time in the office working on a semi-project and this latest trip reminds me that I must get out more, both because I came home with about four story ideas and because I met such fun people (well, except for the guy at the Tidal Fish meeting who told me that I ought to be ashamed of myself --- apparently I never write anything positive about the watermen. I could think of no snappy comeback after my long day so i just shuffled off.)

Anyway, I'd like to start a weekly feature to run on Fridays featuring a great Shore destination. But I'm a bit tired, so i propose we start next week....