Home Away From Home – The Northwoods (Guest Post)

Some of my fondest family vacations took place in Sayner, Wisconsin. So I asked my dear old dad to share how the Northwoods became our family’s home away from home. Enjoy!!

Guest Post, By Dennis Hammer

For many years our family has enjoyed vacationing in the Northwoods of Wisconsin. Tanya asked me to write about our family history there and what made it so unique and enjoyable for our families. This is the first installment of three articles I’ll be writing over the next couple of months.

Where exactly is the “Northwoods” some may ask.

For me personally, it is a real place including the forests, lakes, and streams of northern Wisconsin. But, it’s also a state of mind where anyone can go to enjoy life. In other words, your “happy place.”

For me and my family, we have found this to be an area of northern Wisconsin located in central Vilas County near the towns of Sayner and St. Germain.

My Grandparents, Ganz and Anna K Hammer, first started visiting the Northwoods back in the 1930’s when my father, Ganz “Tack” Jr., was still a teenager. They loved to visit the great fishing lakes of Vilas County Wisconsin, and fell in love with a particular resort on Found Lake near St. Germain.

As my father and his brother Don grew up and started families of their own, they too continued the tradition of summer fishing trips to the Northwoods. Over the years the resort changed hands a few times. In my earliest recollection, it was known as Manteufel’s and also as Ballard’s Found Lake Resort.

Summertime would find us driving to the lake up the old US 41 and US 45 routes through Indiana, Illinois, and on into Wisconsin. The trip would often start around 4 AM. We would pull into the resort by early evening and get settled into our cabins.

I remember all gathering for meals and visiting in my grandparents’ cabin. In my early days, it was Mom, Dad, Dad’s brother Don and his wife Carolyn. It was a cozy arrangement, but we all enjoyed the family time together.

In later years, the family grew to include my two brothers, Rick and Mark, and my two cousins, Linda and Brad. Occasionally, other assorted family would come up to join us in our secluded corner of the Northwoods.

Early morning would come quickly, and I vividly remember awakening to the sound and smell of bacon sizzling, along with eggs in a cast-iron skillet. Served up with juice, milk and sometimes flapjacks or a bowl of Cream of Wheat. It was a bigger breakfast than we usually ate, but you needed the fuel to get you through a day on the lake.

By 6 AM we would head for the dock and load our fishing gear in the two old wooden boats that we rented with the cabin. My grandfather had an old one-lung Johnson motor from the 1930s that we used on one boat. It still hangs in my cabin basement as a reminder of those simpler days gone by.

The other boat had to be rowed to wherever the two unlucky occupants chose to fish. I would tag along with one of the crews. I remember that Grandma and Dad once found a great fishing hole a ways offshore where the Crappies, Rock Bass, and Blue Gills almost jumped into the boat and asked for a ride to the skillet.

Now, of course, they wanted to remember where that hole was. This being way before the days of GPS, they decided to pinpoint it by each picking out an object, one on the north shore and the other on the west shore so they could again find their precious fishing hole. The problem was, whenever they went fishing with another partner they could never line up the points correctly to find that hole. Only Grandma and Dad together seemed to be able to find that danged hole.

At least once each trip Grandpa, Dad, Uncle Don, and I would load up our gear in the car and drive about a half-mile to what was referred to as Beaver Lake. I don’t think it was actually a lake, but rather a marshy area with channels of water running through it.

Now this was fishing heaven.

If you could outlive the ravenous mosquitoes that inhabited this swamp. Liberally lubed up with some sort of smelly oil that was guaranteed to keep the pesky critters at bay, we would set on down one of the channels.

The fish were so thick that half the time they would jump right out of the water to catch a lure mid-flight. On one trip Dad, who held the position of my official hook baiter, yelled at me to quit fishing for a while so he could at least get his own line wet.

I was pulling them in so fast, he couldn’t find time to bait his own line. At one point I quit putting bait on the hook and still caught three or four more nice Blue Gills to finish out our evening fun.

Of course, all those fish had to be cooked up and eaten to truly enjoy our Northwoods fishing experience. So after reaching our limit of fish, we headed back to camp and the fish house to clean our bounty.

That night, Uncle Don was tasked with cleaning up the fish house after us. He took all the fish scraps to the old galvanized trash can that resided just outside our cabin door. About 10 PM or so we all heard a loud clatter coming from the area of that can. Uncle Don said no dang raccoon was going to scatter all those fish guts around and make a mess outside our cabin!

Quietly, he snuck out the door to chase the critters off. Next thing we knew, he was screaming at the top of his lungs for help. We all rushed outside to find him looking pale as a ghost and sitting atop that trash can lid bouncing up and down.

Seems he thought it would be smart to trap the rascal inside of the can. The problem was, he was then afraid to climb off the lid for fear that Mr. Monster Raccoon would get out and come after him!

Dad and Grandpa came to his rescue though and held down the lid while Uncle Don climbed off. They all made a mad dash for the safety of the cabin. Out the window we watched as the lid popped off. To everyone’s chagrin, out came a raccoon no bigger than a medium-sized house cat. He slowly clamored out of the can and casually waddled off back into the woods. They never let Uncle Don live that night down.

Many wonderful memories were made in the secluded backwoods of Northern Wisconsin, which we fondly referred to as simply, the Northwoods. One day I’ll share more of our Northwoods family adventures. If you haven’t had a chance to vacation there, I encourage you to do so soon.

If you have ever visited the “Northwoods” I hope you will leave a comment for me and others.

Wherever the road takes you, make it a joyous journey,
Traveling Tanya

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