My wife and I spent our 4th of July long weekend touring the northern part of Poland. We went to “Masuria.” It sounds just like the state of Missouri. A couple of months ago I was having a conversation with my barber about Masuria. She mentioned the area had lakes galore and people really love this area. I was still thinking we were talking about the state of Missouri. Until she said something about visiting Masuria over the weekend. Well, that is a long way to go for such a short visit. I asked her about her flight and now she was confused. She mentioned that it was only about 3 hours north of Warsaw. We laughed about the misunderstanding. I told my wife about that later in the day, and she said that she wanted to make a trip there. Well, Masuria – here we come.
The drive from Warsaw to Stare Sady, near Mikolajki, Poland was about 3.5 hours north of Warsaw. Google Maps made the journey possible without getting lost. Stopping at two locations along the way to get something to eat or drink and to take a break. We arrived at our destination of Stare Sady near Pod Jabloniami Port. It was a nice small hotel. This establishment also catered to up to twenty-five sailing boats in the area. After an extremely hot week in Warsaw, the cool area of Stare Sady was a very welcome feeling.
We were in luck and found a brewery just across the street called Browar Mikolajki. I love beer! I often jokingly say that my favorite beer is an “open one.” Well, we had a sample of their lager, and it was impressive. we had dinner – Cheeseburger and a Lager. Both were good.
After returning to the hotel, we enjoyed the remainder of the evening around the dock area where there was a campfire going next to the lake. It was nice to sit around and enjoy the ambiance. It did not get dark until 2300, due to the high northern latitude that we were at. However, once it got dark there was extraordinarily little light pollution, which made the stars in the sky impressive. Sunrise is early – 0400. That did make it difficult to sleep, but my wife did get impressive pictures of the sunrise.
The next day looked for attractions in our area to visit. I was surprised to see that “Wolf’s Lair” was so close. I thought it was farther east if not in Ukraine. It was about an hour’s drive north (fifty-two KM or thirty-two miles) from our location. Two-lane roads all the way and there was even a portion that was unpaved for about 10 KM (6 miles). We drove through wooded areas, farmlands, and small villages. It was really a pretty drive. Entry fees were very reasonable for the two of us. There was an audio guide that I was happy that we got these. There were only about 5 or 6 languages and English was one of them. These audio guides had GPS adaptations so that they would play the audio for the location we were viewing. We slowly walked around the area and the audio guide did the rest. I was amazed at the size of the bunkers which are now in ruins after the German forces attempted to destroy these as they were fleeing from the oncoming Russian forces in late 1944 and early 1945. The history of this area was extremely interesting. The box office hit “Valkyrie,” starring Tom Cruise was a recreation of the actual assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler in 1944. We were able to walk through the events of that day thanks to the setup of the park and the use of the audio guide. It was a site well worth the time and effort.
I am not a bird watcher by any means, but I was genuinely surprised to see the enormous number of nests that the storks had built in this area. Every town had a plan to support this population of birds. There were easily 70+ nests along the main road. Many of the nests were being actively used. Oftentimes we could see 3-5 heads sticking out from the nest. The only other place that I have seen this many storks was in the Algarve area of Portugal. They liked walking behind a tractor cultivating the ground or cutting the grass. Evidently, this disturbed the area enough that food was plentiful for the storks. Otherwise, they did not interact with people.