Kohler-Andrae State Park

Kohler-Andrae sits four miles south of Sheboygan and protects something Wisconsin does not have much of: an intact Lake Michigan dune system with a public beach in front of it. Two parks merged into one — the Terry Andrae parcel donated in the 1920s and the Kohler land added later — and together they hold about two miles of shoreline.

The sand here is not a beach with dunes behind it. It is a whole system: wet beach, foredune, blowouts, interdunal wetlands, and behind that a wooded back dune of black oak and juniper. That gradient is why the park is designated a State Natural Area, and why so much of it is boardwalk rather than open walking.

The cordwalk

The Dunes Cordwalk runs roughly a mile as a loop through the foredunes, elevated on planking with interpretive signs. It exists for a practical reason. Marram grass roots are what hold a foredune together, and foot traffic kills it. Kill enough of it and the wind cuts a blowout through the ridge and the dune walks inland. Wisconsin has watched that happen on other stretches of this coast. Stay on the boards.

The Sanderling Nature Center sits right on the dune with a wall of glass facing the lake and runs naturalist programs through the summer.

The beach and the water

The swimming beach is wide, sandy, and shelves gradually. On a calm August day it is as pleasant as Lake Michigan gets on the Wisconsin side — surface temperature in the mid-60s to low 70s Fahrenheit in a good year.

It is still Lake Michigan and it still kills people. This shore does not have a pier generating a structural rip current the way the harbor beaches at Sheboygan and Port Washington do, but longshore currents and outflow rips form here in any sustained onshore wind, and sandbar systems create channels that pull hard when the water behind them drains back out.

The rules that matter: swim near other people, do not swim in breaking surf you would not be willing to be knocked down by, and if you get pulled out, swim parallel to the beach until the pull releases before trying to come in. Fighting straight back toward shore is what exhausts swimmers.

Water temperature swings hard. A west wind blowing off the land pushes the warm surface layer offshore and pulls up 50-degree water in its place, sometimes in a single day. Check before you commit kids to a long swim.

There are no lifeguards.

When to go

June through September for the water. May and October for the birds — this stretch is on a migration corridor and the interdunal wetlands hold shorebirds and warblers in the shoulder seasons. Winter opens cross-country skiing and the ice shelves that build along the beach, which are spectacular and unsafe to walk on.

Before you turn up

A Wisconsin state park vehicle admission sticker is required, day or annual, resident or nonresident rate. Buy at the entrance or online.

Camping is reserved through the Wisconsin DNR reservation system and summer weekends go months in advance. The two campgrounds sit back in the woods, not on the sand.

Beach parking fills on hot weekends. Come before 11 a.m.

Sheboygan is four miles north and has a working harbor. The salmon and trout fishery off Sheboygan is one of the better ones on the Wisconsin side — chinook and coho in summer, browns close to shore in spring and fall. Wisconsin DNR sets seasons and limits, and they change annually.