Shhhh…..if you keep talking we can’t over hear the conversation going on at the table next to us….. Yes, we admit it — Splorin’ has made us experts at eavesdroppin’. Perhaps we’re boring and have to live vicariously through others, or perhaps it’s because we’ve been together for so long we’ve had almost every conversation we might possibly have. Whichever the case, our loyal blog followers have noticed that we like to listen in on what is going on around us at restaurants (whether it’s family gatherings for dinner or coffee klatches for breakfast. But — what happens when we’re the only ones in a restaurant? We found ourselves in this situation at the Kountry Kettle in Gilman, WI this Splorin’ Saturday. The day was kind of dreary to start — we were off to Rib Mountain State Park outside Wausau, WI, so we had lots of choices for breakfast, but not a lot of choices for routes. We ended up driving through occasional rain on the way — Tammy kept checking the radar and we could see it was still raining at Rib Mountain, so we were not in any hurry.
We got to the restaurant and immediately noticed the lack of cars. “Are they open?” Well, the sign in the window said they were so, in we went. We were the only ones in the restaurant…not our usual Splorin’ experience. We sat, and ordered our “Standard Splorin’ Breakfast” (Tammy: veggie omelet, Mike: meat omelet, with salads for both of us). We were a little bummed there was no one else in the restaurant to eavesdrop on. There was a cook and a waitress (perhaps her daughter?) so we hoped they would have some interesting conversations at least. Well, the waitress stayed over in her area and the cook in hers – they did not talk at all. We came up with our own story — they were mother/daughter and the daughter was out beyond curfew and was ticked that she had to come in to work and the mom was ticked that her daughter missed curfew. We will never know if the story was true, but it passed the time. After 15 minutes a gentlemen came in and the first thing we heard him say was “Where are Paul and Tim?” Neither Paul nor Tim had gotten there yet and the cook didn’t know where they were. Paul (or maybe it was Tim) walked in 5 minutes later — apparently he was trying to determine if he was going to cut hay or not before he came in. So — the “male coffee klatch” is still in place.
The food at the Kountry Kettle was very good, although not Tammy’s favorite rendition of a veggie omelet. Tammy likes an omelet that has ingredients cooked right into the eggs. Unfortunately for her this was an omelet where the egg was wrapped around the ingredients. Mike enjoyed his because there was about a pound and a half of sausage, bacon, ham and cheese in his omelet (he had tough time finishing the whole thing). Tammy only ate about half of her ten pound omelet.
When asked if she wanted a box, we had to decline because, well, Splorin’ comes before refrigeration. Oh well, there will be another veggie omelet next week. Off to Rib Mountain!!
Thankfully the rain let up and we did not see any more for the day!!! YAY!!! We have driven past Rib Mountain as least 348 times, but never have driven up to the top. We found out that it is called a “mountain” for a reason — it rises quite high above the surrounding landscape. The park itself is mostly at the top, but there are several trails that descend its slopes — YES!!! Tammy’s favorite part of splorin’! We drove up the mountain and got to the ranger’s station and bought our day pass. The ranger said “Enjoy, you have the park to yourselves!” (you know what to do with ominous music). Mike took this to mean that they would not allow anyone into the park, nor had anyone arrived at the park prior to our arrival. ( there is no camping at this park) Mike, as usual, was mistaken. Our first hike was going to be on the “Yellow Middle Loop Trail”. This had an elevation drop of 420 feet to the bottom and then back up to the top. We pulled into the parking lot and indeed — we were the only car there. Awesome! The views from the parking lot were breathtaking!! It was pretty cool how high you are above the city of Wausau.
We started down the trail and to our surprise — it was, once again, completely different than any other trail that we’ve been on. We are constantly amazed at the differences in environments between state parks (and even within the same state park) — Wisconsin truly is a beautiful place! We kept heading downhill,… and downhill, …and downhill. Until finally we reach the bottom. Mike then had to inform Tammy that we had to basically climb back up what we just walked down. Tammy was a trooper!!! We only stopped two or three times on the way back up (Mike will never admit it, but he was glad we got to stop a couple times). We arrived back at the top of the trail out of breath and ready for a little break. We didn’t see another person on the whole hike — woo hoo, we DO have the park to ourselves! Some water and a five minute drive the rest of the way to the top of the mountain was all it took to be ready for the next hike.
Mike is usually astute at map reading, but since his issues at Wyalusing, he has been a little gun shy and not quite so sure of the accuracy of maps. The next hike was to take the Red Trail, then onto a couple of other trails that connected into the Red trail (Homestead, Dynamite and Turkey vulture loop). Looking at the map, the trails near the top of the “mountain” had elevations listed on them — so, since these did not have elevations, Mike determined that they must not have that much elevation change <omimous music, yeah, yeah….>. The Red Trail was amazing but we ended up right behind a young lady on the trail. We thought for sure she was going to hold us “experts” up…yeah, right (we didn’t see her the rest of the day). This trail was very narrow and composed of many stone steps that were each individually placed. It took years to lay this trail out by the Wisconsin CCC in the 1930’s. There were some huge steps and amazing views along the way. Even though we never saw them, we always knew the other trails were close because we could hear the kids and their parents very nearby. We were no longer alone. We then took off through the trails on the backside of the park.
By this time, Mike was very leery of the trails. From the overlooks Mike had an idea that the trails had very large descents (and reciprocal ascents). Even though he warned Tammy, she was more game for these than he was! We began heading down the mountain. Mike had to stop to look at the maps several times to assess where we were on the trail. At one of these stops we heard a noise like something running through the woods — we started looking for a deer. No deer appeared, but up the trail came a guy running at a very good pace. Here we were barely able to hike up these trails and this guy was RUNNING!!! He even asked us if we needed help finding our way. Mike found out where we were and we kept descending…..until we started ascending. Part way up the ascent was a huge rock quarry. This was an old abandoned 3M mine. It was pretty wild to walk into the bottom of the quarry and see the high sloping walls. As we walked back out of the quarry we noticed that what we though were crickets, or other bugs, on the ground were actually little tiny frogs — they were everywhere!
The remainder of the hike back up the mountain was uneventful (except for a wrong turn, but Mike and his astute map skills figured it out). Upon arriving back at the Red trail, Mike was ready to be done and head back to the car for another break — but Tammy wanted to finish the trail. We did finish it and it was quite the hike, up and down rocks, up and down hills. We even had the opportunity to have a nice talk with some fellow hikers who were more than impressed that we had already hiked about 6 miles. We made it back to the car in, relatively, one piece. We had one more hike to make. Back down and back up the mountain again. This time we were essentially hiking down to where we parked the car for the first hike and then back up. We haven’t mentioned that Rib Mountain State Park is also a ski park in the winter called Granite Peak. The interesting thing about this trail was that the last (uphill of course) part of it crossed the tops of all the ski trails. The views were absolutely gorgeous!!
Going up and down and up and down a “mountain” involves lots of elevation changes. This day represented our single-day peak elevation change. Mike’s sports activity watch tracks the number of flights of steps he has climbed. (A flight of steps is roughly 10 feet.) Today, we climbed 121 flights of steps (our previously high was 112 in Wyalusing). We are always looking for more elevation changes — so, stay tuned and see if we can break this record!! Before we took off we had the time to sit and play a game of cribbage with a fantastic view off the mountain. We had a little chipmunk who would not leave us alone. We think he was used to people feeding him in the shelter we were in because he was not shy. He even ran right across Mike’s feet a couple of times.
Unfortunately since there is no campground at Rib Mountain, there were no showers. We did find a brand new building that had running water and nice bathrooms and we did our best to clean up there before heading out to dinner. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a lot better than just using wipes to try to clean up. Off to dinner!!
Dinner was P&E Steakhouse in Medford, WI (no website, 😦 ). Once again, we had reservations at “senior citizen” time of 5:00 PM. We actually got there a little early. No worries, the restaurant opens at 4:30 PM. We couldn’t help but smile (and take a picture) of the shag carpet covering the entire entryway — walls, doors and everything. This was sure to be a fun night.
Well, in reality the bar opens at 4:30 and the restaurant begins serving somewhere around 5 PM. So, we sat and had a cocktail at the bar and had a nice conversation with the bartender about Splorin’ Saturday and all the places we’ve been. We were then seated for dinner and had a fabulous meal!! The food was excellent. This was a true Supper Club, complete with relish tray. Even if we couldn’t eat the grapes and carrots, Mike was happy with the olives and Tammy did splurge on a couple crackers with cheese and pate.
The company? Well, we had NO company. We made it all the way to getting our check before another couple came in for dinner!! When we were in the bar, Mike overhead the bartender taking a reservation call — he said they had 3 reservations for the evening, but last night they had 25 with people waiting for tables at the bar. Amazing the difference a day can make. It was hard to say no to dessert this night — the sign on the wall showed ALL of Tammy and Mike’s favorites. We finished up our no-sugar cocktails with a toast to healthy habits and a little sigh for what “used to be.”
We then did our standard — took the “long way” home. Mike pride’s himself on trying to find the most non-standard way to get back to Eau Claire after a day of splorin’. Taking freeways and major highways is boring. Mike downloads offline Google maps to his phone and then routes us through tiny little towns. This time is was Spencer and Loyal. A fun drive with many deer and turkeys to add to our count for the day. ( Totals: 34 deer, 23 turkeys and 10 sandhill cranes.)
Splorin' Saturday 