We weren’t able to ‘splore the week of July 13th. Unfortunately Mike’s dad ended up in the hospital on Thursday, July 11th. He was experiencing some difficulty moving his right arm, slurring speech a little, and had a hard time walking -they thought he was having a stroke. Good news — he did not have a stroke; it seems like it was a combination of severe UTI and gout in his shoulder — THANK GOD!!! Long story, and a couple long days at Regions Hospital, (not Splorin’ Saturday-type stuff’ but long enough) and he finally made it back home on Sunday, July 14th. So ‘splorin had to wait.
The next week, (7/20) we were going to be at a BBQ with Mike’s aunt from LaCrosse visiting his dad on Saturday. Family before ‘splorin’. We didn’t want to miss another week so we needed to adjust the Plan and pushed back ‘splorin’ to Sunday and tried to keep it more “local.” Well, the weather was pretty stormy on Saturday, so Aunt MaryAnn decided not to visit (we found out she would have been traveling straight through the path of a tornado so we are glad she stayed put) but we still went over for a visit with Mike’s dad and sisters. Mike got the “privilege” of grilling hamburgers in the pouring rain. We would definitely NOT have been able to ‘splore in that weather anyway so the Plan was working. It was a nice visit at HomeTown Senior Living and Mike’s dad was so much better than the week before!
Sunday usually begins with Mass, breakfast with whatever children we get to come with us, then who knows – getting ready for the week ahead. So if we were going to do any Splorin’ on Sunday, it would have to be somewhere quick to get to. We switched up the normal Sunday routine and went to breakfast before Mass, so after Mass we were ready to head out for Splorin’. We decided on Kinnikinnic State Park just outside River Falls, WI and only about an hour away for this day of Splorin’.
We just have one question — How, having grown up in Hudson, had we never — EVER — heard of this state park?!?!?!? We spent countless days at Willow River State Park (no hyperlink yet, because that will be our last park we ‘Splore), but we never even knew that Kinnikinnic State Park existed. I guess that is what we get for growing up in the days before Google — a little gem could be right under your nose and you had no idea!! Mike, as you faithful reader(s) know by now, came up with “The Plan”. Since the time we had was shorter than normal (we couldn’t leave home until between 10 and 11am and needed to be back home to pick Jason up from work at the mall by 6PM,) we had limited time to splore. :-(. So, the plan was to do basically two hikes. One was to go to the lower part of the park and do two loops and then finish with a loop on the upper part of the park. However, since Tammy is such an amazing hiker, we were able to do MUCH more!!!
We started in the usual fashion — spraying ourselves down liberally with Picaridin — we just can’t stand to be bugged by bugs. We then headed off. The first part of the hike was to head down the blue trail to get to the bottom of the park. At the bottom of the park, there was a central loop, with little loops coming off of it. Mike’s plan was to do all the little loops, then circle back on the inner loop. It meant we would cover some parts of the trail twice — but heck, we love this “job” so no big deal!!! MAP
When we got to the bottom of the park we saw something that we had not seen since Lake Wisssota — big, wide open prairie. When we started around the yellow loop, Mike asked aloud if we were going to ring the entire prairie. It was supposed to be 1.3 miles, but it looked like SO much more. In the end, that is what we did — just made a big loop around the prairie with a couple of small forays into wooded areas. It was actually pretty neat! Thankfully it was nowhere near as hot as Copper Falls had been — it would have been agonzing because we were in the direct sun almost the whole time. Apparently as good as Picaradin is for bugs, it is not a good sunscreen as Tammy found out on Monday.
We made it around the prairie and back to the picnic area and had to find a restroom. Mike’s plan led us right past the restroom (ok, a pit toilet), but unfortunately Mike’s plan and the trail seemingly had different ideas. We thought we ended up missing the restrooms somehow, but, thankfully, in the end we just took a really roundabout way to get to them. After pottying, we made it to an overlook to see where the Kinnikinnic River empties into the St. Croix river. It was a beautiful view (made even more so by the fact that we knew we didn’t have to go all the way down to the river!!!).
After enjoying the view, we had to make it back onto the trail. This was not an easy feat. The maps shows the trail looping the picnic area — but is that within the picnic area, or below the picnic area on the hill? We remembered Wyalusing and thought we were going to end up down by the river (although not in a van) again — thankfully we didn’t. We eventually found the trail and continued. We made it back around to where we could then do the central yellow loop. The only really interesting thing that we found here was that where the other trails went around the edge of the prairie, the yellow loop cut straight across the center. It felt like walking across the Serengeti (if the Serengeti was in Wisconsin and they mowed a path across the middle of it, and had trail markers every 100 yards or so…). The grass that was about 6 feet tall on both sides of us — it was hard to see for any distance at all. Thankfully, unlike the Serengeti, there were no hungry lions waiting to ambush us. Whew — it was a pretty long walk – 5.32 miles!!!
We made it back to the car and took a little, well deserved, rest. We had another 3.5 mile loop to do and then we were going to call it a day. However, Mike screwed up again — somehow for being a math major he has an awful lot of problems adding numbers together. This time it really was not his fault — the map and trail descriptions were messed up. He used the distance from the trail description for his calculations and not the map — so the 3.5 mile hike, actually came in at 2.35 miles. This was a good thing (we’ll get back to that in a minute). The red trail through the upper part of the park was, unfortunately, pretty boring. Don’t get us wrong it was a beautiful day to walk in the sunshine — but it was basically just like walking down a mowed path through a field (perhaps because it WAS just walking down a mowed path through a field). We made it back to the car with plenty of time to spare! In fact, enough time to spare to head to another trail — one that Mike had not included in “The Plan” because we didn’t think we would have enough time to hike it. Turns out — that was very serendipitous as that was the best trail of the day.
We had to venture out of the park to get to the last trail (either the red or pink trail depending on whether you believe the map or the trail descriptions) but it was just a short drive to a little nondescript parking lot on the side of the road. Mike thought this trail was just going to be another “through and around the field” hike (why we still listen to him at all — we will never know). He was so wrong. After striking out across the field, we came to a pine plantation. We were weaving in and out of pines and along the edge of a mature hardwood forest — it was quite nice!! We then head out into the deep forest along very narrow trails. There were some ups and downs but for the most part it was very level. We met another person on the trail would was “prancercising” down the trail. OK then….. We kept on going. Eventually we got to the point where we were at a top of a bluff with the Kinnikinnic River below us. Mike double checked the map and somehow tried to assure Tammy that we were not going all the way down to the river. But the trail kept descending and descending. Thankfully we didn’t make it all the way down to the river — just kept following the edge of the bluff above it. It was pretty cool experience. We did have to climb back uphill to get back to the field, but not too much. We were on a mission now to finish this trail in an hour — it was a 3.5 mile trail and we were so close the the parking lot it was crazy. We emerged from the pine plantation thinking we had it made only to discover an elderly couple in front of us walking very slowly. Tammy decided we were just going to pass them instead of slowing our pace to match theirs. We did. However, we still did not make our goal of under an hour — we missed it by 48 seconds. :-(.
We were then headed back to Eau Claire to pick Carrie up at home and Jason up at work. We’ve been wanting to include our kids in Splorin’ Saturday for a while, but they have not had much desire to accompany us. We figured and easy way to get them in would be to take them along to the #SupperClubSaturday portion of the day (even if it was on Sunday). This time we chose to go to Two Acres Supper Club in Bloomer, WI. Your mom may have told you if you cannot say anything nice, then don’t say anything at all. So, with that, here is our review: ” “. Nope, not much nice to say at all. We take that back — we were able to spend time with Carrie and Jason — that was the best part! Jason had a steak that was somehow fried on a flattop with no seasoning, Tammy had “steamed scallops” (which were really just boiled — we saw the “cook” dump them out of the pan of water) Mike cannot even remember what he had — but Carrie had the winner dinner of the day: Fried Chicken Strips and French Fries. The only problem was that she found a little piece of of Brillo pad in her french fries — we mentioned it to the cook when she came out and she just looked at it and said “Yup, that is from our of our cleaning pads” and then walked back into the kitchen. Easy to say we will not be going back nor recommending anyone else to go there.
Mike had to leave early (3 am)the next morning, :-(, so it was back home and early to bed after a very lack-luster dinner. But at least we made it out splorin’.
Splorin' Saturday 