How do we start a Splorin’ Saturday:
Lets get this party started... get out there on the floor... Take a chance and have a dance... you'll yell and scream for more.
It’s the “Saturday Morning Polka Show – Don Wayerski & Mark Maslowski” on Y106.5 out of Marshfield, WI. There is no better way to get geared up for hiking than listening to polka music!! We always try to tune in to this show, it is every Saturday, but sometimes we are just not close enough to Marshfield. We discovered, much the same way we found the Supper Club Directory on Travel Wisconsin –randomly searching the web — that there are a whole bunch of Wisconsin Polka radio shows listed on Wisconsin Polka Radio, but this is the one we like the best. We enjoy the local announcements, birthday and anniversary wishes and such. On our drive this day, we listened for about an hour until it started cutting out. However, Mike had the bright idea to look and see if it could be streamed online. Of course you can!!! If you’d like to listen along with us, click this link between 7 and 10AM on a Saturday and get ready to polka!!!
Our breakfast stop this morning was Aunt Ozie’s Cafe in Loganville, WI. What a cute little place!! Tammy must have said “Oh my God, I just love this place” about 100 times, all before we even ordered our food!! It was a little kitschy cafe that had such a eclectic set of decorations you didn’t know where to look. There were painted glass bowls from the ’70s, tea sets that could have been 200 years old, a huge safe (we think the building might have been a bank at some point in its history) an old tv from the 60’s and tons of the items were for sale too. The tables and chairs were all unique and mismatched and it just looked like someone’s living room from the “old days.” I am not sure who Aunt Ozie was, but I bet she was a fascinating lady!
When we walked in, it wasn’t too crowded except for a table with 12 people all deeply engrossed in conversation. They were obviously talking about people around town as you could hear a couple of times “he’s a really nice guy” (you just knew if you were in the Deep South we would have heard several “Bless his hearts” as well). It wasn’t the typical old guys’ klatsch around the table this time, there were 2 or 3 women as well (but it was mostly men). At one point in time another older guy in overalls walked in and the waitress called out “Good Morning Frank!” and everyone else chimed in their greetings as well. We said “the waitress” because she was the only one — yet she handled all the tables with ease and speed. By the time we left, every table was filled! Mike ordered the “Caliente” omelette (chicken, salsa, sour cream) while Tammy ordered the tomato, basil, artichoke hearts and feta omelette (at least I think that is the one she got, there were a ton of combinations of those types of ingredients — Tammy was in omelette heaven!) Mike had to practically drag Tammy out, but we did get the obligatory selfie out front.
We were then off to Yellowstone Lake State Park in Blanchardville, WI (20 miles from the Illinois border). “The Plan” had us hiking around 9 miles and maybe a couple of bonus miles if we had the time. We arrived at the park and when asked about the condition of the trails, the ranger told us that they had not been able to get out to mow the trails much during the summer because it had been too wet. We knew some of the trails were grass trails (our least favorite surface), but they must be pretty muddy if they couldn’t get out to mow — oh well, we’ll see (and tell).
We started off to hike around three trails right by the park office. Mike promised Tammy there would be very little elevation gain at this state park (she’s learned to never listen to him on these types of promises) — the first steps onto the trail was going uphill. We started on the Oak Ridge trail — as we rounded the backside of the trail we came out into a field that had recently had hay cut on it to a beautiful view back down towards the lake.
We were then off to the Prairie Loop trail where we came upon some flowers that were covered in Monarch butterflies. We tried to get a picture of more than one butterfly at a time, but could only manage one. This was an huge prarie filled with grasses and wild flowers of all kinds.
We then were off to the Wildlife trail that ran around a wetland area that was labeled on the map as a “waterfowl area”. This was a very interesting trail. It was more or less like a dike going around the corner of the lake. You were always walking a couple of feet above the waterline, but at times it was only 6 to 8 feet wide. We didn’t see any “wildlife” other a couple of frogs. Nonetheless it was a very unique perspective of a trail — essentially walking throught the middle of the lake (without getting wet!!). Interestingly enough, we did not see another person until we were almost back at the car — we made it 3.7 miles without any other hikers — YAY!!!
We headed off to the boat ramp to park for the next set of trails. “The Plan” gets interesting in some of these cases. The ultimate goal of “The Plan” is to cover as many trails as possible without covering trails more than once. This is not always easy as there are many times that there are single connector trails, loop trails with loop trails coming off of them, etc. But Mike does his best. On this hike, we were to start on the Oak Grove trail, then go onto the Windy Ridge Trail, then onto the Savannah trail, back onto the Windy Ridge trail and finally back onto the Oak Grove trail before getting back to the car — Uff Da!!! Immediately upon starting this hike we ran into a group of 3 dads and about 8 kids between the ages of 8 and 10 looking to go on the same trail as we were. Ugh!! Luckily, just like Wildcat Mountain, they made a wrong turn and we were able to jump ahead of them. We did direct them where to go (after we got in front of them). We had no worries that they would catch up to us. Turns out these trails were described as having some “steep hills”. Pshaw….the hills can’t be that steep. HAHA This is where Mike discovered and labeled the levels of discomfort for hill climbs for Tammy: they are (in order): “shit”, “fuck”, and the most difficult hills are “punch you in the nose” — luckily we only only made it to slightly above “shit” at this park. (We’ve made it to “punch you in the nose”, (Perrot and maybe even last week at Wildcat Mountain) but luckily she has only ever said it, not actually done it.)
The Savannah trail is what went almost to the “fuck” level. There was a very steep down and uphill section on this trail. We also saw some very pretty flowers along the way.
We made it back to the car without too much difficulty though and it was a pretty quick walk– we had hiked a little over 8 miles already and we were dragging a little, so we then took a water, almond and peanut break. We still had plenty of time before we were going to leave for dinner so we decided on the “longer” version of the end-of-the day planned hike. This took us back up the Oak Grove trail and then through the campground on the Timber trail and then down the Blue Ridge trail (which spans the park from end-to-end.) We were only going to be able to hike a small portion of the Blue Ridge trail, but wow — it was pretty.
This trail dumped us back to the main park road. We walked along that and through the parking lot of the pet area, beach and boat ramp to get back to where the car was parked. It was then shower time. This park had very nice showers — unisex so it is just a row of 6 showers with their own locking doors. Mike’s was awesome but apparently Tammy’s would only spray water for 4 seconds with every push of the button. It was a shower so, no big deal, just another little challenge to overcome. We still had a few minutes to spare after we got all cleaned up, so we found a nice little picnic table near the lake and played a game of cribbage.
We were now off to dinner – and before dinner we were going to have drinks with a high school classmate and her husband who live in the area. We met Andrea (Crawford) Potterton and her husband, Keric at Hi Point Steakhouse in Ridgeway, WI. It was great to catch up — although half an hour before dinner was not enough time!! We will be getting together again on a future Splorin’ Saturday trip to southern Wisconsin.
Dinner was awesome again. We both had French Onion soup to start — OMG it was amazing, very flavorful, while not being too salty and the crouton didn’t even mess with Mike’s blood sugar too much. Mike had his usual Prime Rib and Tammy had a steak covered with blue cheese and mushrooms. As usual, she also brought half of it home for lunch the next day. The salad bar was stocked very well too!
We’ve mentioned before that we like to eavesdrop — you just never know what you’re going to overhear. One of the specials at the Hi Point Steakhouse was a Wagyu Strip Steak. While the waitress was telling the table behind us what the specials were, the gentleman asked “What is a Wagyu Strip Steak”? She began by explaining that is a very marbled steak and went on to explain that they massage the animals, etc. She kind of paused for a while and the man asked “but it IS a cow, right?”. Hilarious!!
Soon we were off on the 3.5 hour drive home — no polka music for that ride. It is kind of sad that we began and ended this day in darkness -summer really is officially over – but we are getting excited about the changing seasons and are looking into our options for snowshoeing this winter!!!!
Splorin' Saturday 