We took a few weeks off from ‘splorin’ at the end of November. Tammy mistakenly thought that November 23rd was the Saturday after Thanksgiving (Small Business Saturday) and wanted to work at Imagination Station that day. November 29th, the REAL Saturday after Thanksgiving, we spent in Hudson with family and friends saying goodbye to Mike’s dad. We were fortunate to have all 4 of our kids home for the day to pay their respects to Grandpa Ray.
December 7th found us in Milwaukee having attended our daughter Carrie’s Marquette University Liturgical Choir’s “Lessons and Carols” concert the evening before. The concert was, as usual, wonderful — Saturday was reserved for us to get some Splorin’ on as we headed back to Eau Claire.
Not wanting to waste any limited Wisconsin December daylight, we were up and out of the hotel at 6:17AM (Mike wanted to leave by 6AM, close…so close) and on the road to breakfast.
We drove from Milwaukee to Burlington, WI for breakfast at the Pine Street Cafe. One thing that really stood out about this restaurant was its size. We believe it could comfortably seat about 1,723 people. OK, maybe not that many, but it was HUGE!!
The second thing we noticed immediately was the “old guys” coffee klatches were alive and well in Burlington. There were two tables overflowing with “older” gentlemen (Mike is getting too close in age to these gentlemen to be calling them “old”). Unfortunately due to the size of the restaurant we had to observe these two groups from afar as the hostess seated us well away from them. We had our standard breakfast omelettes with side salads (yay!) and the food was very good. On the way out of the restaurant we were treated to a gorgeous sunrise reflecting off the clouds.
We were now on our way to our first stop on this triple state park day — Big Foot Beach State Park in Lake Geneva, WI. We rolled up to find that this was an unmanned state park and we had to self-register our non-resident rental car for the day. There was only one other car in the parking lot — as we got done registering we saw the gentleman and his dog heading back to their vehicle — so we would have the park to ourselves.
“The Plan” was to break this park up into two hikes — the front and the back. The front was a combination of the Green/Red/Yellow/Blue trails and the back was Green and Orange trails. We got our hats and gloves on and were off on the hike.
We started off heading back towards Lake Geneva and Ceylon Lagoon. It was still below freezing, but not by a lot, so there was some ice on muddy stretches along the lagoon. As we made it to the back of the lagoon where we would turn off into the woods and start following the Green/Yellow trail we notice a piece of paper along the side of the trail. Closer inspection showed us that it said “Trail Closed”. It was obvious it had been on the ground for a while, and it was also obvious there were a lot of hiker tracks going down the trail. We decided to proceed with caution and would turn around if we saw anything dangerous. It became quickly apparent that the trail closure was due to the wet conditions on the trail. This portion of the trail bordered some wet lands and it was pretty obvious that the wetlands were overflowing and causing pretty wet and muddy conditions on the trail. We sunk in a couple spots, we had to traverse the sides of the trail, and we had to crawl over some fairly large downed trees. But we made it through with not too much effort. After a quarter mile we came to an orange cone in the middle of the trail that had the same “Trail Closed” message on it. So — good news we were out of the closed area and it wasn’t too bad, and even better news, it should be good hiking ahead.
We’ve done a lot of hiking at Wisconsin state parks at this point and seen just about every kind of trail, but every so often we find ourselves in a “first” situation. This was one of them. As we came to where the Green and Blue trails were supposed to intersect, we found ourselves standing beside a road in the middle of an open cut grass area. It took a minute but we realized the “trail” was supposed to just cut out across the open grass area. We walked along and found that the “trail” also turned in the middle of this grass field and went across a parking area where it finally cut back into the woods. We were now on the Blue trail and headed to go around the Red trail loop before heading back to the car for a quick break. The Red loop was very pretty and skirted the edge of the wetlands that we had to traverse earlier. As we came to the back corner of the trail, we came to an area where it looked pretty wet and muddy under the frozen surface. Mike saw this and veered to the side, Tammy somehow walked right into the middle of it got a little muddy. Navigating our way around this we saw another trail closed sign, but luckily the plan did not have us going down that route. We made it back to the car and took a quick drink of water, made our way to the pit toilets and then were off to ‘splore’ the back side of the park.
We are always on the lookout for “wildlife”. Deer, turkeys, cranes, squirrels, birds….what have you… we love to see it; Mike is always complaining that we should see more deer. As we started down the Green trail we came around a corner and saw a little buck alongside the trail up ahead — maybe 5o yards away. Took a quick picture because they often bolt as soon as they know that they have been seen. This one has obviously encountered a lot of people as he was completely unaffected by us. He just keep browsing on the bushes beside the trail. We kept slowly walking forward thinking he would bolt at any moment. We finally made it to about 10 yards away before he hopped off the trail and back into the woods. Here are a couple of pictures showing how far away we were when we first noticed him, how close we got and a zoomed in pic.
We continued on the trail to the backside of the park coming out to the edge of the Badger High School property. Along the way we noticed something brightly colored off the trail and went to investigate. Turns out it was an orienteering checkpoint with a message not to remove it. It must be something that the high school does with kids — very nice to have a state park literally in your high school’s backyard. We made it around the rest of the loop and the Orange loop with only seeing one more deer. It saw us before we saw it (imagine that!) and bounded off across the middle of the open center of the Orange loop. We thought we might see it again as we rounded the open area, but we never did. We made it back to the car and were ready to head off to our next park.
The next destination was Aztalan State Park in Jefferson, WI. We knew this was going to be a “quick” park for us as it had, at most, 2 miles of trails to hike. But we still needed to check it off the list! Arriving in the parking lot there was only one other car — another empty park for us to hike — YAY!! The trails leading from the parking lot were wide cut grass trails. It looked like the majority of the trail here would be this kind of trail and, no surprise, it was. Being that we were basically walking across a big wide open field — the wind was blowing kind of hard and it definitely was pretty chilly. As we got closer to the woods we saw that we were actually going to make it into the woods instead of just in the middle of the field. A little ways into the woods we came to the banks of the Crawfish River. We then paralleled the river for a quarter mile or so until we came to the first of the restored stockade walls. Seeing these huge trees sunk into the ground made us really appreciate the effort that it must have taken the original people to build this kind of structure.
Still walking along the river, we made our way to the South end of the park and the very large restored mound. We went up the steps to find that yes, the wind does blow more strongly the higher you get. 😉 The view was pretty neat though.
We quickly made our way to the other restored mound and back to the car. Aztalan State Park is very pretty and historic and has a lot of information on signs throughout the trails, but not much for those that are more “hike-oriented” like us. On to the third and final state park of the day.
The final park was Lake Kegonsa State Park in Stoughton, WI. We were pleasantly surprised to find a ranger in the contact station at the main entrance. Even more pleasantly surprised to find out that she would be there until 4PM and that they had bathrooms that we would be able to change into our dinner clothes in, instead of having to do it in the car or finding a gas station to do it at — WOO HOO!!! Even though there was no snow on the ground, everything was switched over to “winter” mode at this park (meaning all the trail signs, etc. were ready for skiing and not hiking). The really strange thing is that the trails are named differently and go different places in the winter. In the summer there is a “White Oak Nature Trail” that in the winter is called the “Green” trail, the “Prairie Trail” is known as the “Blue” trail, and the “Bluebird” trail is know as the “Yellow” trail and goes to completely different location.
Oh well, we started off down the White Oak Nature trail. This was a very nice little loop trail through the woods on the North side of the park. We came across a hawk along the trail that kept going from tree to tree like it was trying to lead us away from something. We have seen this many times with smaller birds, I don’t know if that is what the hawk was doing or if it was just ticked that we were walking in its woods. Eventually the hawk flew off to somewhere that we could not see. We came along a sign that said “Please stay off Indian Mound”. The funny thing about this was that it was seemingly almost completely flat ground. Had there not been a sign there, you would have never even known there was anything to stay off of. Making our way back to the parking lot off that loop were were now going to head down the Prairie trail. This was a nice level trail around the prairie. While doing this loop, we change “the plan” and decided to head off on the “Yellow” trail and loop down to the beach. We are so glad we did this as we got to see the really cool ice buildup being pushed onshore from the partially frozen lake. The ice was about half an inch thick and was piling up in ridges on the shore — very pretty.
We made our way back to the car to go to the other side of the park down by the boat lauch. These trails were through some of the small bodies of water next to the lake. Must be very pretty (and mosquito filled) in the summer, but hiking through with all the leaves down was also beautiful. Being that these were snowshoeing trails and there was no snow on the ground it was a little difficult to know exactly where the trail was supposed to go. This was very evident as we followed the trail up to Williams Knoll picnic area — we could not find where the trail went from that hill top. We could however see our car in the parking lot about 1/3 mile away. We decided just to bushwhack the rest of the way and forego trying to find the trail — we made it about halfway there when we came across the trail that we were supposed to be on. Oh well, sometimes bushwhacking can be fun!!
We had about two hours before we were to meet our good friends for Supper Club Saturday. We happened to pass by Cambridge Winery in Cambridge, WI on the way to Lake Kegonsa State Park and decided to head back there after getting changed. We were very excited to see that this winery offered more than the traditional sweet fruit wines that dominate the Wisconsin winery business. We had 45 minutes for the tasting before we had to leave for Supper Club Saturday. No worries — plenty of time (insert ominous foreshadowing music). Needless to say Tammy had a blast talking to the ladies pouring the wine and of course, tasting the wine. Suddenly we looked and we had 15 minutes to drive the 25 minutes to the supper club!!! Oh no!! We quickly paid but the ladies had to have us taste one more wine before we left. We were able to witness a beautiful sunset as we walked out to our car — wanted to enjoy it more, but we had a supper club to get to!!!
Maple Tree Supper Club was the destination to meet our good friends Beth and Frank Hoppe for Supper Club Saturday. While we were a little late due to the winery, Beth and Frank has just arrived shortly before we did and were sitting in the bar enjoying a cocktail. We joined them for a quick drink before being seated for dinner. Followers of this blog know that prime rib is Mike’s meal of choice, but they had four sizes here: 12, 14, 18 and 24 ounces) which to choose? While waiting for our table Beth and Frank ran into someone they had not seen in years and he suggested getting the 24 ounce prime rib and bringing the leftovers home. Done!!
This is probably one of the first times that Mike has actually brought food home from a restaurant in a very long time!! The food and the company was outstanding!!
We finally said our good byes and has an uneventful 2.5 hour drive home.
Splorin' Saturday 