Hixon Forest Part Deux….1/11/2020

“Sometimes you just have to do a little Splorin’ ” — Mike Schmitz

A quick bit of history here — all four of our kids were in show choir at Eau Claire Memorial High School (Old Abe Show Choir — OASC Forever!!!). Our youngest son graduate last year so this is officially our first year of not having kids in show choir since 2007. Whew — 12 years. We love show choir — it was a great place for our kids. Our oldest daughter met her husband there, our youngest daughter is still going out with her boyfriend that she met there and all the kids (and us) made life long friends. So — here we are our first year of not being involved with show choir, you would think we would enjoy our time away. But no. This Saturday two competitions were taking place in the La Crosse, WI area: Onalaska and Viterbo. We were going to take the day off from Splorin’ and just go to both competitions, but that is when Mike made his famous quote above. We had the morning to do some Splorin’ before attending the competitions, so we were headed to Hixon Forest Park in La Crosse, WI.

A couple words on the back story here. Those who have actually read the entirety of our blog know that this all started from Mike’s quadruple bypass surgery and our desire to get out and be more active. The worst of that all started on Mike’s 50th birthday when he got the called that he fabulously failed his stress test and would need to see a cardiologist. This news was all received when Mike and Tam were on their way to have lunch with Tammy’s Aunt Jane and Uncle Gary in La Crescent, MN (right across the Mississippi from La Crosse). So — on Mike’s 51st birthday he wanted to return to the scene of the crime and have lunch with them again — they introduced us to Hixon Forest and we did some hiking on his birthday. Mike has complicated rules for what counts as Splorin’ and what does not. That hike did not rise to the level of Splorin’. When asked to explain why not, the only thing he could say was “It doesn’t meet the bar of Splorin’ ” — no one (including Mike) knows what that means. He’s a complicated guy….and sometimes not very articulate, but when he’s made up his mind, no one (including the truth) can make him change it.

It was decided that we would have about 3 hours to hike so we would do the same trails that we did with Tammy’s Aunt and Uncle before we started watching show choir competitions for the rest of the day (literally!!). Even though we had a ton of snow in Eau Claire, we knew that La Crosse had no snow on the ground — we thought hiking in Hixon Forest would be a piece of cake. Mike made sure to get current maps (last time we were there, we were close to lost because some of the maps that were posted were out-of-date).

Our breakfast was in Arcadia, WI — yet another small Wisconsin town that we had been to a million times before (usually stopping at the bakery or Pat’s meats) — but to a restaurant we had never been too: Kozy Kitchen Cafe. Tammy was concerned it would be right next to the bakery that we used to always get coffee cake from — it was, but, the bakery closed quite a while ago and was for sale. Whew — that just means that Tammy was not tempted by the call of the poppy seed coffee cake. We walked into the restaurant to yet another first for us: the old gentleman’s coffee klatsch was in full swing with 5 or 6 guys — BUT this time they each sat at their own table. They were spread all over the restaurant. When we walked in Mike picked the booth that we were to sit at. A couple minutes after we sat down another older gentleman came in and stared at us. Tammy thought for sure that we sat at “his” table and he was ticked — Mike thinks he just stared at us trying to figure out who the heck we were (we don’t think they see many non-locals there). Whichever the case, all was good. He walked right back into the kitchen to get his own coffee then joined the rest of the klatsch. We had our “usual” breakfast — bonus points for anyone who comments on this blog post and states what that “usual” is!!!

We also have to take a moment to talk about what it takes to make a quintessential Wisconsin diner/cafe that we like. Has to have the following: an older gentleman’s coffee klatsch, miss-matched coffee cups, an open beverage station, kitschy stuff on the walls, a lunch counter with stools, tiny tiny bathroom, a high school aged waitress… Kozy Kitchen Cafe had another first for us — you go to the restroom and the only thing in the restroom is….a toilet. The sink to watch your hands is out in the hallway between the Men’s and Women’s bathrooms. Wow — we’ve never seen that before!!!

Oh well — time to start some Splorin’!!! As we mentioned above, we’ve been on this trail before — it has a lot of elevation gain, beautiful views and lots of places for Mike to hug trees instead of getting close to death-defying drops. We started up the trail — we knew it was a big climb before we got to the first observation area. Mike commented several times that he was amazed there was no ice on the trail <ominous foreshadowing music…>. We did see some ice right by the first little bridge that we had to crosss, but not much beyond that. We were passed by a gentleman on a fat tire bike on a fairly steep section of the trail. We couldn’t understand how he could be going that slow and still keep his balance on the bike. The trail was mercifully clear of snow and ice — YAY!!!!

This is about the point where the cyclist passed us. We thought this picture was so beautiful. You can see the Minnesota bluffs way in the distance. The trail was in great shape. You can see the trail bending to the right in the distance in this picture. We made our way around that bend to see….

Ice. Ugh. At this point we were able to just walk on the side of the trail to avoid most of it. We kept wondering how in the world the cyclist made it through this — it was slippery enough for us going slow how in the world would you bike through it? Our question was answered about 5 minutes later when we saw him on a switchback above us pushing his bike. So — we guess the answer is you do NOT ride your bike over this, instead you push it. But we finally made it to the first scenic overlook. As we were walking the short trail out we ran into another hiker. We stopped an chatted for a little bit — his opening line of the conversation was: “So, you survived going down over all the ice, huh?”. We talked for a little while about the trail conditions and he admitted that there were a couple of sections that he just sat on his butt and slid down instead of trying to walk. It wasn’t until we left the observation area that Mike realized he was going the opposite way we were going so his “downhills” were our “uphills”. All-in-all we were happy to climb up icy hills rather than have to try to hike down them. We love the view from the top yet again.

Even with the beautiful view Tammy had to take a minute to respond to several text messages (including her Aunt who lives WAY on the other side of these pictures). We moved on the trail and actually saw some wildlife!!

We knew there was another uphill section that was on the North side of the bluff so it was going to likely be covered in ice. We were not disappointed (or maybe we were…). Regardless it was a long hike up the switchbacks that were completely covered in ice. A couple of times we cut straight up hill rather than trying to walk up the trail because it was so covered in ice.

But as usual the view at the top is worth the hike up. Mike was actually almost adventurous on top of this observation area. The really cool thing about this was that you could see the trail and the long switchbacks on the bluff that we had just climbed up earlier in the morning. If you look close (or zoom in?) on this picture you can see the trail as it goes back and forth on the bluff.

We were going to go further — at least that was “The Plan”. But given the ice on the hills it took us a LOT longer than we anticipated and we had to get going so that we could go watch show choir!!!

While we did not get a #SupperClubSaturday this weekend we were able to have enough time to make it to the Blue Moon restaurant in Onalaska for lunch that we had been to a couple times before. We had wings and cheese curds. It was good food!!!

We spent the afternoon at the Onalaska Show Choir Classic where we saw a couple pretty bad show choirs and some absolutely amazing show choirs, including Tammy’s favorite, Bemidji Vocalmotive. We then spent the evening at Viterbo College at Viterbo 101 — we had awesome seats, about 10 rows back right in the center. It was awesome!! We didn’t get a chance to have dinner, so we ended up meating our kids at Applebee’s in Eau Claire at 11:15PM to grab a bite to eat with them! Whew….what a Splorin’ Saturday!!!