The weather was supposed to be FANTASTIC for Wisconsin in February — highs in the upper 30s/low 40s — we decided to head back to a state park we had visited back in June — Straight Lake State Park. Our loyal readers will remember that we cut our visit to this park very short as the mosquitos were unbearable at the time. We were pretty sure even with the warmer temperatures, we wouldn’t have to worry about mosquitos and it should be awesome for snowshoeing — right? Right?!?
The day started pretty gosh darn spectacular. First, we left the house at 7AM (well, 7:02AM, but Tammy will say that is because Mike was slow loading the car), and walking out of the house we heard every bird within 10 miles singing — it sounded like a bright clear Spring morning (even though it was only 10 degrees with about two feet of snow on the ground). Since we added the bird feeders outside our living room — we love birds!!!!
Our first stop of the day would be AJ’s Northside Cafe in Baldwin, WI. The drive from Eau Claire to Baldwin — about 45 miles — was stunningly gorgeous with freezing fog on all the trees and layers of fog floating at different levels along the way. It was really strange in that we would go through locations where there was frozen fog over everything and a mile later there wasn’t any. Overall very stunning.
We attempted to stop at AJ’s on one of our previous Splorin’ Saturdays but were denied because there were issues that weekend with not having enough staff to serve. No such “unluck” today. We arrived and the street and the lot were full. We were worried about finding any place to sit, but as we walked in, we saw one table available — YAY!! This was our kind of place. Of course there was a coffee klatsch of older gentleman (and one gentlewoman) and it was busy, busy, busy. Lots of little kitschy decorations adorned the walls and something we have been noticing a lot more — some great signs.
The food was very good — Tammy having her typical veggie omelet and Mike going off the board and having steak and eggs with a side of bacon.
From Baldwin we were heading north on our way to our destination. We encountered more freezing fog along Highway 63, thankfully the roads were not slippery at all. Before we got to the state park, we had to go right through Amery, WI. We decided to make a stop at Ellie’s Ice Cream, Coffee, and Conversation because a friends of ours, Amy T, is the manager there (Mike went to school with her since First Grade). You might remember that the FIRST time we went to Straight Lake, we also made a stop to see Amy at her birthday party. Mike was convinced there was no way that she would be there early on a Saturday morning (the manager usually doesn’t have to work the crud hours) — but as Mike’s luck would have it, Tammy proved him wrong once again. We had a very nice visit with Amy T!!!
We then were off to Straight Lake State Park. As previously mentioned we spent a VERY LONG 20 minutes here back in June. We made a very quick “jog” around Rainbow Lake shooing, smacking, waving, basically anything we could think of, to kill or chase away mosquitoes. Today there was not a single mosquito in sight!!! WOO HOO!! We arrived to find only two other cars in the parking lot. We could see two people out on Rainbow Lake ice fishing — so they were at least one maybe both of the cars. Mike was worried that we would see tons of people since the weather was going to be so nice. So far, so good on that front.
As usual Mike worked diligently on a plan. Unfortunately at this park there was no easy way to get back to the car after a short-ish snowshoe hike. So — Mike planned on doing 5 – 6 miles of snowshoeing before we made it back to the car. We were psyched!! Before we head out we made a quick trip to the pit toilets. Tammy found out that freezing fog on the toilet seats of pit toilets is not a really a comfortable way to start the day of hiking. The weather was already getting warm — it was almost 30 degrees. We dressed lightly to avoid overheating, then we strapped on our snowshoes, took our trekking poles, Mike donned the backpack, and off down the trail we went.
We began on the same trail that we started on in June — around Rainbow Lake. We passed the two people out ice fishing. We couldn’t tell if they were catching anything or not, but both were standing looking at their phones while their tip-ups were resting in the holes in the ice. We passed the spot where we ran into the extremely large snapping turtle last summer (he wasn’t home this time — what do turtles do in the Winter? Hmm….). Climbing a small hill we had a very pretty view back across the lake.
We had kind of forgotten how hilly this trail was (after all we were just focused on mosquito control and getting back to the car last June) and doing hills with snowshoes is a little bit more difficult and tiresome than doing it just in hiking boots. The other thing that we noticed — snowshoeing is LOUD!!! We knew it would be difficult for us to see any wildlife along the trail because of the noise we were making. We also found out that it is difficult to carry on a conversation while snowshoeing because of that noise. So, fearless leader Mike would have to stop and turn around any time he wanted to say anything to Tammy (which, he wasn’t too upset about because it would allow for a micro-break).
We made it the one mile back around Rainbow Lake to where we could go to the car if we wanted, or we could turn and head south on High Point Trail. We had made that first mile in about 30 minutes — we were feeling good. This was going to be an awesome day!!! Of course we chose to head down the High Point Trail. As it’s name implies, there was a lot of up and down on this trail. But the scenery was just breathtaking. Along the trail we saw a Bald Eagle soaring overhead.
Tammy is still dealing with her new boots and still trying to break them in — but it seems like they are breaking her instead. By the time we are getting toward the end of the High Point Trail, she knows she has some pretty big blisters on the back of her heels.
At this point, Mike commented that we were supposed to be looking for a trail off to the right — the Glacial Trail, which would take us to where the Ice Age Trail enters Straight Lake State Park. Up ahead Mike spotted the back of a sign on the trail. Mike said “I sure hope that says “High Point Trail” — well, it didn’t. It said “Glacial Trail”. Somehow we transitioned from the High Point Trail to the Glacial Trail without even knowing it. Ugh. Mike pulls out his trusty map to try to figure out where we went wrong. The best he could tell the Glacial Trail must have been less traveled and we just didn’t see it branch off. Well, about 0.1 miles back on the trail we found where the trail branched off at a relatively sharp angle; coming from the other direction it was almost invisible.
The Glacial Trail was a LOT less traveled than the High Point Trail. No one had hiked down it since the last snowfall, and whomever had hiked down it previously was bareboot hiking (no snowshoes) so it was just footprints and not very well packed down. This can sometimes be very nice snowshoe conditions but here it was a little difficult as the snow was not really “fluffy” — with the warming temperature the snow was becoming heavier and heavier (great snowball fight or snowman making snow, but not so great for snowshoeing). We had about a mile to go on this trail and as we neared the end where we would meet up with the Ice Age Trail, Tammy kept complaining about the snow balling up under her snowshoes. Mike just thought she was complaining because of her blisters as he was not having any problems at all. At this point she had to stop every couple hundred yards to whack the snow off the bottom of her snowshoe crampons and between that and the blisters, she was not a happy ‘splorer.
We were then on the Ice Age Trail and heading back towards Rainbow Lake. This portion of the Ice Age Trail was on top of a bluff overlooking the Straight River. It was very beautiful. We encountered many bridges along this portion of the trail — during warmer months there must be a lot of running water down the side of the hills as at this point in time the bridges just went over snow.
Finally at this time Mike’s snowshoes started balling up with snow too. This becomes very difficult to walk on. It is like putting a tennis ball on the bottom of your shoe and expecting to walk on it. We were stopping every 20 feet to clear our snowshoes with our poles. Mike finally figured out you could get most of the snowball off by scuffing your snowshoe forward into the snow. This was very difficult and strenuous to do though. The problem was the darn temperature — it was getting too warm and the snow was packing into the crampons on our snowshoes. We decided that when we got to the intersection of the Ice Age Trail and the Rainbow Lake trail we would head back to the car. Unfortunately that was still about a mile ahead. So we still had about 1.5 miles left to hike on this snow that was rapidly getting very warm.
We finally made it back to the car (after 4.34 miles of snowshoeing in just under 3 hours. Obviously after that first mile in 30 minutes we slowed down considerably!!! 😉 We took a much needed break and decided that we were done snowshoeing for the day. We had a new snack to try this week in addition to our almonds — BBQ pork rinds. Quite addictive really. The temps were just too high and the snow too sticky to allow snowshoeing to continue. BUT — that does not mean we were down!!! We could still do some bareboot hiking.
After a nice long break and some first-aid treatment on the blisters on Tammy’s heels we were ready to do a little walking. We walked up the driveway to get our selfie by the State Park sign and then headed down the Straight Lake Trail which takes you down to the hike-in campsites.
Unfortunately the trail was not as heavily trafficked as some of the other trails we had been on. So it was some pretty difficult hoofing as the snow was pretty deep in some places (and our snowshoes were resting back in the car). We finally made it to the campground parking lot and we decided to bug out — we would take the driveway out to the road and walk that road back to the main parking lot and be done. One the way out to the road we passed an area that was actively being logged. It sure looked like it was hit by some straight line winds, but thinking back it might have been done just by the loggers. Found some interesting sumac along the way too.
When we got back to the car — we still had some time to kill before we had to head off to dinner, so we took advantage of the warm weather and sat at a picnic table in a shelter to play a game of cribbage. Mike was killing Tammy until her last three hands when she pegged about 97 points and won going away. Oh well, it was fun anyway.
We were now off to #SupperClubSaturday. A high school friend sent us a suggestion for a place to go: Bistro 63 in Baronette, WI. Mike looks it up and sees that they open at 4PM so as long as we get there after 4PM we’re good, right? Right? Well, Tammy has noticed that while they open at 4PM they do not start serving dinner until 5PM. Ugh. So Mike is a STRONG believer in Google Maps. So he programs the restaurant in and it says we will arrive t 3:51PM. Oh oh, not open yet. So as we go along the way Google keeps saying “Hey — here’s an alternate route that takes 5 minutes longer”. So…..we take it! And another and another and another. We love traveling the back roads of Wisconsin, so take us on alternate routes!!! We finally passed by about 4:05 or so — it appeared no one was there. Just a pickup truck out front. We decided to head up the highway 5 miles or so and let Google route us back. Well, we made it back at about 4:14PM and still just that one pickup. So we kept going the other way. We turned on 27 1/2 St. Turns out this is a non-paved road (do not tell Avis please) and with the super warm temperatures and melting snow and ice — it was pretty gosh darn muddy. There were several spots where we were going sideways like we were sliding on ice — but it was on mud. Mud was flying up from the wheels. Seriously thought we might get stuck for a little while — but we made it through and decided to finally stop and go inside.
As we walk inside, we encounter a little old lady who asks us if we have reservations. When we tell her we don’t, she gets a very concerned look on her face and says she will see what she can do. She was able to find a table for us and told us we could have a seat in the bar until it was time for them to serve dinner. So, we ambled over to the bar and had a drink….or two. We were a little confused looking in to the dining room as we saw several tables with people eating. We thought the dining room didn’t open til 5? The nice hostess came over and told us our table was ready. As we sat down, we noticed there was a family style table set up and the food looked really good. A little eavesdropping and we are pretty sure this was a catering tasting for 2 weddings and not people being served ahead of time. Whew!
Dani, our waitress, was right over. We had the Antipasto (without bread and crackers) for an appetizer. Mike of course had the Prime Rib and Tammy had the Seafood Mixed Grill (tuna, scallops and shrimp.) Dani was right on top of all our low carb requests — no croutons on Mike’s salad, asked before she brought bread, etc. -she was a very good waitress. Mike’s Prime Rib was pretty good and Tammy’s was pretty good too, with one notable exception. She saved half her tuna for Mike (since he LOVES tuna) — but it was the most “fishy” tasting tuna that either of us had ever had. Oh well — what can you expect in Baronette, WI. 😉 We should have just stuck to beef — Wisconsin does beef very well!!! It has been awhile since we have done much “eavesdropping” at dinner but tonight the couple seated next to us was very obviously on their first or second date. It was fun to kind of listen in on them a bit getting to know each other and see those new “sparks” fly.
We then had a 1.5 hour drive home — which was pretty short for a Splorin’ Saturday!!! We love Splorin’!!!!!
Splorin' Saturday 